Wiki police

I love Wikipedia. Really. Not only as a legitimate research tool, but also as a form of edu-tainment. A simple perusal of the most mundane topic can lead to hours spent visiting page after page. Maybe I’m just peculiar that way… in addition to all the other ways I’m peculiar.

What I don’t like are some of the editors that seem to have this authority complex. On more than one occasion, I’ve run across these Barney Fife’s threatening to get their bullet out in response to the most trivial things.

My first encounter was in response to an edit I made to Griffin’s wikipedia entry. I had listed the number of employees at 100 assuming an approximate was sufficient. That was immediately reverted by a former employee as he knew there was no way Griffin could have that many employees. The actual number was 94 at the time, so I left it. Whatever. Oh, I see that Griffin’s logo has been deleted now also.

Anyway, yesterday I noticed that Proxi’s entry had been tagged with a deletion proposal. This on account that the article gives no indication of notability or verifiability. You see, I added Proxi after one of my wikipedia browsing sessions having noted that LaunchBar, Butler and of course Quicksilver all had entries so I figured why not. Though I’m the author I tried to leave out any bias and simply provide a short description and information on the current version, etc. I also included links to those applications that I mentioned above. I thought it might be handy for anyone poking around wikipedia looking for Mac OS X automation / launcher sofwtare.

Unclear on exactly what constitutes “notability”, I contacted the person responsible for the proposed deletion seeking clarification and citing Butler, LaunchBar, and Quicksilver as similar articles and rather than a helpful response, I was directed to the articles mentioned in the delete template. You know, the ones that were unclear to me. Not only that, but he thanked me for pointing out those other articles and tagged not only LaunchBar, but Quicksilver for deletion as well! (Sorry about that guys) Clearly this person is not acquainted with Mac software. I can almost understand the decision to delete Proxi, but Quicksilver? Are you serious?

At this point, I’m not sure what I’m going to do about Proxi’s entry, if anything. But it makes me wonder. Of what benefit is it to the users of wikipedia to remove articles just because they don’t live up to someone’s subjective view of notability? Proxi has a small but loyal group of users. I suppose it’s notable to them. I’m sure there are thousands of articles that meet the same criteria. There are guidelines for wikipedia articles, but sometimes I get the impression that the enforcement isn’t much different than this: