Deletionpedia is an online

archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

containing articles deleted from the

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is, along with the Simple English Wikipedia, one of two English-language editions of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was founded on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition, and, as of , has the most arti ...

. Its version of each article includes a header with more information about the deletion such as whether a speedy deletion occurred, where the deletion discussion about the article can be found and which editor deleted the article. The original Deletionpedia operated from February to September 2008. The site was restarted under new management in December 2013. The site is based on

MediaWiki MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWi ...

. The site functions as something of a "wikimorgue"; it automatically collects articles deleted from Wikipedia. In addition to categories preserved from Wikipedia, Deletionpedia has its own categories for articles, based upon the deletion criteria. Pages are organized by the month in which they were deleted, by the number of editors that had worked on a page and by the length of time the article had existed on Wikipedia. Deletionpedia states that it avoids hosting deleted pages that are

copyright violations Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...

, pages with serious libel problems, pages whose full

revision history A changelog is a log or record of all notable changes made to a project. The project is often a website or software project, and the changelog usually includes records of changes such as bug fixes, new features, etc. Some open-source projects in ...

is still available on Wikipedia's sister sites, and pages which set out to offend others. Articles preserved by Deletionpedia were deleted from Wikipedia for a variety of reasons, from "being not notable" to "manipulation by political and business interests". The site seeks no donations; its "Donate" page formerly suggested that supporters donate to

mySociety mySociety is a UK-based registered charity, previously named UK Citizens Online Democracy. It began as a UK-focused organisation with the aim of making online democracy tools for UK citizens. However, those tools were open source, so that the ...

or to the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

instead.

Version 1

The original Deletionpedia collected about 63,000 articles, which were deleted from Wikipedia between February and September 2008. Nearly 2000 pages were over 1000 days old before they were deleted.

Demise

The last viewable log the site made of Wikipedia was taken on 14 June 2012 of Anime Festival Wichita. The original content is still available to view online. In 2011,

Jason Scott Jason Scott Sadofsky (born September 13, 1970), more commonly known as Jason Scott, is an American archivist, historian of technology, filmmaker, performer, and actor. Scott has been known by the online pseudonyms Sketch, SketchCow, The Slipped ...

Archive Team Archive Team is a group dedicated to digital preservation and web archiving that was co-founded by Jason Scott in 2009. Its primary focus is the copying and preservation of content housed by at-risk online services. Some of its projects include ...

saved a copy of the website with WikiTeam tools and uploaded the copy to the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

's collection.

Reception

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' cited it as a response to the culture clash that exists on Wikipedia between deletionists and inclusionists. ''

The Industry Standard ''The Industry Standard'' is a U.S. news web site dedicated to technology business news, part of ''InfoWorld'', a news website covering technology in general. It is a revival of a weekly magazine based in San Francisco which was published betwe ...

'' calls it "a ould-befine research project for

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

students to study what

groupthink Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness ...

does when applied to a community-built compendium of knowledge". Shortly thereafter, the ''Industry Standard'' again turned its attention to Deletionpedia, reporting that deletion of the article in Wikipedia about Deletionpedia was itself under discussion, suggesting that the article was not being considered for deletion based on “insignificance of the site” but rather “due to perceived criticism of Wikipedia itself”. Deletionpedia also made news at '' De Telegraaf'', the website for the largest daily morning

Dutch language Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic language spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-Europea ...

newspaper, and ''

The Inquirer ''The Inquirer'' (stylized as TheINQUIRER) was a British technology tabloid website founded by Mike Magee after his departure from ''The Register'' (of which he was one of the founding members) in 2001. In 2006 the site was acquired by Dutch ...

'', a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

technology tabloid website. The site has been more fully explored by '' Ars Technica'' in an article that not only describes aspects of the website but mentions the controversy over deleting the Wikipedia article on Deletionpedia.

Statistics and version 2

The website was reregistered by a new owner, Kasper Souren, and began operation anew in December 2013. As of Feb 2022, it had amassed 91,250 content pages, and 117902 pages in total, with 239,847 edits. It had also acquired 4,020 users.

Similar projects

There are similar projects for other Wikipedia languages, for example PlusPedia in German, PrePedia in Polish, and Wikisage in Dutch.

References

External links

* *
Deletionpedia dump
by WikiTeam (may contain errors) {{Wikipedia Internet properties established in 2008 Wikipedia-derived encyclopedias MediaWiki websites History of Wikipedia Criticism of Wikipedia