Wikipedia's Growing Pains

Nicholson Baker--the bane of librarians everywhere ever since his assault on microfilm in Doublefold (2001)--has turned in a fascinating status report about Wikipedia in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books.

It's very much worth reading to enjoy Baker's inimitable prose--you don't often come across a word like "panjundrum."  But here's a comparatively straight-laced summary:

Baker becomes obsessed with the ease of editing Wikipedia articles, and so he starts to edit articles himself (under the user name "Wageless.")  Eventually he takes up the cause of rescuing articles slated for deletion by zealous volunteer editors--just like he sought to save the books and newsprint that librarians wanted to microfilm.

Baker goes into depth about the evolution of Wikipedia: from an anarchic place in which all articles were welcome, into a more regulated domain in which the "deletionists" and "inclusionists" do battle. (The Economist has a starchier take on this same debate in the most recent "Technology Quarterly.")  Of course some rules are necessary to give structure to the Wikipedia, but in Baker's view--and mine--the numerous regulations now threaten to strangle the spirit of innovation that launched Wikipedia in the first place.  One chilling example: "Notability purges," in which zealous volunteers peg articles for deletion because they aren't deemed to be about worthy topics.

One man's trash is another man's treasure.  There are no page or length restrictions in the Wikipedia (obviously), so who am I to judge what should matter to you?

The healthy side of Wikipedia regulation manifests itself whenever people delete silly or unfactual edits within individual articles. Several years ago I inserted a nonsense sentence into an article (can't remember which one), and was pleased to see it gone by dawn.  But the mood these days is much more sinister. Baker quotes Andrew Lih:  "The preference now is for excising, deleting, restricting information rather than letting it sit there and grow."

There is a bright side, thank goodness.  Those worried about the Wikipedia censors can join the awkwardly named Wikiproject Proposed Deletion Patrolling project.  This is a splinter faction within the Wikipedia community; anyone can resist the notability purges and spur the Wikipedia to hew closer to its original spirit.

To the cyber-barricades, I say--the more articles about Pokemon, the better!