The Deletion Process at Wikipedia Options

[timbo]

I found an interesting article buried in the footnotes of the Oct. 31, 2011 edition of The Wikipedia Signpost, an academic study dealing with the deletion process at Wikipedia. The pdf for the piece, entitled "Participation in Wikipedia's Article Deletion Processes," by R. Stuart Geiger and Heather Ford of UC Berkeley, is published under a Creative Commons license and is freely available:

http://www.wikisym.org/ws2011/_media/proce...p201-geiger.pdf

Takeaways are that approximately 60% of all deletions at WP over the past 4 years have been done by Administrators as speedy deletions and that "A7: No indication of importance" is overwhelmingly the most commonly-cited reason for the speedy — indicating that such deletions are of generally encyclopedic material.

With respect to the "Articles for Deletion" process, the authors found that AfD debates were dominated by a relatively small number of long-time WP participants and more or less echoed anecdotal evidence that "the deletion process is plagued by highly-nuanced standards and norms, substantial use of jargon and categorization, compartmentalization of related processes, and a significant imbalance between the number of procedurally-oriented administrators and procedurally- unaware newcomers."

The discussion question I have: how big of a problem is this? Is the "A7 Speedy Deletion Criterion" being abused by administrators?

Further: Does the makeup at AfD of experienced editors, apt to spout jargon and sometimes obscure policies and standards, negatively impact the project — or does it add an aspect of quality control that would be lacking if these debates were dominated by newcomers driven by narrow single interests separate from established policy?

t

This post has been edited by timbo:

[thekohser]

One thing that still tickles me about Wikipedia is that they reviewed the status of a List of U.S. ticker symbols, which would actually be a very useful list, and very easily maintained by investors.

But, because most Wikipediots are too young and broke to even consider things like stocks, they ignored all the "Keep" votes, and the list was deleted.

They delete that, but they keep more important lists like:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_characters_in_the_Pok%C3%A9mon_anime_series
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._military_vehicles_by_supply_catalog_designation
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_undersea-carried_planes
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_related_to_Belgian_punk_rock

It's deletion decisions like these that make me realize how hopeless Wikipedia is.

[radek]

One thing that still tickles me about Wikipedia is that they reviewed the status of a List of U.S. ticker symbols, which would actually be a very useful list, and very easily maintained by investors.

But, because most Wikipediots are too young and broke to even consider things like stocks, they ignored all the "Keep" votes, and the list was deleted.

They delete that, but they keep more important lists like:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_characters_in_the_Pok%C3%A9mon_anime_series
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._military_vehicles_by_supply_catalog_designation
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_undersea-carried_planes
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_related_to_Belgian_punk_rock

It's deletion decisions like these that make me realize how hopeless Wikipedia is.

The discussion you link to has it as Keep. what happened?

[thekohser]

The discussion you link to has it as Keep. what happened?

What happened was a second crack at it. Cogent arguments from people with such illustrious names as "Flying Hamster" won the day.