Value, respect, and strive for diversity in editors

This is a pretty responsible look at the debate. We need people who want a broad amount of content, and we need people who make sure that there are some minimum quality standards in place. I agree that the debate cannot "end". But what I would like to see is for the two sides to be organized in a way that maximizes the benefits of both sides, and minimizes the friction.

I've seen it work on a small scale: a deletionist finds a bad article that probably can't stand on its own two feet, while an inclusionist says that they should work together to merge it somewhere else. Or a deletionist finds a whole topic area that is just blatant promotion and original research, and an inclusionist comes in to request a few months while BOTH editors look for sources. In both cases, the end result is that we cover a lot of content, and still meet some basic level of quality.

That's the real "end" to this debate. Not that one side wins, but that both sides are organized in a process where they can work together.

Randomran (No relation to random ranting person)00:42, 10 May 2010

Actually we could put this into into a formal algorithm like this one: if the deletionist believe an article is below quality minimum its tagged and gets a long time (like half a year) to get over this minimum quality. If it hasn't jumped over the minimum by then it is transferred to the archive. Actually different quality classes could deliver this right away. If somebody only want to look at class A articles he might restrict his own view on wikipedia to only class A articles.

The rationale behind is: server space is cheap and getting cheaper everytime. One can afford to keep almost everything easily. However not everything is equal, not an measures of quality.

134.76.223.208:39, 10 May 2010

I agree that time can be a big part of getting deletionists and inclusionists to work together, and balance quality and scope. Rather than putting things to a vote, you flag it as a concern, and depending on the article you give time to address the concern. Controversies and hoaxes would get very little time because they can damage Wikimedia's reputation, but more neutral content might have more time to improve. Newer articles might get more time, but articles that have existed for a longer time with no improvement might get less time.

Of course, we can't just force this compromise down peoples' throats. But I suspect that if you locked inclusionists and deletionists into a room together and didn't let them out until they compromised, they might agree upon something like that.

Randomran18:24, 10 May 2010