The Wikipedia Deletion Wars

Nicholson Baker has written a good review of John Broughton's new book "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual" that details the Wikipedia War between deletionists and inclusionists that started in the fall of 2006, when groups of editors went around getting rid of articles on webcomic artists—some of the most original and articulate people on the Net.

As the deletions and ill-will spread in 2007—deletions not just of webcomics but of companies, urban places, Web sites, lists, people, categories, and ideas—all deemed to be trivial, "NN" (nonnotable), "stubby," undersourced, or otherwise unencyclopedic—Andrew Lih, one of the most thoughtful observers of Wikipedia's history, told a Canadian reporter: "The preference now is for excising, deleting, restricting information rather than letting it sit there and grow."

Although the war seems to have subsided "someone recently proposed a Wikimorgue—a bin of broken dreams where all rejects could still be read, as long as they weren't libelous or otherwise illegal. Like other middens, it would have much to tell us over time. We could call it the Deletopedia."

Kevin Kelly has some additional thoughts on the book.

Photo:  "I love Wikipedia" by nojhan  Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic