Wikipedia Being Torn Apart in War Between the Old-Timers and the Newbies

Years of volunteer effort has allowed Wikipedia—for better or for worse—to evolve into the world's most popular source for information. But now there’s new threat that could split the online encyclopedia right down the middle. The "people's encyclopedia" is written and edited by its readers. But who really has the power to decide what stays and what goes? What happens when that group becomes divided?

New entries once flooded the site, but now the submission of new articles is slowing down to a trickle. Critics say the discussion pages have devolved into petty arguments and cryptic references to policy. Many believe it’s “the deletionists” who are causing the unpleasant stir throughout the formerly peaceful information source.

Anyone can edit all but the most controversial pages, but the English-language Wikipedia is governed by a group of around 1,000 administrators. These administrators are drawn from the ranks of enthusiastic editors. They hold the final decision of whether to delete an article or bring it back from the dead.

The group has unofficially formed itself into two “warring” factions: inclusionists and deletionists. The deletionists want to prevent the encyclopedia from becoming a “dumping ground for facts”. In their eyes, standards of have to be raised, or at least upheld, or the site would be full of pointless trivia. Inclusionists respond to that worry by pointing out that Wikipedia's greatest advantage is that it has no space limit and that an entry of interest to just a few people is justified. They argue that niche articles can’t hurt anyone since most people will never even see it, since the only way to access articles is through search.

From the articles that lay out these ideas and principles on Meta-Wiki, a website devoted to discussing how to manage Wikipedia, it is clear that both groups find the other side to be foolish. But things really get heated on the discussion pages of articles nominated for deletion. Policy documents are referred to only by abbreviations. There's WP:NEO (avoid neologisms), WP:NOR (no original research), WP:NOT (what Wikipedia is not, including a dictionary, a crystal ball and a democracy) and the popular favorite of the deletionists WP:NOTE (notability).

The notability question is at the center of the issue. As well as WP:NOTE itself, CSD (Criteria for Speedy Deletion) has a lot to say about what qualifies for an entry. The often-quoted CSD article seven bans any "article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not state why its subject is important or significant".

Inclusionists say that short articles (referred to as stubs) can be great seeds for future edits. The fact that they might not state exactly why the subject is important doesn’t make it automatically insignificant. It you delete it off hand then it never has the chance of expanding and becoming a great entry.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, created a stub entitled Mzoli's Meats. It was one sentence: "Mzoli's Meats is a butcher shop and restaurant located in Guguletu township near Cape Town, South Africa", with a link to a blog.

However, that little entry wasn’t good enough for 19-year-old administrator Chad Horohoe (username ^demon) who deleted it just minutes after it’s creation. Two weeks of furious debate followed. Mzoli's Meats now has an extensive entry and has likely been saved from future deletion.

User Kelly Martin, summed it up with "The Wikipedia that Jimbo [Wales] originally created takes short stubs like the one he created and turns them into articles; stubs should only be deleted when there is no reasonable hope that they will ever cease to be stubs. Unfortunately, in the past few years Wikipedia has changed; it now takes short stubs and throws them in the trash can, and excoriates those who have the temerity to create them. This stub is being saved only because it was created by Jimbo."

Andrew Lih was once a deletionist until he got in a conflict over an entry for Pownce, which had been written up in Business Week. The entry was deleted as advertising. Lih decided enough was enough and resurrected it. He wrote about the debate on his blog and has become a de facto spokesman for the inclusionists, who he says are the core of what makes wikipedia great.

"The old timers remember the early days when we used to say 'ignore all rules' and 'assume good faith', but people tend not to emphasise that now. The third or fourth generation of Wikipedians has only heard Jimmy Wales talk about the problems.

"So now, mixed in with the euphoria and positive energy it's a lot of cutting, fighting, referencing, cutting back while leaving the good stuff in. New priorities are arriving. Newer folks feel like they're wielding a machete, not planting new trees.

"A lot of the veterans see established articles nominated for deletion. They try not to be arrogant, try to be inclusive, but it's tedious after six, seven or eight times."

This year's Wikimania conference in Taiwan featured a 6ft model of Wikipedia's lettered globe logo in the lobby. At the end of the conference it was smashed so the delegates could all take a piece home. With other sites already springing up to rescue deleted articles, the old-timers hope that the broken up model is a foreshadow of things to come for Wikipedia.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

Comments

Perfect! Clusters of people are disasters waiting to happen. I managed a movie theatre in 1993. We kept a large journal behind the concessions counter, and all of the employees submitted thoughts, confessions, stories, drawings, poetry-- an amazing mix! Well, one of the kids wrote [of an above submission] "This is very offensive!!" And the whole thing devolved into petty namecalling debates over what "should" go in. Sad.

Posted by: Mr. Bear | October 15, 2007 at 07:19 AM