User:Mujinga/essays/inclusionism

Sometimes I find it very hard to understand the edits of fellow editors. Recent events (in March/April 2019) have reminded me of the long-running debate between inclusionists and deletionists. In my opinion deletionism drives other users away from the project. This is a good long read about that (which I don't agree with 100% but that's a topic for another time). Here, I want to reflect and explore some thoughts about the difference in approach between inclusionism and deletionism, using some concrete examples to really flesh out what I am on about. This was intended as a philosophical rumination based on reference to examples, yet as it turns out, events deteriorated so it's become an interesting document for other reasons too.

Beginnings
Over at the Squatting page, I would irregularly clean up the list of notable squatters and squats, chopping out the crufty self-links and making sure the blue-linked people/projects actually mention squatting on their profile. However the last time I checked, someone had deleted both the lists just THREE days after a tag was put on them. Could they have checked my prior work? Oh yes if they wanted to see prior work from anyone, actually they could have scrolled back through the history of the page to see previous versions and build up an idea of what was going on. I would have done that. They didn't.

So I found this deletion annoying. Yes there were a lot of redlinks, no I wouldn't have had a problem with them being removed. Yes, these people can be put in categories and perhaps that makes more sense, but I think most casual wikipedia users (and readers on mobile devices) will never find the categories, so in my view knowledge has been lost. Not a lot but a little bit. On its own though, this is no big deal really. I would have done it differently, of course, I would have actually gone round and added the categories myself. But a deletionist doesn't see the need for that, I guess.

Social Centres in the United Kingdom
Next I noticed that the Social centres in the United Kingdom page had disappeared. This freaked me out, since it is a useful page in my opinion and I've edited it over the years and through the various debates and name changes. After some searching, I worked out what was going on and found an exchange where a fellow contributor was treated with disdain for wanting to make the page better instead of it being trashing completely.

The page merge with autonomous social centre i view as highly destructive, since it was unnecessary AND practically none of the information on the original page was transferred. That's pretty weird when you consider the social centres the original page linked to:


 * 491 Gallery
 * The 1 in 12 Club
 * Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh
 * Bank of Ideas
 * Centro Iberico
 * Cowley Club
 * DIY Space For London
 * Forest Café
 * Freedom Press
 * London Action Resource Centre
 * rampART
 * Spike Surplus Scheme
 * Sumac Centre
 * Wapping Autonomy Centre

But hey! Deletionists are cleaning up the “mess.” How many of these made it into the new page? Well none. Strangely, the new page does link to 121 Centre .. which was recently recreated by .... !? Yes, the same editor doing the all the destructive edits mentioned so far!

That was a bit of a shock

Clarity
My attempts at trying to understand this decision where met with the usual dismissive and patronising language, which i have come to know as willy waggling on wikipedia. In short, when you politely ask someone why they did something, you often find that they respond aggressively and double down in defence of their "truth" instead of remembering there are many truths.

When I pointed out the notability of the already existing references, the fellow editor denied they existed. I then listed the twenty references I was talking about, only to be confronted with doubled-down ignorance.

I shook my head

Inclusionism strikes back
So I went away and did what any good inclusionist (in my opinion any good wikipedian) would do. I redrafted the page, cleaned out the cruft (which indeed was there but only in one small section mainly), added some new refs and undid the redirect. And I'm pleased to say Social centres in the United Kingdom is back again.

Was that the end of it?
Goddess! Are you new here? Of course that was not the end of it. We are now bickering about references over at the talk page and elsewhere. So far I'm noticing the argument goes like this:


 * Me: adds source
 * 1) Fellow editor: that is clearly not reliable
 * Me: oh it is, here's some extra information for you
 * 1) Fellow editor: we would never approve of that sort of thing at RSN
 * Me: Great, see you in court
 * 1) SILENCIO

Getting hounded
It gets worse actually! Turns out the fellow editor stalked (past tense? here's hoping!) my edits, which is acceptable i guess, but then they were spurred to respond with willy waggling, which is ... unfortunate to say the least. Here are a few choice examples:
 * Pointless edits on the Klinika page which I recently created (now it's been a week and we are the only two editors - as a sidepoint their edits there reveal them as an admin, so they really have no excuse for this sort of stuff)
 * "I would have been willing to collaborate on that, but continued bald refusal of good faith like this (linked from discussion pages I'm obviously watching) has worn me thin" (taken from here)- this isn't watching a talk page for a reply, this is stalking my contributions on my own talk page and reading them and commenting on them!
 * I updated the website details on Cowley Club, then our old friend, popped up to trash an entire paragraph with the edit comment "rmv unsourced: feel free to reinstate with reliable, independent sources." All they had to do was click through to Harry Cowley to find a ref, or indeed you could argue no ref is even needed since Harry himself is blue-linked. But y'know how deletionists are. So I added a reference, coz y'know how I like to assume good faith, maybe they were busy or having a bad year. I was then told this reference wasn't reliable. Which is total nonsense, I've taken it to the talk page with the comment: "I'm struggling to understand why you don't consider it a 'reliable, third-party, published source with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.'" To be continued

Invited to leave
Could it get even worse? Oh yeah of course it could.
 * I was invited to leave wikipedia "If you think that is pedantry, please consider one of the many encyclopedias with lesser contribution standards." - and all this simply for asking for consistency!?

