Two weeks ago, Susan Peters, a local TV news anchor, was marked for deletion. "Not notable," wrote one Wikipedian. "What distinguishes her from any other local anchor (and local Emmys don't cut it for me)?," asked another. This is Wikipedia--the massive communal online encyclopedia written, edited, and deleted, entirely by volunteers. Every day over a hundred articles, many of them on living people, are nominated for deletion. And it's not pretty. Even those that defended Susan's Wiki-worthiness were harsh: "Seems notable enough. At least as notable as any other second-tier author or journalist." Ouch. But this is how decisions get made at Wikipedia. We talked to two Wikipedians who have been participating in Susan's judgment.

Notes from Producer Neille Ilel:
Back in 2000, I used to wonder how I ever lived without the Internet. A few months ago, I wondered how I ever lived without Wikipedia. It is truly a wondrous thing. Where else can you find serious encyclopedic entries on Early Christianity ("Christianity of the period after the Death of Jesus c.33 and before the First Council of Nicaea in 325"), a few thousand entries away from Ellen Feiss ("A teenage girl featured in an Apple Computer advertisement, whose slurred speech and disoriented eyes provoked speculation that she was under the influence of illicit drugs.")? At last count Wikipedia had over 4 million articles in over 200 different languages. They've all been written and edited by anyone who was struck with the desire to do so.

What's even more wondrous than all the things you can learn is how the site runs seamlessly on the backs of thousands of skirmishing Wikipedians. There are guidelines for notability (why the person is notable, and such information should be verifiable) elections (for arbitrators), factions (the inclusionists and the deletionists) and even organized gangs of hackers. While I always assumed there must be a lot of dedicated (and perhaps crazy) people behind the greatness of Wikipedia, I never knew how much of it is actually conflict. If you love Wikipedia, I invite you to explore behind the scenes of this odd place, check out the deletions list, edit an article, or just troll around all the pages of innards that we've posted here.

» Susan Peters Entry
» Susan Peters Deletion Discussion
» Notability criteria
» How deletion works
» Deletionists
» Inclusionists
» Troy Diggs aka AmNewsBoy
» Jon Radoff aka Tarinth