I have already complained (not sure whether on LW or ACX) about how Wikipedia no longer accepts imperfect articles (used to be called “stubs” long ago). Now you are supposed to create a full article that follows all the rules, provides enough sources, establishes notability, etc., or it won’t be even admitted as a Wikipedia article. Then you put it in the “Draft” workspace, and wait for some Wikipedia editor to judge whether it is worthy of adding to the online encyclopedia.
Now I learned the second part. If your attempt at an article does not pass the judgment, not only it stays in the “Draft” workspace (which would be fair: keep the “stubs” in a separate namespace), but after a few months it will be automatically deleted if no one fixes it.
It feels like Wikipedia is actively trying to get rid of volunteer contributors.
I admit that my attempt at an article sucks, but come on, twenty years ago this would be a perfectly legit “stub”. I have made new articles like this, someone else added a few lines or paragraphs, and after some time it developed into a solid article. That’s what cooperative encyclopedia means, doesn’t it?
The problem is not that the author is insufficiently notable. At least—well, let me quote Claude:
Alston has been covered/profiled by numerous independent outlets — an international bestseller profile noting his book was published in 27 countries and spent over 30 weeks on the NY Times Bestseller List, plus interviews and features from sources like ReadingZone, Fictitious Podcast, and Barnes & Noble’s Poured Over podcast. That’s a solid spread of independent secondary coverage.
An author qualifies if they meet any of several criteria — Alston appears to hit multiple:
Significant awards: His debut novel won the Barnes & Noble Children’s Book Award for Young Readers, and was named the Overall Winner of the Barnes & Noble Children’s and YA Book Awards in 2021.
Commercial/critical success: He is described as the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the AMARI books, published in over 30 countries and winner of numerous international awards.
Notable/well-reviewed work: The series received starred reviews from major trade publications — Booklist, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly all gave starred reviews to his debut (Kirkus called it “an impressive debut series opener”).
Adaptation into another medium: A major motion picture is currently being developed by Universal, starring Marsai Martin — adaptations are a strong secondary-notability signal.
In practice, this is well above the bar where most Wikipedia editors would consider an author uncontroversially notable — and indeed, a Wikipedia article on him already likely exists or would survive an AfD (articles for deletion) discussion easily, given this level of sourcing.
So the problem is not that Alston is a nobody. A quick question to LLM, or just a Google search confirms that he is a successful writer.
The problem is that my article “stub” does not document this, and therefore it is better to delete it than to keep an imperfect article.
But I am not paid to be a writer for the fucking Wikipedia! Especially if they warn me never to use an AI to jump through their hoops. I tried to help, but the time I want to spend doing unpaid work for Wikipedia is limited. In my opinion, any sane person would agree that this guy should have a Wikipedia page. And in my opinion, a short page is better than no page, because a short page can be improved gradually, which is easier than creating the entire page from scratch.
Another complaint: Twenty years ago it was also considered OK to add links to articles that did not exist yet. The links were displayed in red color, and if you clicked on them, you got a “this articles does not exist yet, do you want to write it?” message. This was a way to notify other editors about topics you thought deserved coverage. When I tried to create a link to Alston (not to the draft, but where the final article should be), the edit was reverted, so apparently this is also no longer allowed.
It feels like the editors consider Wikipedia a completed project that needs to be protected against vandals, but no longer needs to be extended, unless you provide solid evidence that it should.
EDIT:
Added 4 references from reliable sources, submitted again, got rejected again. (At least the clock for deleting the stub started ticking from start again, if I understand it correctly.)
There’s this brilliant line from a post about the Wikipedia article for Mao I really like (link):
Had Wikipedia died in 2011, its achievements would have been immortal. Had it died in 2018, it would still have been a great site but flawed. But here we are in 2025. Alas, what can one say?
Someday wikipedia will die, and when it does, it will be by the hands of its own editors.
