Investigating Deletion in Wikipedia

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.