Talk:Deletionism

Average article size is still just a stub

From the village pump

"The mean article size was about 1997 bytes, or roughly 332 words: the en:median article size was smaller, at roughly 980 bytes, or roughly 163 words." From: Wikipedia:Size_comparisons.

Meaning, that this is the average size article, and that something like this article is about the halfway mark -- roughly half of all articles are smaller. It's a stub though-- which is my point. Those in the deletionist camp (sorry I been out for a few) -- who tend to want to get rid of articles on the basis of their stubbiness alone might try looking at this logically. Meaning like it or not, much of that 300000 in Wikipedia, is made of stubs. -戴眩sv 19:16, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)

Little Gull and Write-through are not stubs. They're not an in-depth treatise on the species' migratory patterns or a paper on the most efficient use of write-through caches, but they're both informative encyclopedia entries. --Brion 19:41, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Exactly my point. Some would call write-through (as it was when I used it as an example) too small to be called an "article". -戴眩sv 19:51, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)

Who are these mysterious "some"? --Brion 19:52, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

They are the wikifaithless deletionists, and they are many- I stand corrected. GTR, BBL戴眩sv 19:55, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)

Are these real people, or your mental image of people whose actual opinions on these pages you don't know? --Brion 20:07, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I wouldn't call those stubs. It's "articles" like Josh Kalis that deletionists have a problem with. A deletionist.

Well, considering that that anon user wasnt a wack-- he did actually edit a few other unrelated articles, we can assume that its not totally nonsense. What the heck I did a google search and came up with some info-- I added a link, made it a redirect to a more general category-- Whaddyaknow? Theres no skateboarder category. So I added one. I added Tony Hawk-- who I think is related to the subject, though I cant be sure, and the micro-granularity problem of a Josh Kalis article was solved in just as much time as it would have taken to add it to VFD --A typical salvationist

"When memes go bad"... Martin 20:56, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

A little sour from recent mailwacks, but not actually "bad". -戴眩sv 21:04, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)

Skateboarder and skateboarding would probably be better off discussed in one article. Pete 21:41, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Erik Zachte's great work on his statistics script (visible at http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm ) adds more detailed stats... one trend (see bottom of page) is that the proportional of articles less than 64b,128b,256b,512b,1024b,2048b are all heading down over time... yes there are bazillions of stubs, but they are slowly but surely being eroded away (proportionally speaking!). We are winning! Pete 21:41, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Where's the Find a random short article button so deletionists and others can find and expand random stubs when bored?:) Has to beat looking in recent changes, which by definition are something someone just worked on and is therefore more likely than average to continue working on and expand. JamesDay 22:18, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:shortpages. Random? Close your eyes and click randomly! Martin 22:27, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

---

This page indicates a complete misunderstanding of why so-called "deletionists" delete. Much of the time it is because the article is *never* going to be a good Wikipedia article. There are aspects of the sum total of human knowledge that don't belong on Wikipedia, and deleting articles on them makes the Wikipedia better. And, while we're at it, people that write one ungrammatical phrase and call it a stub are also a massive pain. --136.186.1.117 02:45, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Deletionism: Judge, Jury and Executioner - 122.150.200.116 05:31, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Angela's revisions

There quite obviously is such a thing as deletionism. The opening paragraph had survived in a form close to its current version for about a year, apparently accepted by most people as the proper definition. There's even an Association of Deletionist Wikipedians now. Angela, why did you unilaterally decide the philosophy is somehow fictional? --Eequor 13:26, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Why?

Why deletionism? When thought about in a rational sense it is a rather stupid 'philosophy'. As Wikipedia is an 'Encyclopedia anyone can edit' surely anyone can add anything they deem relevant. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia surely everything should be included.

Is it just because you can delete articles you delete them. This seems particularly silly. If you think you could write a better article why not just edit the existing one? Because you think that you are above others, maybe you feel you are 'Administrators', but in truth you are not.

Some articles are written poorly because not all facts are gathered at the time of writing and may note be finished. And you delete these fledgling articles because they are not up to you're ridiculously high standards. Try writing the articles instead of deleting them, because it seems to me as if you are a spiteful bunch. If it happened to you you would surely become hypocritical.

You're right, but there's not much that can be done about it. It's actually not so much a philosophy as it is a pathology. But that's the nature of the Internet, not just wikis: it attracts people who find narrow niches for their disabilities and claim them as "skills" or "philosophies". Aldaron 15:09, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Ditto

If it happened to you you would surely become hypocritical.