On no
Could it get even more worse? Oh yeah it sure could! Me idly poking around led me to Kate Sharpley Library .. which had been redirected to Anarchist archives ??? What on earth was happening?

Yup you guessed it, the same editor was again making destructive edits. Seemingly without discussion again. It's starting to see like a pattern now right? The evidence is piling up.

Here's my initial comment. I hope this can be resolved without further steps. [EDIT - of course it wasn't]

And it got worse again
Yup. It got worse again. Of course it did pff... I'm glad I am writing all this down, it helps me process it and I think in the abstract I quite enjoy thinking these things through, but also I have to say it's now actually at the point where my fellow editor has twice done things which have overstepped the boundaries of what is acceptable and civil on wikipedia, so it's good to be keeping a record of it. What's weird is that they are are actually an admin, thus they really should know better. Anyway, the things I'm going to describe now happened around the full moon ten days ago, so that's probably why they happened since tempers always flare at that time. (Today is Sunday, 28 April 2019 and I'm taking some time to reflect).

The anarchist archive debacle
Hi everybody and welcome back to the anarchist archives discussion page. Well the debate we thought last time was winding down has suddenly got going with some full moon fireworks and some fiery accusations being thrown around. But before we get to that, let's go through a quick flashback scene so we are all on the same page:


 * 1) We begin (150419) with a mystery: Why have Centre International de Recherches sur l'Anarchisme (CIRA) and Kate Sharpley Library suddenly been merged to the new Anarchist archives? The information previously on the pages has been lost, there are hidden comments on the text, what's the crack?
 * 2) Two weeks later there's no reply, so a tidyup was initiated, the 'work in progress' tag was deleted as per instructions if nothing happens, a 'clean up' tag was left and questions asked elsewhere. Centre International de Recherches sur l'Anarchisme and Kate Sharpley Library are recreated.
 * 3) A response asks What's the issue? and comments that "the sourcing remains abysmal" on the two other articles
 * 4) Someone else helpfully intervenes to say I don't know anything about the history of this article, but ...
 * 5) Response to 4: Well if you don't check the diffs then we can't really discuss and Response to 3: more sources have been added
 * 6) A second request for the plan for the article is made
 * 7) The article is wikified into sections and the cleanup tag is left because of the ungainly references / bibliography / further reading
 * 8) The same person repeats that sourcing of those [other two] pages does remain abysmal
 * 9) It is gently pointed out 'abysmal' is a rather strong and possibly inappropriate word to be throwing around. The initial point is restated, namely that it's kinda weird to leave hidden notes on the article like "pick up here" back and then refuse to state what the plan was so other editors could collaborate
 * 10) The (admittedly incomprehensible) answer comes back that the sources for CIRA are known by the editor because they added them... but of course they added them to the anarchist archives page, not the CIRA page, which according to the same person has "abysmal" sources ... this circular argument doesn't make much sense at all

And that's where we are at now] .. is it worth pointing out (again) that the sources could just be added to CIRA article and then everyone can get on with their lives? Maybe it's better just to leave it alone since...

Autonomous attacks
...at the same time as the whole anarchist archive dingdong was going on,there was a pretty similar situation over at autonomous social centre, where again i was forced to repair the damage done by some destructive "merges" which simply deleted a lot of useful information. This page had for some reason become redirect central, with Social centres in the United Kingdom and Self-managed social centers in Italy (both now restored) going there, but also Zine library, Infoshop, Infoshop Network, Free skool, Alternative information centre and Anarchist bookstore. I've repaired as much as i feel like doing, I've got plenty of other stuff I actually want to be busy with isntead of clearing up this other editor's mess AGAIN. I do hope someone else sorts out anarchist bookstore and zine library.

The fact remains also that the page now lacks a lot of global info, it is rather US-biased. So I left a tag and what I hoped what was a useful and constructive discussion on the talkpage. And what did i get back? Well basically a lot of vitriol from the same editor, who I can only presume took my suggestions as an attack. In the end I was accused of gaslighting. I had to look it up. That's a serious accusation in my opinion.

Highlights from No_personal_attacks:
 * Comment on content, not on the contributor
 * Serious accusations require serious evidence
 * Often the best way to respond to an isolated personal attack is to simply ignore it.

This is all great advice, so far now I'm just ignoring this attack.

And I've already said elsewhere I'm not taking the bait.

You either laugh or you cry
And could it get still worse? Sure it could. Haha. Lucky for me that I am a chirpy happy-go-lucky sort and I'm still disposed to laughter.

I was putting down (some not yet polished) thoughts today about the dangers of references dictating content, both from my own experiences of creating content recently and from the experience of trying to understand what was going on with Anarchist archives and Autonomous social centre. This is weird and probably will become funny in hindsight, but when talking about unsourced claims on wikipedia that i have found interesting to read, for some reason the section on Venetian Snares' eccentric use of time signatures popped into my head, since when i read it years ago the idea of 7/8 was truly mindblowing and it was probably one of the best things I read on wikipedia. So i checked for it ... and it had gone. And when I looked into it, it was the same editor again responsible for the deletion. I mean what are the bloomin odds??

