Deletion discussions in Wikipedia: Decision factors and outcomes

Deletion of articles is a common process in Wikipedia, in order to ensure the overall quality of the encyclopedia. Yet, there is a need to better understand the procedures in order to promote the best decisions without unnecessary community work. In this paper, we study deletion in Wikipedia, drawing from factor analysis, and taking an in-depth, content-analysis-based approach. We address three research questions: First, what factors contribute to the decision about whether to delete a given article? Second, when multiple factors are given, what is the relative importance of those factors? Third, what are the outcomes of deletion discussions, both for articles and for the community? We find that multiple factors contribute to the assessment of an article, and we discuss their relative frequency. Further, we show how the assessment timeline focuses attention on improving borderline articles that have the potential to meet Wikipedia's content inclusion policies, and we highlight the role of novice contributors in this improvement process.