Pack Rat

In many aspects of my life I am a pack rat. I just never know when some stray item might come in handy. I grew up collecting stamps and coins and post cards. Now my genealogy hobby is the enabler, allowing me to keep old books and important family papers and do all sorts of "keeping of old stuff." The whole mess is barely tolerated in my household and I'm often persona non grata because of my hobbies.

Well, anyway, I've recently discovered yet another way to keep old stuff -- on Wikipedia. I'm not the most religious person, but apparently I can now be linked to two Wiki-ish cults: Inclusionism and Eventualism. Oh, my.
* Inclusionists like to hold onto articles and pieces of information because they can imagine a use for them or see no particular harm in keeping them.
* Eventualists like to hold onto info just in case they can find a use for it someday.

The Economist wrote a related article in March 2008 called The Battle for Wikipedia's Soul. It deals specifically with the fight over content between inclusionists and deletionists. The war really rages at times. And I've fired more than my fair share of volleys in support of adding, keeping, preserving.

So, how does this obsession manifest itself in my day-to-day Wiki world? Well, I can say that most airport articles don't suit my packrat nature. Look at London's Heathrow as an example. The gates and airlines are all current, like an airport webpage. Seems to me that someone doing research on airport growth and decline since the beginning of the use of smaller jets and airline hubs would be sorely out of luck if he/she tried to use Wikipedia. Deletionists are careful to quickly remove all signs of former airlines and gates when changes to flight schedules or airline bankruptcies occur. This is true for most articles about airports, which are overseen by WikiProject Airports.

This all came up because someone recently edited the Erie Water Works article to change the source of water for an Erie reservoir. The correcting editor is fixing the encyclopedia article about the current water works, while the article may actually refer to historic information about the sources of water used in Erie. My eventualist tendencies say to preserve the historic information in case a more complex article can be formulated that includes the history of EWW's water sources. I think Wiki is big enough to hold these extra facts and it's always best to proceed cautiously to avoid losing useful information.