Wikipedia - An encyclopedia written by the general public and filled with boundless knowledge, articles, and other useless tidbits. The idea certainly is great. Unfourtanetely, in practice there are many flaws. In terms of finding information, I'm a Wikipedia fiend. It's typically the first place (other than Google) that I go to find basic information: anything from the cast of a new TV show to the history of a company like Apple. They do a great job at making good-quality (most of the time) information easily accessible by as many people as humanly possible. On most Google queries, a related Wikipedia article is the third of fourth result down. Now, that's all the praise they need for today. Let's get to the nitty gritty.
A free encyclopedia where anyone can post a decently written article? A wiki that would define the Web 2.0 generation and contribute to a truly free internet? I think not. For every person out there that loves and relies on Wikipedia, there's a person that's tried to post a well-written and informative article and gotten denied by one of their volunteer patrol-editors. So, looking at it from a different perspctive, I guess it is a free environment. Their moderators are completely free to speedily delete any article they wish without any checks or balances. Completely unchallenged authority. Great idea, eh?
As for evidence supporting this, unfourtanetely none is available to me because all of the articles are deleted too fast. However, this same thing did in fact happen to me and it's simply a terrible way to run a site; especially one that's supposed to be considered "open" and condusive to a "free" environment.
A free encyclopedia where anyone can post a decently written article? A wiki that would define the Web 2.0 generation and contribute to a truly free internet? I think not. For every person out there that loves and relies on Wikipedia, there's a person that's tried to post a well-written and informative article and gotten denied by one of their volunteer patrol-editors. So, looking at it from a different perspctive, I guess it is a free environment. Their moderators are completely free to speedily delete any article they wish without any checks or balances. Completely unchallenged authority. Great idea, eh?
As for evidence supporting this, unfourtanetely none is available to me because all of the articles are deleted too fast. However, this same thing did in fact happen to me and it's simply a terrible way to run a site; especially one that's supposed to be considered "open" and condusive to a "free" environment.
So, let's give a round of applause for: 
4 comments:
Great insight!
The moderators (admins) are not free to speedily delete any article -- they don't have "unchallenged authority". They're fully answerable to every user, and can delete an article only if it satisfies the criteria given at WP:CSD.
Apart from being well-written and informative, the primary criteria for a good article is that it should be well-referenced and satisfy the notability guidelines. These restrictions are necessary, because anybody with an account is free to create an article. In absence of any restrictions, Wikipedia will be full of useless articles.
People often complain that an informative article created by them was deleted. The reason for deletion and the user who deleted the article are mentioned in the deletion log (example).
If you don't find the reason for deletion satisfactory, get in touch with the user who deleted the article. Most speedy deletion issues are solved at this stage. If that doesn't help, file a deletion review.
I appreciate your thought out response. Just as you imply that I have a bias or at least a curved view on the situation, I find the same with you. My observation may be false but it seems to me that you have some connection with Wikipedia. In addition, based on the experiences of people I've spoken with, their articles were deleted by a single user. When they tried to rebut the deletion reason, the same user just re-deleted the article and that was the end of it. That, to me is unchallenged authority. Unfortanetely, they're not answerable to every user. Or at least not the admin's that I've heard of. My apologies if I'm basing my entire judgement of Wikipedia admins on a select few.
I do, however, agree with you that Wikipedia needs moderation. Without it, as you stated, "Wikipedia [would] be full of useless articles."
Again, thanks so much for reading the blog and I hope you continue to enjoy it.
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