OK so I was perusing wikipedia and decided to look up some pages about bands that I had been in/involved with etc. Only to find that some wikipedia dude deleted most of these band pages and made them redirects to Area 7’s wikipedia entry. That in itself is alright but should they not contact the contributors first to say that this may happen.

Talking with some colleagues, it seems to us that wikipedia has gone crazy with deletions. Lots on legitimate info is getting turfed. When I first saw wikipedia I marveled in the site and thought “finally…this is the start of the Real Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy”. But the last few years I have come to the conclusion that this site can never be that. I romantisized in my mind that this site would be the source of that computer far off in our star trek like future that you can ask questions like “Computer… What was the individual, known as Raphael Segal, doing on the 15th of October2009″ and the computer responding with “He was writing an article entitled Wikipedia sux”. etc

I think something has to give – Wikipedia is now becoming a block to the contributors that it once was wooing and trying to get involved in the project. Seems to me that another system of archiving information has to be created. Hopefully this will happen sooner rather than later.

Wikipedia need to improve if they are to live up to the ideals it was toted to be created with or they will die -relagated to be  simply a footnote in the history of man when the truly open contributed archive takes over.

This may seem like sour grapes as it was pages mentioning me and my friends that have been deleted but I assure you that is not what disappoints me. The info that was deleted can be posted somewhere on the web and found again with relative ease. My disappointment comes from the fact that wikipedia are impeding what i thought was the goal of the site. To record and archive as much information and detail of our existence. Obviously it seems that I am wrong about the motives and the goals -  this is where I am most disappointed.