I've written about there being a relationship between the number of articles on Wikipedia versus the number of editors required to maintain them, in an attempt to understand what motivates a deletionist? That "x" amount of articles require "y" amount of editors to maintain them. Andrew Lih's blog and Torsten's comment got me started thinking about that. The most recent data (about one year old) I can find on the number of edits per article shows that these edits are increasing, casting doubt on my previous theory of their being overworked editors reacting by thinning the number of articles.
My theory of the week is, that as articles on Wikipedia approach perfection, active editors get bored with them. Seasoned editors still feel the need to do something, to continue on their mission, that got this encyclopedia made in the first place.
Just as they delete questionable parts of articles, they start to participate in deleting whole articles from Wikipedia. The impact of doing so is greater than just deleting a line or two from an article. And I am referring to the impact on the deletionist. One could say to oneself, look what I have done, I got a whole article deleted, now we are getting somewhere.
Wikipedia does have its addictive qualities. Those that have done the most to create it, are possibly those suffering the most from its addiction. What else can we say about addictive behavior? What can we say about someone with over 50,000 edits? It's tempting to say that they require actions with bigger results. Besides deletions, that might include battles over what Wikipedia is supposed to be? This is to suggest that deletionism is not the whole story, just part of it.
The work that is Wikipedia can be boring, and over time, it gets more so. Maybe it seems like everything has all ready been invented. So what's a Wikipedian supposed to do for fun? Part of being a Wikipedian is ability to revert someone's edit, and to do so with the thought that that is improving Wikipedia. So deletion equaling improvement is something every editor knows about, and why shouldn't this apply to articles the theory might go.
The growth of the ranks of the deletionists seems expected. My take is that the deletionists are anti-growth. What is the harm of an article on Pownce? It seems to me that if Wikipedia has the editors to maintain such articles, it can broaden its impact. Call it a supplementary article if you like, or put into a tier II Wikipedia. I don't think this is any time to put the brakes on. Why not a vision of a number one Alexa rank? That would a give the deletionists a new challenge. The deletionists could work on something that I would call productive, and leave more of the boring editing to the noobs. This would follow the model of editors going through their life cycle, striving for advancement, onward and upward. And yes, I think the dedicated deletionists should consider branching off into something else.
You may not agree with me, that Wikipedia should grow. But you might agree that understanding deletionists and all editors would be helpful.
