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Wikipedia’s Pyrrhic Victory
(www.newyorker.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2026
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Technology
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Sounds like the only real problem is all those jackass "deletionists"...
If an article is so niche no one ever looks at it, then it eats up zero bandwidth. Just the data storage for a small text file.
Nothing should ever be deleted, there's no fucking benefit to that
If they weren't acting up, then activity dying down wouldn't matter
It's the biggest repository of human knowledge ever, it existing and being freely accessible to the planet is massive.
That's not true. It's an entry in a database. That means it has to be indexed for search, and counted for "all pages where..." types of queries. It has to be replicated between database shards. You scale up your number of records, and you start hitting database, application, and operating system limits.
If non-notable articles were never deleted, millions of people and companies would create articles about themselves for promotion.
Self promotion is a different rule that exists. Also, their threshold for what constitutes 'notability' is ridiculously arbitrary and bureaucratic, or at least it was in the past. I doubt it's changed.
It's notable if there are reliable sources about it. If there are no reliable sources about it, you wouldn't be able to write much about the topic anyway. Unless you conduct your original research.
In theory. I've seen firsthand the number of arguments about what constitutes notability and reliable sources. It's not for nothing that this is the biggest divide among Wikipedia editors.
A genuine question: Is a Wikipedia article supposed to be written from an objective perspective?
Yes; all content must be written from a neutral point of view.
So? If the information they provide is accurate, what's the big deal?
Because an encyclopedia with millions of promotional articles would lose not only its objectivity, but also crater the standard of quality of the average Wikipedia article.
The Cebuano Wikipedia is the poster child of a project expanding beyond its scope: millions of articles generated by a bot with no one there to edit them after they're created.
But if they stop keep deleting “niche” content from Wikipedia, then people won’t have to use Fandom instead.
You know, the commercial, ad infested wiki that was also founded by a Wikipedia co-founder.
I don't like Fandom as a commercial platform any more than you do, but in-universe topics for niche fandoms simply don't belong on Wikipedia; they would make it harder for editors to focus copyediting time on articles that matter far more to most people.
There are nonprofit wiki farm alternatives to Fandom that are a better solution to that problem.
For example this interesting article
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Exocortex&oldid=813869381
was deleted with the reason "mostly unsourced speculation/science-fiction".
That reason is correct, though.
Internet Archive and Libgen are incomparably bigger.
I mean, a municipal dump contains arguably many more printed words than Wikipedia, but that doesn't mean it contains more information, nor is it easily cataloged for access.
I'm noticing a pattern of you reducing arguments down to meaningless and out-of-context metrics in this entire comment section.
Have you actually ever used Libgen and Internet Archive (its book collection specifically)?
Yes. Libgen.whatever is a russian-operated "free" library.
I can find José Saramago books there, but no info on the author himself.
Are you trying to compare libgen with Wikipedia? They don't really serve the same purpose.
Pirate library. I don't think this aspect has to be downplayed.
You can find his biographies, criticism, analyses, the very sources that Wikipedia is using.
They don't serve the same purpose, correct. But as far "repositories of knowledge" go (the phrase that kicked off this sub-discussion), they count as such, and they are massive, I have no doubt they're bigger than WP. English Wikipedia has 7 million articles while Anna's Archive (which mirrors Libgen and a big part of Internet Archive - but far from all of it!) says it has 70 million books and 200 million articles. Cut the number in half, or even in third due to duplicates if you want, to get a more realistic number, it's still bigger.
Sure, yes. Acknowledged.
It is true that the referenced information is present in libgen, but it is not succinctly summarized for consumption, and that is the function Wikipedia fulfills for most users.
I can understand the pitfalls of allowing updates from the public, but I think it's widely accepted that Wikipedia does more good than bad.
It's really difficult to understand your point of view on this, especially when you indulge in semantics arguments.
You may have noticed that this is precisely what I've disagreed on with two other users in this thread, who claimed that Wikipedia should contain as much information as possible. I agree with you, it is good to have an encyclopedia that summarises the most important, and directs towards further materials for further deeper study.
Again, the point I disagreed on with the other poster is simply on what's the "biggest repository of human knowledge ever". You seem to agree that the shadow libraries are bigger, and that settles it, we don't have to disagree further. Being the biggest repository does not, of course, mean that it should be the only repository, that others are bad, or whatever else. Different repositories can fulfill different roles in the sharing of knowledge.
I don't think I disagreed with the latter point, except when I mentioned the smaller borderline fascist wikis somewhere ITT. When it comes to English and some other large WPs I definitely don't disagree.
Maybe you're just supposing that we disagree on something when we really don't, so you can't lead the discussion to the point where we'd finally clearly disagree. I provided some criticism of Wikipedia, that doesn't mean I think it's bad wholesale. Wikipedia is complicated. I've spent quite a while editing it, as well as using traditional encyclopedias. I just negatively reacted to some comments in this thread, the harsh dismissal of traditional encyclopedias, and the somewhat overrated view of Wikipedia.
The reason I down voted you is you're ignoring duplicative information...
And mainly because instead of asking questions to learn, you just went off with a halfbaked thought and presented it like it was fact.
Do better
I certainly ignored "duplicative information", because I don't even know what those words are supposed to mean.
You haven't asked any questions either, you made up a claim and are now seemingly very insulted when an obvious correction is pointed out. Those two sites contain hundreds upon hundreds of thosands of entire books, entire encyclopedias, and god knows how many scientific articles, inevitably way more stuff than Wikipedia. Every Wikipedia editor should have them open in a tab while editing ready to verify the existing sources and look for new ones.
How many websites about Pokemon do you think are archived?
How much of that info is duplicative (meaning it exists multiple times)?
If 2 gigs of data all says charmander evolves into charazard, why is that worth more than a single text string saying it once?
I already understand it...
You don't even know what "duplicative" means, and were too lazy to even look it up, you just wanted to argue about how your opinion matters more than facts.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/duplicative
With no context I didn't know what you might have meant by "duplicative information". Now it makes sense, apparently you think Internet Archive is just Wayback Machine, with its archived duplicate Pokemon websites. Which is comically false, try to dial down your arrogance. Perhaps you could have asked questions about whether I really think Internet Archive's collection of Pokemon sites contains more knowledge than Wikipedia, or maybe something else:
What did they do with the books after they scanned them?
Made them free to access and download, if the book is in the public domain or under a Creative Commons license. Allowed limited access if copyrighted (through some weirdly legal solution where they technically "loan" the book to you while you view it in your browser), although that option has been partly limited in the recent years due to lawsuits by book publishers.
https://archive.org/details/texts
No I mean like the physical books. What happened to them after they were scanned?
Congrats bud.
You kept going long enough I'll never try to clarify anything for you again, every single reply you make to one of my comments from here on out will not receive any further clarification and you'll always believe it's 100% correct.
It won't be, but I won't see it to tell you that anymore.
So you win, enjoy it.
Edit:
2-0 bud!
Apparently I blocked your original account already, the streak continues
As if you tried to clarify anything up until this point anyway 🤣
Eh. They've got a history out the ass of being rude shits, you're just the latest. Block them and move on.