What’s the point of a Wiki if people delete pages instead of improving them?
By admin on Jun 01, 2010 with Comments 4
So I just added information to Wikipedia about a specific news person on TV. It wasn’t trollish. It was just information. I put a link to the CNN page about that person. It got disputed because it “wasn’t up to the standards” of Wikipedia. That’s fine. Disputing it is fine, but nominating it for deletion seems a bit much. Yet it’s the norm since all of my articles have been deleted, except one that I spent almost a month fighting for.
But instead of fixing it, this article about this CNN guy, it got deleted. Why? Why not fix it instead of deleting it? What’s the point of having a Wiki if this is how it works. Every Wiki I’ve been to, even self-proclaimed easy Wikis like TVtropes, treat me this way, like I’m some troll or idiot ruining everything. An article that is perfectly fine and needed and relevant, is deleted instead of improved, simply because it’s new. It doesn’t make any sense.
I would love to sit around all day and write a book with references about everything, and then spend the next month sitting at my computer without sleep having edit wars and providing resources for e-strangers about some guy on TV and debating about various minutia, but I’m not MENTALLY INSANE. I have other things to do and I’m not an obsessive shut in, and I know that there are better ways to focus my energy besides fighting about such nonsense and feeling drained because of some idiotic internet thing. But some people seem to spend all of their time and energy doing just that. I’ll just quit my job and cut all social ties to real people in order to provide an article for Wikipedia that will probably get deleted anyway.
I’m not getting paid to write Whatever for Dummies. I feel like I’m doing Wikipedia a favor by doing this for free in my spare time, and I feel offended when it gets deleted by people who should be helping me.
So someone please explain to me why Wikis work this way. It doesn’t seem to improve the Wiki, deleting relevant articles about real celebrities instead of improving them. Battling to get rid of information instead of nurturing it.
But for the record, the only thing that was wrong with my article about the CNN reporter was the tags and other such minor programming things to make it look pretty. Otherwise, the article was perfectly fine and neutral and informative. Not too big, not too small. Etcetera. But now it’s gone forever. I even marked it as a stub, which I guess meant nothing to anyone.
Oh yeah, and the article wasn’t rambling and incoherent like this question. I’m sort of angry right now, so I’m venting and no proofreading.
This person is mentioned in several other Wikipedia articles, which lead to his non-existent page.
I didn’t mention the specific person because people would miss the point and focus on the person.
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Wikis have their own insular culture, and if you don’t fit up to their standards, they’ll boot you.
It’s not fair and if you look it up you’ll find that this is actually bad for their growth due to all the idiocy and pointless wars over articles, but that’s just how it is, people are people.
The deal is …
Articles on wikipedia are graded on standards. If the article is up to snuff for a particular standard, and then is edited to the point the article no longer meets the standards for that “grade”, then deletion is easier than to refine the additional content.
If you desire to contribute, then you must find the grade of the article and ensure that any content you add meets the standards for the article to retain its “grade”.
No offense, but the very fact that you haven’t identified the CNN reporter in question suggests that you have no intention of discussing the most important issue here, which is why anyone would benefit enough from knowing about this person to justify the existence of a profile of him (or her) that’s open for defamatory, hatchet-job editing, at any time, from anywhere in the world, anonymously, by anyone – including that person’s worst enemies and detractors, not to mention random pranksters and haters.
Even if the person actually is worth knowing about, you have to remember that Wikipedia is in a maintenance phase. Most articles about subjects that people actually care about have already been written. The last thing they need are more “stubs” about people who might one day be of some social or cultural significance, posted by people who have no intention of improving them or maintaining those articles themselves. Such articles only deny potential new-article opportunities to people who might be willing to do such maintenance over the long term. Those are the people they want to recruit, not folks like you.
Articles about living individuals are much more problematic for Wikipedians to maintain and justify, not that they’re doing an especially good job of it now. By adding more of them, you’re doing a disservice to everyone else whose privacy and reputation are threatened by Wikipedia. Until Wikipedia adopts a policy allowing such individuals to have articles about them deleted upon request, anything like what you attempted to do is simply irresponsible.
I realize that’s probably not the sort of answer you were looking for… sorry!
The point of a wiki like Wikipedia is to provide a platform for ego gratification for introverted narcissists. All the talk of “making knowledge free” is just to take care of the funding needed to maintain such a platform.
There is a Wikipedia policy or essay that says people ought to improve pages rather than delete them. Even if you can find it, don’t bother using it in your arguments with the Wikipediots, because you’ll lose, regardless of whether or not you’re actually right.
Retype your article, post it on a website you control, and move on with your life. Let the shut-ins have their little victory.