All the other dingdongs are ostensibly very far away from Vsnares. Or not? I dunno any more, in any case we can say that there are getting on for SIX million articles on EN wikipedia!! At least the fix was relatively easy for once... (and as I wrote that I realise the editwar may still be looming in the future).

Which all FINALLY brings us back to the subject of this essay, namely inclusionism and deletionism.

Ignorance and US Exceptionalism
Unfortunately it seems that at least some of these deletionist edits I have been describing in long and tedious detail were made in ignorance. Certainly in this case. Also I have to say, I am starting to suspect an underlying attitude of US superiority on wikipedia. Why else would autonomous social centre not mention UK social centres except in passing? We are all equal on the internets in the pursuit of knowledge. At least we should be. I guess english-language wikipedia still needs to shake off the US bias.

Another viewpoint
Or is it not about deletion at all, is it about rationalism perhaps? I've been trying to work where the editor (yup still same one) is coming from over at the talkpage for the 'social centres and infoshops' infobox in a long and silly debate about what their criteria are for adding places. They don't seem to be able to make up their mind. I think that debate, whilst anal to the nth degree also shows another problem of wikipedia in that people will sometimes use their experience and verbosity to railroad people in defence of nonsense.

It would be funny if I've got this far into an essay about deletionism only to discover I'm doing a disservice to deletionists. But I don't think so to be honest, see the section below.

The acrimonious infobox debate basically stems from an edit in which our fellow editor renamed the box to 'autonomous social centre' ... which would be fine except the name now doesn't describe some of the projects very well at all, whereas 'social centres and infoshops' did perfectly.

I can't really be bothered to describe it further. Hardcore popcorn addicts can follow that particular dingdong over at Template_talk:Autonomous_social_centers and Talk:Binz_occupation.

I've made the proposal to change the name back and I'm leaving it for a few months in the hope some other editors give an opinion.

And now for something completely different
I stumbled across the entry for GalGael Trust looking for something else entirely. The page was made in 2006 and seemed to have been hanging without references for a long long time. So what should i have done? Maybe I should have requested a speedy delete as other might have done? NO WAY! I checked it out and (easily) found some references, as in reliable secondary sources. And maybe if a Glaswegian who has fallen on hard times finds that page it might help them out and that would be awesome. In any case, I enjoyed the editing and learning a little bit along the way. I also found out what a birlinn was.

Ah! But then actually whilst grabbing the links for the above paragraph, i see now that an editor of the deletionist persuasion (but not the same one for once) made a hugely destructive edit back in 2012 that took out most of the wikilinks.

Pff! I don't get this approach to knowledge production at all.

Why not improve something instead of slash and burning??

The dangers of deletionism
Check out this article which recently popped up on the frontpage - Georgetown Car Barn. Mein GOTT im himmel There are no references in the first three paragraphs! Likewise for another recent featured article Referendum Party!! I have the feeling if a deletionist had been let loose on these articles they would have deleted almost everything in those paragraphs, with an edit summary along the lines of "(rmv unsourced: feel free to reinstate with reliable, independent sources)."

Assume Good Faith
Assume Good Faith is for me a fundamental tenet of wikipedia editing. If I see an edit and I don't understand it, i will endeavour to understand why someone or something made it. If something is lacking verification, I try to provide it rather than deleting it.

I wonder why other people don't think that way. Why? Why didn't they check things for themselves?? We can all google.

Why do they spend time instead policing other people's edits? When I ponder that question, it takes me onto the onset of fascism. That's for another article though.

How things can be
In a chain of events which are in absolute contrast to my experiences with Social centres in the United Kingdom, I recently discovered the Women in Red project, through Steven Pruitt (on wikipedia Ser Amantio di Nicolao)'s wholesome Reddit AMA (he had an AMA because mainstream media got interested in him for being Wikipedia's most prolific editor).

WIR aims to get more articles about women onto wikipedia, which sounds like a fantastic idea.

I picked a person, made the article and had a lovely exchange with some really helpful people on the talkpage.

This is what you get from inclusionism.

Final thoughts
Everyone is different and it would be boring if we were all the same.

Don't be a dick is a good life lesson. Speaking of that, beware of people merging pages and trashing them at the same time, it's a very easy to destroy edits without the accountability of going through a deletion process.

To counter the obvious objection, my arguments here do not mean I am in favour of preserving cruft or spam or vandalism, but if I see a page that needs improvement, my instinct is always to work on it, not to delete. That's the thing that makes Wikipedia so great, the urge to contribute and improve.

And by the way I don't buy at all the deletionist argument that nothing gets lost with deletion since the information is logged and people can still add it again if the thing under discussion really is notable. That seems deeply wrong to me, stuff can get lost all the time.

To make my final point, let us remember also that it's very easy for a dominant worldview to decide what worthy of inclusion or not.

Long live the forces of inclusionism! Death to deletionism as a concept!!