Being an editor on wiki kind of sucks, and the systems which are supposed to help, instead distort incentives and enable politicking. Their reputation system is trivial to game. Its easier to remove content than the add new content, so naturally the most prolific editors mostly just delete stuff. Anything without a citation, no matter how obvious, is fair game for deletion. The citation source must be “respectable” meaning that youtube videos are not acceptable, even when its a lecture by a subject matter expert. Their standard of notability for a person is “have I personally heard of them?” Articles for small companies are routinely deleted because “thats advertising”. In an argument over an edit, they can throw the rule book at you. There are high ranking editors who roll around enshitifying random articles. Ive seen it happen. Its sad, it breaks someone elses hard work, and it leaves wiki substantially worse off
Uh, Wikipedia. :(
I have already complained (not sure whether on LW or ACX) about how Wikipedia no longer accepts imperfect articles (used to be called “stubs” long ago). Now you are supposed to create a full article that follows all the rules, provides enough sources, establishes notability, etc., or it won’t be even admitted as a Wikipedia article. Then you put it in the “Draft” workspace, and wait for some Wikipedia editor to judge whether it is worthy of adding to the online encyclopedia.
Now I learned the second part. If your attempt at an article does not pass the judgment, not only it stays in the “Draft” workspace (which would be fair: keep the “stubs” in a separate namespace), but after a few months it will be automatically deleted if no one fixes it.
It feels like Wikipedia is actively trying to get rid of volunteer contributors.
I admit that my attempt at an article sucks, but come on, twenty years ago this would be a perfectly legit “stub”. I have made new articles like this, someone else added a few lines or paragraphs, and after some time it developed into a solid article. That’s what cooperative encyclopedia means, doesn’t it?
The problem is not that the author is insufficiently notable. At least—well, let me quote Claude:
So the problem is not that Alston is a nobody. A quick question to LLM, or just a Google search confirms that he is a successful writer.
The problem is that my article “stub” does not document this, and therefore it is better to delete it than to keep an imperfect article.
But I am not paid to be a writer for the fucking Wikipedia! Especially if they warn me never to use an AI to jump through their hoops. I tried to help, but the time I want to spend doing unpaid work for Wikipedia is limited. In my opinion, any sane person would agree that this guy should have a Wikipedia page. And in my opinion, a short page is better than no page, because a short page can be improved gradually, which is easier than creating the entire page from scratch.
Another complaint: Twenty years ago it was also considered OK to add links to articles that did not exist yet. The links were displayed in red color, and if you clicked on them, you got a “this articles does not exist yet, do you want to write it?” message. This was a way to notify other editors about topics you thought deserved coverage. When I tried to create a link to Alston (not to the draft, but where the final article should be), the edit was reverted, so apparently this is also no longer allowed.
It feels like the editors consider Wikipedia a completed project that needs to be protected against vandals, but no longer needs to be extended, unless you provide solid evidence that it should.
EDIT:
Added 4 references from reliable sources, submitted again, got rejected again. (At least the clock for deleting the stub started ticking from start again, if I understand it correctly.)
There’s this brilliant line from a post about the Wikipedia article for Mao I really like (link):
Someday wikipedia will die, and when it does, it will be by the hands of its own editors.
Being an editor on wiki kind of sucks, and the systems which are supposed to help, instead distort incentives and enable politicking. Their reputation system is trivial to game. Its easier to remove content than the add new content, so naturally the most prolific editors mostly just delete stuff. Anything without a citation, no matter how obvious, is fair game for deletion. The citation source must be “respectable” meaning that youtube videos are not acceptable, even when its a lecture by a subject matter expert. Their standard of notability for a person is “have I personally heard of them?” Articles for small companies are routinely deleted because “thats advertising”. In an argument over an edit, they can throw the rule book at you. There are high ranking editors who roll around enshitifying random articles. Ive seen it happen. Its sad, it breaks someone elses hard work, and it leaves wiki substantially worse off
Edit: FYI: if you need to find a deleted page, check wikibin, which archives deleted wiki pages: https://wikibin.org/about.html