I really shouldn't dignify your comment though, because it dubs "absolutely retarded" a process that got a non-notable SEO consultant's book considered by someone who could find out how many libraries carried it, and no money changed hands to make that happen.

Seriously: the interface you're complaining about? Even if it had been perfect: that article wasn't a keep. Jessie Stricchiola doesn't belong in an encyclopedia; at least, not yet. Maybe she'll fix all of click fraud, instead of commenting about it; then she'll be notable.

You could try to comprehend my comment first, instead of interpreting it as an indirect ego-attack. Wikipedia's software and community aren't magically immune from criticism, especially from a usability standpoint, just because they produce a lot of useful content.

But of course, I don't think this is actually a UX discussion at all; the participants here are:

* An SEO consultant who may have written her own promotional article on Wikipedia

* Her friend, who was upset at the experience he had attempting to convince Wikipedia to keep that article

* Hacker News, which is convinced that Wikipedia suffers from "rampant deletionism" (despite --- for the most part --- never having seriously participated in anything at Wikipedia) and viewing every story about Wikipedia through that lens.

If you're of the opinion that Wikipedia should be an insular community, than maybe they should be more honest about it, disable anonymous edits, and save everyone a lot of time. If you think Wikipedia should be accessible, well, it isn't, and that should be fixed, too. Either way, there's room for improvement.

In other words, deletion isn't just about notability - it's also about gauging whether the article will be maintained. Wikipedia's procedures, while sometimes rather obtuse, serve as a first-pass filter to help gauge whether people who are Serious About Wikipedia will actually take care of the article (and of course, even if you are a person with zero edits to your name, reading up on wikipedia's procedures is a good way to prove you might actually care enough about the article to take care of it after it is undeleted).

I will admit that the user messaging feature is _awful_ however. Wiki format is not the right thing to use for a point-to-point conversation.

Mediawiki, and Wikipedia's incarnation of it in particular, is outmoded and obtuse. But it's not hard to do things on Wikipedia. If anything, it's too f'ing easy.

You should read downthread; other people have taken a closer look at Danny Sullivan's real experience working with Wikipedia's processes. This isn't a good case study to make a stand on. Give it a few weeks; Wikipedia will inevitably do something genuinely dumb we can get outraged about. It appears not to have here.

Yeah, this guy was probably wrong, and this particular subject probably isn't notable. Wikipedia still could have given this guy a better experience in the process of figuring this out, and writing this guy off as worthless and not worth listening to is just arrogant and unproductive.

You say that it's ridiculous that to revert a community decision on a major international knowledge resource, someone should have to learn about their policies.

Is it really that 'retarded'? I actually went and followed the instructions while actually paying attention, and I found that the header of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review fully explains the situation, and within 2 clicks you can be instructed on what to do and where to do it.

This process is only opaque or difficult if your attention span is such that reading two paragraphs is a strain. Given that the writer of the original article didn't even bother to read the email he was sent then I think we can assume that the fault lies there.

Or you could have a deletion policy that's less complicated in itself. When I was a heavy contributor to Wikipedia and actually knew all these dumb policies, people argued that notability shouldn't be a criteria and verifiability was the only truly necessary criterion for including content. I find it hard to argue with that.

I'm actually not convinced of that. That is, I'm not convinced it's a bad thing that people have to learn policy and acronyms in order to participate in a discussion. Wikipedia is - like any large, distributed group effort - entirely dependent on its processes. Without those processes, I don't think it could function. Your argument, as I understand it, is that people shouldn't have to become familiar with the processes that enable Wikipedia to function in order to be a part of how it functions. That seems contradictory to me.

I went to Google, typed in "Wikipedia deletion policy" and got what seems like some good documentation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy

Imagining it from Sullivan's perspective, I read down to the bit that says "If you disagree: Take the matter to Wikipedia:Deletion review", which leads me here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review

Reading down a bit, I find this bit in bold: "This process should not be used simply because you disagree with a deletion debate's outcome [...]" which seems to directly address his condition.

I agree that one needs a basic facility with Wikipedia and Mediawiki to usefully participate, which is definitely a barrier to novices. Which certainly makes it seem murky and hard to follow. It's also somewhat stochastic; a lot of outcomes depends on who happens to show up and participate.

A lot of these problems, though, are things you personally could fix. Anybody can edit the documentation and get involved with processes like Articles For Deletion. If you think it could be better, please get involved!

And if you don't like it and won't get involved, then please keep in mind that much of Wikipedia's software and all of its content comes from volunteers. Telling people that they aren't doing enough free work for you is unlikely to improve much of anything.

Yes, thanks. I have no particular opinion; I just said that was the complaint, and it's not the first time I've heard it. I've never made more than casual and minor corrections to Wikipedia, and I've never been notable or known notable people who Wikipedia deemed worthy of deletion. And I do know spam and loathe self-promotion by meaningless hordes, so I can understand where Wikimedia editors are coming from. But I also know when a culture is not particularly outsider-friendly, and I stay over here, thank you.

I might add that complaining that I'm not doing enough free work to fix Wikipedia is also not going to help. I'd love to delve into the history and process of Wikipedia's culture, but I'm going to get about six minutes of sleep tonight already.

People who argue about the campaigns to tarnish Wikipedia's name and repeat the fact that Wikipedia still manages to be respectable and successful are right! The same things the author rails against are the very things that keep the riff raft out.

The author didn't get his way after a lengthy, well reasoned, and obviously thoroughly thought through debate. Not every website needs a reworking of their user experience. Sometimes we make you jump through hoops for a reason. This process weeds out the people who would use Wikipedia to advertise. At the end, despite the author believing his submission was fitting of its own Wikipedia page, the community still disagreed.

I call sour grapes.

Suggesting more efficient processes for Wikipedia is a never ending tarpit that doesn't get anywhere, no matter how committed you are and how established you are in the community.

Any hidebound culture filled with red tape has horror stories and experiences that seem to justify every broken thing they do. If your answer to a usability critique is "they should learn the last several years of Wikipedia history, which isn't documented anywhere, and understand where all these rules came from", isn't that just a concession that you might as well not even bother unless contributing to Wikipedia is going to be one of your primary hobbies for the foreseeable future?

I would ask why it's so very important for his contribution to be accepted? This really isn't about the process as much as it is the OP not getting his way. He just shields himself with an argument over user experience as an excuse to whine. It's all there in the subtext.

Wikipedia does not manage to be respectable when ill-informed people debate whether to delete an article that Wikipedia itself started and reach a "consensus" to do so without there being a consensus.

What looks to you as a well-reasoned and thoroughly thought debate looks that way because you're probably not an expert in search marketing. It's like an amateur watching two programmers debate whether some other programmer is "notable" or not. If you're not a programmer, you probably have no idea. And the references that might seem reasonable perhaps aren't, if you're more educated.

The Wikipedia "community" hasn't agreed with my assessment. The Wikipedia "community" that made this decision was one person, who when someone else raised the fact that I posted new, fresh arguments, decided unilaterally that if I thought those should be considered, I should submit a review request.

The way it should work, he should have put that request in himself. At the very least, it sure should be a lot easier for anyone to put in such a request.

As I detailed, I found it actually impossible to do so, because you can't request that a page that's been deleted to be reviewed on the review deletion page -- that page is only for pages in the current process of being reviewed.

I call a confusing system that needs overhaul.