I am fascinated with Wikipedia and its free and open nature. I see it as profoundly revolutionary.
I am a moderate inclusionist, and so I see excessive exclusionism and deletionism as a problem. I see the value in both eventualism and immediatism. However, I do not believe that immediatists should unilaterally delete articles or exclude information—they should immediately improve them. From what I have seen so far, exclusionists and deletionists hold the upper hand here at Wikipedia because it is easier to remove information or delete articles than it is to invest time and effort in improving them.
One problem I have noticed regarding mergism is that as the information under a subtopic grows, there is a tendency to trim that information down because it overshadows the rest of the article. The problem then is not that the subtopic is too long, but that the main article is too short—not voluminous enough to balance out the particular subtopic. To counteract this editorial trimming, in some cases I would advocate the creation of a new article, in which such editorial trimming is unnecessary and new information can be added without hesitation.
I will try to compile a list over time of articles which I deem acceptable, but which others regard as borderline. I may not personally find some articles interesting or of value, but I respect the curiosity of others and their faith that Wikipedia can inform them.
Cirsium palustre, the marsh thistle, is a herbaceous biennial (or often perennial) flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. It is native to Europe, where it is particularly common on damp ground such as marshes, wet fields, moorland and beside streams. In Canada and the northern United States it is an introduced species that has become invasive. It grows in dense thickets that can crowd out slower growing native plants. Cirsium palustre can reach up to 2 metres (7 ft) in height and features strong stems with few branches which are covered in small spines. In its first year the plant grows as a dense rosette and in subsequent years a candelabra of dark purple or occasionally white flowers, 10–20 millimetres (0.4–0.8 in) with purple-tipped bracts. In the northern hemisphere these are produced from June to September. The plant provides an important source of nectar for pollinators. This C. palustre flower was photographed in Niitvälja, Estonia.Photograph credit: Ivar Leidus
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