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. The terms reflect differing opinions on the appropriate scope of the encyclopedia and corresponding tendencies either to delete or to include a given encyclopedia article.[1]
"Deletionism" redirects here. Not to be confused with depletionism.
Deletionists are proponents of selective coverage and removal of articles seen as poorly defended. 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.
Inclusionists are proponents of broad retention, including retention of "harmless" articles and articles otherwise deemed substandard to allow for future improvement. 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. Some extend this to include allowing a wider range of sources such as notable blogs and other websites.[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". The policy concludes "Consequently, this policy is not a free pass for inclusion".[6]
Scholarly research[edit]
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.[12] The existence of these groups was mentioned in a study by the Harvard Business School which reviewed the deletion debate over an article on Enterprise 2.0.[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.[29]
In the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, a study of Wikipedia's social dynamics called inclusionism and deletionism the two most prominent associations within Wikipedia. They observe that users in the same role (administrator, etc.) may hold different perspectives, and that "the diversity of member [information quality] preferences and the low cost of forming or switching associations may encourage schism in an existing association or evolution of new groups." At the same time, the associations may help to better critique existing policies and to find and achieve points of convergence.[2]
Vasilis Kostakis argued that the existence of deletionism vs inclusionist conflict illustrates the imperfect governance model of Wikipedia, and ambiguity of its rules that can only be resolved through conflict.[30]
Other language Wikipedias[edit]
Since the communities of different language versions of Wikipedia set their own notability standards, they have in some cases diverged substantially. Writing for Die Zeit, Kai Biermann describes the German Wikipedia as being dominated by "exclusionists", whereas he calls the English Wikipedia "inclusionist";[31] although c't author Torsten Kleinz commented that the English Wikipedia has for several years required users to have registered accounts to create articles, which German Wikipedia does not.[32] A debate in late 2009 over inclusion of several articles led to criticism in the German blogosphere of such vehemence and volume that the German Wikimedia held a meeting with several bloggers and German Wikipedia administrators regarding the German Wikipedia's notability criteria, and issued a press statement.[31]
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