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Comment by zeveb | Hacker News Reader

One could perhaps be forgiven for wishing that the deletionists would … delete themselves.

Seriously, though, bytes are cheap, and an article sitting somewhere in Wikipedia doing nothing and bothering no-one is pretty damned cheap too.

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I dunno, this kind of thing seems like exactly the canonical argument for deletionism. Maybe there's no cost to a page sitting on Wikipedia describing, like, some guy's special attack from Naruto. There are reasonable arguments that allowing things like that would set a bad precedent and encourage behavior that doesn't help the project, but I admit it's pretty tenuous.

There are obvious and important costs if Wikipedia articles start being perceived as promotional material rather than encyclopedia entries.

> Maybe there's no cost to a page sitting on Wikipedia describing, like, some guy's special attack from Naruto.

There is a cost, but it's measured in hours of maintenance labor not bytes of storage.

If Wikipedia wants to maintain a semblance of accuracy [1] in the face of declining participation, it needs to concentrate its labor resources rather than spread them out.

[1] which IMHO is vital given its unwise prestige as arbiter or truth

Since Wikipedias concentration of labor itself is a source of declining participation[1] it's doubtful that continuing this behavior will result in something else than a death spiral with even fewer people ready to do the work, more concentration, even fewer .. and so on.

[1] Among other reasons, more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_is_Wikipedia_los...

> Since Wikipedias concentration of labor itself is a source of declining participation[1] it's doubtful that continuing this behavior will result in something else than a death spiral

I'm not as interested in the viability of Wikipedia's culture than the reliability of Wikipedia as a resource given its prominence. I'd take a dead Wikipedia over one that's lively and fun but full of crap and poorly-checked influence attempts.

It's never going to recapture its halcyon days, so it's going to have to evolve with the times in more ways than one.

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