Well that's the disturbing thing about deletionists, they don't even have any qualms about deleting their own work if it fails to comply with policy. Drawing a Harry Potter comparison, these people are like Dolores Umbridge. They feel that authority cannot be wrong and whatever the rules are they must be adhered to, no matter how ridiculous and self-defeating said rules are.

I completely understand how you feel about this and it's satisfying to see people who share my frustrations. --81.153.236.226 10:51, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Filtering by others

I prefer to do my own filtering and I beleive in freedom of choice. Whenever my ISP filters stuff for me I may not be able to receive certain emails because they contain a picture file that has an encoded pattern sequence identical to an unencoded virus. Also I think I’m old enough where my mother does not have to protect me from sport or hobby magazines that might contain sexy underwear ads! Besides when you throw the afterbirth in the biohazard bin you can’t use it later for stem cell or other biological research. -- Pragmatist 17:45, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Wow, this page gets little attention

I debate the reality of this

Tell me, how many books are published on wikipedia deletionism? How many Google hits? How many people truly care? Down to earth truth, this is not an article that belongs in Wikipedia, it contains nothing to do with anything save the few sick-minded individuals who belive in it. Has this ever even been in the news? I belive for one, Deletionism needs to be deleted.

It's not just a few, it's a great deal of little editors running around deleting images, deleting factual content and otherwise "shrinking" the size and scope of the encyclopedia. While some clearly "get off" on the idea of deleting others' hard work, some come out and say they are in favor of "streamlining" content. It brings to mind Orwell's conception of the language Newspeak in the book 1984, in which the goal was to eliminate words and restrict thought. That's why the deletionist impulse needs to be exposed, and why this is a perfectly legitimate article. I suspect your questions, in effect, "Where are the books...where are the articles...how many Google Hits?" are great examples of the deletionist impulse. Even though this exists as a phenomenon, there are some who want it "eliminated" and thrown down a Memory hole.

I agree, this article needs to be deleted. I haven't found even one hit from a reputable news source, no bibliographic references, and all the Google hits (not a criterion by my standards because Google takes money for premiere hitspace) are all related to this very article. I'm going to mark it for deletion.137.236.4.1 14:33, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

"this is not an article that belongs in Wikipedia". Wikipedia is that way, this is Meta. Anomie 14:06, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

@Anomie: Sarcasm... TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 08:47, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

POV?

This article is very pro-deletionist and rather than describe deletionism it seems to defend its sanctity. Any article in wiki should have NPOV. Deletionism/Inclusionism are two sides of a dualism in wikis such that if deletionism were to win out there would be no wiki left, and if inclusionism won out nothing would ever be deleted. It does not make sense to defend an extremist view here as if it were rational. 70.113.3.5 13:15, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Relax. The side on which there would be no Wiki left does not actually exist. Anyone actually trying to erase entire Wikipedias is called a "banned user", not a deletionist. --Gmaxwell 17:59, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Storage

I've removed this argument against because it is misguided:

• Digital storage is inexpensive, making incremental costs of even superfluous trivial

The statement itself is actually true, but the use of it as an argument here betrays and promotes a significant misunderstanding of why people would delete things on Wikipedia in the first place. As Wikipedians (should) all know— "deletion" doesn't save any storage at all, thats why deletion can be undone. The idea that we're deleting things to save space is a very common misunderstanding on the Internet, and isn't one we should promote by listing the trivial cost of space as a counter argument. As it's a counter to a specific argument which isn't being made by anyone. Cheers --Gmaxwell 15:48, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

John Anderson

Has the fact that John Anderson is used as the example here led to there being an unusually large number of John Andersons on the main wiki? Jlang (talk) 11:45, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Most evil?

See this article which claims deletionists are among the most evil people in history! --131.123.123.136 16:30, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Essay against deletionism

Just adding this link here https://www.gwern.net/In Defense Of Inclusionism Kbog (talk) 19:01, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Missing history section

I came here hoping for some explanation of the history of deletionism and inclusionism on Wikipedia. I have some understanding that inclusionism used to be the predominant philosophy but that it's been shifting toward deletionism, but I don't know much beyond that. Can someone who knows more write about it? (If this isn't the place for it, I'd kindly appreciate a pointer to the more appropriate venue.) Sdkb (talk) 22:47, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Well there's no objective way to look at it. Deletionists invariably think that inclusionists are winning the day, and vice versa. That's what keeps the two sides fighting forever. Nemo 15:57, 22 March 2020 (UTC)