{tag=Deletionism}

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia

Some examples by <Ciro Santilli> follow.

Of the tutorial-subjectivity type:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Isomorphism_theorems&oldid=976843241[This edit] perfectly summarizes how Ciro feels about Wikipedia (no particular hate towards that user, he was a teacher at the prestigious <Pierre and Marie Curie University> and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Lazard[actually as a wiki page about him]):
  > rm a cryptic diagram (not understandable by a professional mathematician, without further explanations
  which removed the only diagram that was actually understandable to non-Mathematicians, which <Ciro Santilli> had created, and received many upvotes at: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/776039/intuition-behind-normal-subgroups/3732426#3732426[]. The removal does not generate any notifications to you unless you follow the page which would lead to infinite noise, and is extremely difficult to find out how to contact the other person. The removal justification is even somewhat <ad hominem>: how does he know <Ciro Santilli> is also not a professional Mathematician? :-) Maybe it is obvious because <there is value in tutorials written by beginners>[Ciro explains in a way that is understandable]. Also removal makes no effort to contact original author. Of course, this is caused by the fact that there must also have been a bunch of useless edits not done by Ciro, and there is no <reputation system> to see if you should ignore a person or not immediately, so removal author has no patience anymore. This is what makes it impossible to contribute to Wikipedia: your stuff gets deleted at any time, and you don't know how to appeal it. Ciro is going to regret having written this rant after Daniel replies and shows the diagram is crap. But that would be better than not getting a reply and not learning that the diagram is crap.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Finite_field&type=revision&diff=1044934168&oldid=1044905041 on <finite fields> with edit comment "Obviously: X ≡ α". Discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Finite_field#Concrete_simple_worked_out_example Some people simply don't know how to explain things to beginners, or don't think Wikipedia is where it should be done. One simply can't waste time fighting off those people, writing good tutorials is hard enough in itself without that fight.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discrete_Fourier_transform&diff=1193622235&oldid=1193529573 by user https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bob_K[Bob K.] removed <Ciro Santilli>'s awesome simple image of the <Discrete Fourier transform> as seen at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discrete_Fourier_transform&oldid=1176616763[]:
  > Hello. I am a retired electrical engineer, living near Washington,DC. Most of my contributions are in the area of DSP, where I have about 40 years of experience in applications on many different processors and architectures.
  with message:
  > remove non-helpful image
  Thank you so much!!

  Maybe it is a common thread that these old "experts" keep removing anything that is actually intelligible by beginners? <There is value in tutorials written by beginners>{full}

  Also ranted at: https://x.com/cirosantilli/status/1808862417566290252

  \Image[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/media/master/home/numpy/fft_plot.svg]
  {title=<Ciro Santilli>'s awesome graph removed by Bob K. from the <Discrete Fourier transform> page.}
  {description=Source at: <numpy/fft_plot.py>{file}.}
* when <Ciro Santilli> created <Scott Hassan>'s page, he originally included mentions of his saucy divorce: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scott_Hassan&oldid=1091706391 These were reverted by Scott's puppets three times, and Ciro and two other editors fought back. Finally, Ciro understood that Hassan's puppets were likely right about the removal because you can't talk about private matters of someone who is low profile:
  * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons
  * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Who_is_a_low-profile_individual
  even if it is published in well known and reliable publications like the bloody <New York Times>. In this case, it is clear that most people wanted to see this information summarized on Wikipedia since others fought back Hassan's puppet. This is therefore a failure of Wikipedia to show what the people actually want to read about.

  This case is similar to the <PsiQuantum> one. Something is extremely well known in an important niche, and many people want to read about it. But because the average person does not know about this important subject, and you are limited about what you can write about it or not, thus hurting the people who want to know about it.

Notability constraints, which are are way too strict:
* even information about important companies can be disputed. E.g. once <Ciro Santilli> tried to create a page for <PsiQuantum>, a startup with \$650m in funding, and there was a deletion proposal because it did not contain verifiable sources not linked directly to information provided by the company itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/PsiQuantum Although this argument is correct, it is also true about 90% of everything that is on Wikipedia about any company. Where else can you get any information about a <B2B> company? Their clients are not going to say anything. Lawsuits and scandals are kind of the only possible source... In that case, the page was deleted with 2 votes against vs 3 votes for deletion.
  > should we delete this extremely likely useful/correct content or not according to this extremely complex system of guidelines"
  is very similar to <Stack Exchange>'s own <Stack Overflow content deletion> issues. <Ain't Nobody Got Time For That>. "Ain't Nobody Got Time for That" actually has a Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain%27t_Nobody_Got_Time_for_That[]. That's notable. Unlike a \$600M+ company of course.

  In December 2023 the page was re-created, and seemed to stick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:PsiQuantum#Secondary_sources[] It's just a random going back and forth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ctjk[Author Ctjk] has an interesting background:
  > I am a legal official at a major government antitrust agency. The only plausible connection is we regulate tech firms
There are even a Wikis that were created to remove notability constraints: <Wiki without notability requirements>.

For these reasons reason why Ciro basically only contributes images to Wikipedia: because they are either all in or all out, and you can determine which one of them it is. And this allows images to be more attributable, so people can actually see that it was Ciro that created a given amazing image, thus overcoming Wikipedia's lack of <reputation system> a little bit as well.

Wikipedia is perfect for things like biographies, geography, or history, which have a much more defined and subjective expository order. But when it comes to "tutorials of how to actually do stuff", which is what <mathematics> and <physics> are basically about, Wikipedia has a very hard time to go beyond dry definitions which are only useful for people who already half know the stuff. But to learn from zero, newbies need tutorials with intuition and examples.

Bibliography:
* https://gwern.net/inclusionism from <gwern.net>:
  > Iron Law of Bureaucracy: the downwards deletionism spiral discourages contribution and is how Wikipedia will die.
* <quote Golden wiki vs Deletionism on Wikipedia>{full}


Deletionism on wikipedia

ID: deletionism-on-wikipedia