Wikipedia is committing suicide.
Considering the other option is, largely, to die of LLMs in 5 years, perhaps this is sensible.
But it is sad to watch.
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After Charlie Kirk was killed, an editor quickly created an article about his widow, Erica Kirk.
This was, speedily, nominated for deletion.
The discussion remained open for FIVE AND A HALF DAYS, because a few liberals didn't like Charlie Kirk and wanted to drag things out because of spite.
This, obviously, looked bad.
So there is now a discussion about adding a "Wait and See" vote, to do the sensible thing of deferring a discussion in this type of situation.
This is failing. Because Wikipedia is committing suicide.
There are four main arguments against it, all of which are stupid.
- We should just do whatever has consensus.
- Articles that don't have consensus to exist should be drafts.
- People can already vote how they want.
- We shouldn't do things because of how Wikipedia will be perceived.
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For years, there has been a small cabal of editors who have been at war with the concept that articles about Airports should include data about the destinations of that airport.
First it was that it was "unsourced", so people added links to the airline route-pages.
But that is a "primary" source, and isn't specific to each route. So people added different references, and more of them.
Then those references were also found to be improper.
And, the sheer number of unnecessary references became an issue.
Because, once again, the fact that this information is very useful, and not easily available elsewhere, is considered to be a reason NOT to include it.
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Clearly, the Hasten The Day ⚙️ a code-word for, roughly, "Wikipedia is bad and we should make it die faster" crowd has won.