Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia

"Deletionism" redirects here. Not to be confused with depletionism.

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]

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]

  1. ^ David E. Gumpert (5 September 2007). "A Case Study in Online Promotion". BusinessWeek. Archived from the original on 12 March 2008. Retrieved 23 January 2008.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference JASIST was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Douglas, Ian (11 October 2007). "Wikipedia: an online encyclopedia torn apart". The Telegraph. London: Telegraph Media Group. Archived from the original on 12 November 2012. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
  4. ^ "Marked for Deletion". Weekend America. National Public Radio. 20 January 2007. Archived from the original on 10 March 2014. Retrieved 23 January 2008.
  5. ^ Nick Farrell (26 February 2007). "Hack got death threats from Wikipidiots". The Inquirer. Archived from the original on 27 May 2012. Retrieved 23 January 2008.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  6. ^ "Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not". Wikipedia. 20 July 2010. Archived from the original on 14 March 2017. Retrieved 21 October 2021.