Over the last week, a small band people who contribute to Wikipedia, the self-billed “free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit”, elected to nominate the article on Battlestar Wiki for deletion. (Link)

Now, previous attempts on creating an article there have been met, twice previously, with deletion. (Deletion #1 in 2005, Deletion #2 in 2006.)

Both deletions were previously understandable. We were a small website — hardly the success we are now — and we did not meet their “notability” guidelines. Hell, even I had endorsed the deletion back in 2006, since I feel it didn’t meet those guidelines myself.

Of course, a lot has changed since then. We were noted in “notable” media, such as being mentioned on AOL’s “Top 10 Battlestar Websites”, been offered a buy out from the “notable” Wikia, Inc. for an asinine sum, been visited by various cast and crew members from the shows, have them contribute to our site (of their own volition) and whenever you do a search on anything BSG related, a link to an article we have is pretty much somewhere on that first page of results. Oh, and we’ve been recognized by NBC-Universal/SciFi Channel, since they’ve sent us promotional material for the fourth and final season of an excellent television series.

So why then was our article deleted?

Because we still weren’t notable.

At all.

Every humbling accomplishment was dismissed by persons who believe themselves the gatekeepers of a site that makes “the Internet not suck”. And that wonderfully worded, grammatically correct phrase is from the mouth of Wikipedia’s scandal-ridden “spiritual leader”, Jimbo Wales, who has cleaned up articles for “donations” to Wikimedia… even donations of a sexual nature.

Disappointing, isn’t it?

But… here’s the thing… I’m apathetic now. I was a bit irritated before, particularly since every action the Wikipedians have done in relation to this current “article for deletion” discussion was devoid of any common sense as I have personally come to know it.

On the one hand, we need to recognize that it is “their” site and they can do with it as they please.

On the other hand, in my informed opinion, the article did satisfy their current policies.

Also, take into account that treating things equally doesn’t appear to be common sensible (to them) either, since articles from WikiFur, to “The Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5″, to even Memory-Alpha. By the way, our previous article had the same exact features as the one on Memory-Alpha, but ours did not have the fluff. Ours was trim, lean…. and frak it.

I will neither bore you with the past nor with Wikipedian stupidity.

So what I will have to say is this: there are double standards at work on Wikipedia. Anyone who has contributed there knows it, and that’s why half the Internet is learning to do without Wikipedia, or so it’s beginning to seem.

At any rate, I’m now quite pleased that we don’t have an article on there any longer. Given Wikipedia’s various quality control, accountability (or the pathetic lack thereof) and maturity issues, I am now looking at this development as a positive. Since I do not believe that the current group of inmates running the asylum can do an article on us (or just about anything) justice, we should be quite thankful to them for deleting the article.

Also, for those of you that did fight for our article’s existence, I do wish to thank you. It was a futile battle, and those who fought against the decision likely knew this as well… but you fought anyway. You spoke up.

And you have reaffirmed my belief that the whole “wiki” concept is one worth keeping around…

Furthermore, I can only speak for myself when I say that I’m honored that people think that highly of the work Battlestar Wiki’s contributors have done for the past three years. It is deeply humbling, even when my own doubts bubble to the surface every so often.

So say we all!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 12:52 am and is filed under Discussions, Drifiting Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.