Investigating Deletion in Wikipedia

TL;DR

This paper analyzes Wikipedia deletions to assess their justification, revealing many are appropriate but some occur too rapidly, and offers recommendations to improve content quality and editor retention.

Contribution

It provides a dataset of deleted articles and insights into deletion practices, proposing strategies to reduce non-significant pages and retain new editors.

Findings

Many deletions are justified

A large number of deletions occur quickly

Recommendations to improve retention and reduce non-significant pages

Abstract

Several hundred Wikipedia articles are deleted every day because they lack sufficient significance to be included in the encyclopedia. We collect a dataset of deleted articles and analyze them to determine whether or not the deletions were justified. We find evidence to support the hypothesis that many deletions are carried out correctly, but also find that a large number were done very quickly. Based on our conclusions, we make some recommendations to reduce the number of non-significant pages and simultaneously improve retention of new editors.