[p2p-research] threat of wiki bio deletion

[Henrik Ingo]

Now that we have people here that follow Wikipedia more actively than
me, it seems like a good opportunity to ask the question I've always
wondered about:

Is the issue of creating "editions" of Wikipedia often discussed? I
mean the whole question of deletionism seems to me to be a
misunderstanding of the opportunities created by an internet
wikipedia. The problem deletionists try to solve is that of
quality/trustability, they try to delete all such material that would
not normally make it into a traditional encyclopedia, or at least
material which can be suspected to be wrong or just poorly written.
Yet, the great thing about wikipedia (or the internet in general) is
that it is not a traditional encyclopedia - it can contain an infinite
amount of information (why not have bio's of all of us there?) and be
updated fast, rather than through a slow perfectionist process.

It seems that the antagonists in the deletionist vs inclusionist
debate have forgotten that they are dealing with an infinite medium,
where all solutions ( -> forks) may co-exist. The sensible thing to do
would be to have one "source" Wikipedia, which would strive for
maximum inclusionism, and then have editions which strive for a
certain treshold of quality, certain topics etc... (And there are
mechanisms that can be implemented to make sure the original source is
still efficiently re-used, the editions would be subsets of the
inclusionist full wikipedia.)

This would be similar to how Linux distributions work: Sourceforge and
the internet in general will create an endlees supply of Open Source
Software, and distributions are there to filter out the true gems for
easy access to the greater public. Instead now the different camps in
wikipedia seem to have gotten stuck on the idea of a one true
wikipedia, and battling over how that should be governed.

**

I'm aware of Citizendium
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/sep/21/wikipedia.comment)
and there also seems to be various Wikipedia editions for - say - PDA
type of devices. But since the deletionists still seem to be so active
in Wikipedia, it seems to me that this solution is not yet obvious to
the majority of Wikipedians?

Lastly, I should note that this is a solution that could be
implemented by Wikipedia itself (as in, edited.wikipedia.org or
similar) or it could be launched as a "deletionist fork" (which
Citizendium seems to be?)

henrik


On Dec 1, 2007 11:43 AM, Tere Vadén <tere.vaden at uta.fi> wrote:
> I *hate* deletionism. Arguing for deletion of articles on net theorists
> because they have mainly published on the net is madness. Though, maybe,
> it is mostly young males influenced by natural science and just learning
> the skills of using references who represent the tendency. Hate the sin,
> not the sinner, eh? I would love to see a ultra-inclusionist wikipedia
> from which nothing but advertisement and illegal stuff would be deleted.
>
> In any case, I tried to improve the article by adding a little bit on
> the CTheory article.
>
>
> Michel Bauwens wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Michel_Bauwens
> >
> > Dear friends, it appears, unless I am mistaken, that there is a new
> > deletionist attempt to take my bio off the wikipedia, which I think
> > would be unfortunate, as it is often cited.
> >
> > May I appeal to your cooperation, as I can't do this myself, to support
> > the noteworthyness of the page?
> >
> > I'm appealing especially to my academic friends in cc, since part of the
> > motivation seems to be my exterior position to the acedemia.
> >
> > I think at this stage, since there is already a lot of supporting
> > material in earlier discussions, some short statements against deletion,
> > but motivated, would be sufficient,
> >
> > Many thanks for this,
> > Michel Bauwens
> >
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-- 
email: henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi
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www:   www.avoinelama.fi/~hingo
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