Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia
Deletionism and inclusionism are opposing philosophies that largely developed within the community of volunteer editors of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
Deletionist viewpoints are commonly motivated by a desire that Wikipedia be focused on and cover significant topics—along with the desire to place a firm cap upon proliferation of promotional use (seen as abuse of the website), trivia, and articles which are, in their opinion, of no general interest, lack suitable source material for high-quality coverage, are too short or otherwise unacceptably poor in quality,[2][3][4] or may cause maintenance overload to the community.
Inclusionist viewpoints are commonly motivated by a desire to keep Wikipedia broad in coverage with a much lower entry barrier for topics covered—along with the belief that it is impossible to tell what knowledge might be "useful" or productive, that content often starts poor and is improved if time is allowed, that there is effectively no incremental cost of coverage, that arbitrary lines in the sand are unhelpful and may prove divisive, and that goodwill requires avoiding arbitrary deletion of others' work.
[3][5] To the extent that an official stance existed as of 2010, it was that "There is no practical limit to the number of topics it can cover" but "there is an important distinction between what can be done, and what should be done", the latter being the subject of the policy "What Wikipedia is not".
"[9][16] On the other hand, deletionists favor objectivity and conformity,[12] holding that "Wikipedia is not Google",[2] a "junkyard",[9] or "a dumping ground for facts".
[18] Journalism professor K. G. Schneider has identified the mentality of deletionism as having manifested once the emphasis of the encyclopedia shifted from quantity to quality.
[19] In early 2007, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger identified himself as an inclusionist, except on certain topics pertaining to sexuality, for his Citizendium project.
He changed his position when an article he created about the social networking website Pownce was speedily deleted by another administrator as advertising.
[26] Novelist Nicholson Baker recounted how an article on the beat poet Richard Denner was deleted as "non-notable",[A] and criticised the behaviour of vigilante editors on Wikipedia in The New York Review of Books:[10][27] There are some people on Wikipedia now who are just bullies, who take pleasure in wrecking and mocking people's work – even to the point of laughing at non-standard "Engrish."
[14] At the 2005 Digital Arts and Culture Conference, the two groups were discussed as examples among "Eventualism" and "Immediatism" in a successful large-scale architecture of participation.
[9] The Institut national de recherche pédagogique (National Institute for Educational Research) in France, in case studies of Wikipedia, reported that while it was difficult to measure the influence of the groups as of April 2006, their existence is indicative of Wikipedia's internal dynamics consisting of multiple identities,[17] and may play progressively increasing roles.
