May 10, 2019

WIkinews treats an URL to encyclopedia dramatica as spam


The famous social network Wikinews has made recently a decision to delete an article [1]: it was a one sentence article which was referencing to a website called “encyclopedia dramatica” in the sources. The posted link was valid, that means behind the link there was real content, but Wikinews doesn't like the URL very much.
In the speedy deletion comment, it was written that the article is equal to “Advertising or spam”. It is unclear which point exactly was treated as advertising. One explanation could be that the URL to the encyclopedia dramatica in general was defined as spam, because encyclopedia dramatica is not equal to the Guardian website or the BBC website.
Another possible explanation could be that encyclopedia dramatica itself is a perfect choice for a source, but the linked article itself was not the right one.
Let us go into the details. The URL which was posted to the Wikinews article was:
The article was created at the same time in which the wikinews article was created which was April 2019. So we had at first a real event (somebody has created in encyclopedia dramatica a new piece of content), and another user was trying to post the URL to Wikinews to announce the fact to a larger audience.
A third possible explanation for the speedy deletion is, that the admin in the WIkinews website has made a mistake because he has violated the most important rule:
“If in doubt... don't delete!” [2]
The reason why this rule exists is to prevent censoring of information.
Sources: