Wikipedia:Editors matter but...
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This is an essay; it contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. It is not a policy or guideline, and editors are not obliged to follow it. |
The editors matters essay has been touted as though it's a silver bullet, a trump card, a magical essay that makes deletion discussions go away.
Nobody is denying editors matter but this needs to be balanced against the fact that it doesn't give anyone free reign to use Wikipedia as their own personal playground. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia - it is not a web host, it's not a place to play fun and games and spend hours creating silly pointless pages and it's not MySpace.
Long-time good-faith contributors who do good work on Wikipedia should understand that better than anybody as WP:NOT is one of the fundamental policies that make Wikipedia what it is. By pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable they have risked alienating themselves - that's not the fault of people who nominate and vote on miscellany for deletion discussions. Wikipedia is based on co-operation and understanding within the rules, and that includes user-space, but the essay uses "editors matter" as doublespeak to imply that if you believe that you don't care about editors.
[edit] Nominators are editors too
Users too often wheel out the essay in legitimate discussions, and there's a great irony that an essay called "editors matter" is too often used to disrespect long-standing editors for "wheeling out policy" or the implication that they think "editors don't matter". These people are members of the community too, and throwing an essay in their face is somewhat of a backhanded insult.
[edit] Throwing toys out of the pram
The essay seems to have created some sort of mythos based around the concept of "if we delete someone's inappropriate page, they'll leave", yet there is little-to-no evidence of this actually taking place. Rather, since the essay's creation, some have threatened to leave if their chosen page is deleted since the essay came along, WP:BEANS-style, trying to hold Wikipedia to ransom to disrupt deletion discussions. Should Wikipedia tolerate policy violations, and be held to the ransom of its contributors, lest people leave?
[edit] But Wikipedia isn't... at the moment
Wikipedia is collaborative whereby people share ideas rather than following explicit rules, and new ideas are shared meme-like throughout Wikipedia without following the word of policy. When one person creates a page and it's deemed to be acceptable, others inevitably follow. This is why deletion is a powerful tool - it creates active, explicit limits on what is and isn't acceptable, and prevents Wikipedia from being overwhelmed with content that doesn't move the encyclopedia towards its goal. The fact that Wikipedia isn't MySpace or strayed too far from its goals despite being on an extremely open-ended software platform perhaps should be taken as a sign that the current deletion policy has worked.
