Criticism
Documentarian Jason Scott has noted the large amount of wasted effort that goes into deletion debates. Being called an inclusionist or deletionist can sidetrack the issue from the actual debate, which may contribute to community disintegration, restriction of information, or a decrease in the rate of article creation that suggests a decrease in passion and motivation amongst editors. Nevertheless, some have observed that the interaction between the two groups may actually result in an enhancement of overall quality of content.
Startup accelerator and angel investor Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham has written on a page listing "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund" that deletionists rule Wikipedia:
Deletionists rule Wikipedia. Ironically, they're constrained by print-era thinking. What harm does it do if an online reference has a long tail of articles that are only interesting to a few people, so long as everyone can still find whatever they're looking for? There is room to do to Wikipedia what Wikipedia did to Britannica.
Novelist Nicholson Baker recounted how an article on the beat poet Richard Denner was deleted as "nonnotable", and criticised the behaviour of vigilante editors on Wikipedia in New York Review of Books. The article has since been restored.
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'. They poke articles full of warnings and citation-needed notes and deletion prods till the topics go away." —Nicholson BakerSuch debates have sparked the creation of websites critical of Wikipedia such as Wikitruth, which watches for articles in risk of deletion. Wikinews editor Brian McNeil has been quoted as saying that every encyclopedia experiences internal battles, the difference being that those of Wikipedia are public.
In 2009, Wikipedia began to see a reduction in the amount of edits to the site, which some called a result of user frustration due to excessive deletionism.
Read more about this topic: Deletionism And Inclusionism In Wikipedia
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting worldthough the cant of hypocrites may be the worstthe cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (17131768)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other mens genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesnt know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the idle workers who just wont get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877?)