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But it's a new article. How should it be improved if not encouraging people to edit it? Isn't that the whole idea behind Wikipedia? There is no need for this process to be contentious. All it needed to be unflagged not notable was some references. I went and Googled up 5 articles; it was painless enough. Where is the abuse?

The article had no content because it was just made; it started with the opinions of one person. That's why it was requested for people to improve it. That's what Wikipedia does, it writes and improves encyclopedia articles by crowdsourcing. Saying it's an abuse because the article is bad is ridiculous. That's the whole point -- to fix the article. And no, it is not abuse. It's an intended use of the system. You are saying it is an abuse because it is controversial? That seems inconsistent, this site thrives on debate and in this case such debate can only improve the quality of the article.

I still don't get it. I went and reedited the article, I would encourage you to give it another pass.

Sure... From my experience of Wikipedia though, it'll likely be deleted within the hour.

I generally agree with you. However, suppose there are good reasons behind the deletionist philosophy. What might they be? Some possibilities:

(1) Inclusion in Wikipedia is a statement in itself. It says, "This is notable." In the case of non-notable subjects, the statement is false, and so the problem is one of inaccuracy.

(2) Information on a non-notable topic is very difficult to check for accuracy, update, etc. Thus, the proliferation of non-notable topics would lead to lower overall quality.

(3) Pages on generally non-notable topics would tend to reflect the viewpoint of perhaps just one person who considers the topic important, or, similarly, one company. They would thus be prone to excessive POV stuff, advertising, etc.

In summary, every argument I can think of boils down to lack of notability -> poor quality.

And perhaps that does mean that there should be a notability standard on Wikipedia. On the other hand, I think it is clear that a large number of those people labeled "deletionist" have a notability standard that is significantly too high. (I also think it is very clear that HN is notable enough for inclusion; I'm rather baffled that anyone would think otherwise.)

I don't agree at all with deletionist philosophy. I want that ended myself.

But the arguments typically center around the mission of Wikipedia. If the organization has to fund storage, bandwidth, etc, then they'd like it to be worthwhile content .

In other words, people argue that it's simply not Wikipedia's mission or charter to document every trivial fact. It's meant to be a reference for "important" and "notable" things.

To reiterate, I don't agree with this. I would actually donate more than I already do to Wikipedia if they changed their policy and were less deletionist. I would like to see more "underground" topics covered on Wikipedia that they delete quickly.

Well because you start to lose the signal in the noise then.

Wikipedia is an enyclopedia not a directory. Mentioning HN would be more appropriate under any Ycombinator or Paul Graham article. You'd still get it then in a search for information.

It isnt suitable for it's own article because this is mostly a new streaming site and so hasnt "achieved" anything worth talking about :)

are you by any chance a Scientologist?