Diminishing retention rates

While Wikipedia's strategizers are trying to analyze the falling number of editors, could we have some analysis of the strengthening hold of deletionists? Why aren't deletionists getting discouraged and giving up? What editors are spending the most time nominating articles for deletion, and voting for other articles to be deleted?

Maybe a relatively small number of Wikipedia editors are responsible for most of the editor retention problem. We should track the fate of editors whose work was deleted. Did they lose the confidence to gamble more of their time and effort on the uncertain outcome of editing? It would be interesting to identify the deletionist who holds the record for driving away the largest number of constructive contributors, if that could be worked out from the data.

Deletionism on Wikipedia appears to be a natural evolution of the features that make reverting vandalism as cheap or cheaper than vandalizing. The immune system that protects a wiki from vandalism can also mutate into an auto-immune disease against legitimate content, since contributions form a continuum from brilliant prose to well-intentioned-but-not-so-good down to vandalism. The need to revert vast amounts of vandalism without concern for the vandals creates the habits and culture in which we can act unilaterally and without apology or accountability against good-faith editors whose knowledge of the rules is incomplete or interpreted differently.

Diseases of the immune system are some of the most insidious diseases known to medicine. These will probably be among the last diseases to be cured. The challenge posed to Wikipedia by deletionism - as currently practiced - may be similar. Wikipedia might be turning out to be pretty good at attracting and retaining the type of users who will eventually kill the project.

An editor whose primary interest is deleting articles never loses. The deletionist either wins, or ties, since the only penalty when an article is kept is that deletionist immediately finds more articles to try to delete. How could a deletionist ever get discouraged? The satisfaction gained by inflicting pain on other people is never ending. It's a sociopath's dream job, perfectly legal and even applauded by fellow sociopaths who have found their stable niche. The deletionist invests very little to delete an article, whereas the contributors can have many hours of their labor at stake. If the article remains, it doesn't threaten the deletionist's interests in any way, nor create any obstacles to deleting other articles. Deletionists can simply ignore whatever they don't want to see on Wikipedia, as can anyone else. Wikipedia doesn't get any harder to search or navigate as the number of articles increases.

No constructive editor really wants to confront the deletionist, because the deletionist has a safe perch from which to examine all the constructive editor's edits, and try to delete those. The fact that most editors don't even look at WP:AFD gives deletionists a huge advantage. There is only a seven-day window in which to contest a deletion nomination, or improve the article, but no time limit on nominating articles for deletion. It's like the asymmetry between an attacker, who can choose the time and place to attack, vs. the defender who has to guard everything at all times.

The problem with watching WP:AfD for over-zealous deletionists is that over 95% of the nominations are justified. I consider myself an inclusionist, & even I have nominated a couple of articles for deletion. Crap (by anyone's definition) is added, & if it slips by New Pages Patrol it remains in Wikipedia until someone happens upon it.

On the other hand, I remember a certain person commenting that giving an article the benefit of the doubt & keeping it doesn't really harm anything. If it isn't notable or important, no one will ever bother to read it. I consider that one of the wisest things he has ever written about Wikipedia, but wonder if he would agree with this statement now.

Someone suggested a different thread that new articles can be kept in a lower-quality state until improved. As you say, nothing happens if a bad article is not deleted. I would add that keeping it on WP and monitoring page views would give evidence of just how notable the topic is, which after a period of grace (say a year) could be used in assessing whether the article is notable enough or needs to be deleted according to current policies (I wouldn't oppose changing the policy though). I don't see why we need speedy deletions and proposed deletion if we have other ways of fighting vandalism.
After reading Teratomis' reply, I'd like to add to the list of mechanisms to "delete deletionists":

• When an article is proposed for deletion all contributors to that article should be notify in order to appeal the proposal.
• Experienced inclusionist editors should be made voluntarily available to newcomers who which to contest an deletion proposal.
  

That's my two cents. Asinthior 14:59, 17 May 2011 (UTC)