Hello Wikipedians

Consider this an open letter about how many well-meaning individuals following Wikipedia's current rules and practices take good content and trash it. I am a new editor and documenting my experience trying to improve Wikipedia on a single subject of 'open source labs'. I looked it up on Wikipedia and it sent me to OSU Open Source Lab. I knew there were other labs at other universities so I wrote an OSL disamb page, which I copied the code for below. In my opinion I did a good job - and was trying to show the breadth of the subject and hit most of the major labs at universities and list some of the company ones. Now my work has been eviscerated - by the following things happening:

all the examples I gave that there were not pages created for were deleted
all external links were deleted, thereby rendering the page useless as a core resource for the concept
Boston Open Source Science Laboratory has been proposed for deletion as an ad and as not notable
Open Source laboratory information management systems is slated for deletion because of significance
BYU Open Source Lab is tagged as not noteable
Stanford Open Source Lab has been tagged as not noteable
Open Source Research Lab has also been tagged the same
User:Stockwellnow/UniParthenope Open Source Lab was moved to my user space
and so has the Open Source Lab book User:Stockwellnow/Open-Source Lab (book)

I do appreciate the last two - in that at least it preserves the work - and I can work on it and make it better.

For the most part the existing editors did not make the pages better or correct the things they found wrong (e.g. add external references etc). The pages were simply tagged, deleted or moved.

However, worst of all:

OSU Open Source Lab, which is the original page - which I didn't do anything to other than move it to its own personal page (actually someone else did that) - now has a lack of notability tag at the top!!!!

Take away conclusions for new editors

I have no reason to believe my experience is somehow unique. Thus, the take away lesson for me is: Don't waste time creating new pages in Wikipedia unless you are willing to invest hours making them super-complete AND willing to follow and defend them for days from attacks from the entrenched editors. It should be clear this will turn off all but the most dedicated editors or those being paid to edit for a specific subject (e.g. a company).

In my opinion this is a dangerous lesson to be teaching new editors - as most will simply say forget it and never edit again - or start a flame war and then never edit again. In this particular topic- things are only marginally better than before I began editing -instead of a lot better- and I think if all the deletes are actually put into effect including killing the OSU page - Wikipedia will be clearly worse. I have read that Wikipedia is shrinking -- e.g. getting worse -- and I think this is why. I realize I am a newbie, greeny, whatever and my opinion counts for basically nothing - but I think many of you have good intentions and want to see Wikipedia become a repository for all human knowledge. With policies as they are set now that is never going to happen.

All the best, --Stockwellnow (talk) 01:42, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

My Edited version

Open Source Labs are labs dedicated to open source software or open source hardware. As the open source movement has increased these types of labs are increasing in number and activity.

The Open Source Lab may refer to:

Books

Open-Source Lab (book) - Open-Source Lab, 1st Edition: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs by Joshua Pearce, (Elsevier, 2014).

Labs (non-profit) or corporate

Boston Open Source Science Laboratory – a lab primarily for Biohacking
Open Source IT Lab - a company
Open Source laboratory information management systems
Open Source Lab (LUbunutu) - Virtual lab for LUbuntu development

University related Open-Source Labs

BYU Open Source Lab – makes open source civic apps
Marshall Open Source Lab – collects Open Source and Linux uses at Marshall University
NJIT Open Source Lab - provides a Linux environment for general-purpose work at New Jersey Institute of Technology
OSU Open Source Lab - the first Open Source Lab - open source software developers
Stanford Open Source Lab – open source software developers at Stanford
UniParthenope Open Source Lab – open source software developers in Italy
Open Source Research Lab – UTEP lab group-based violence on the Western Hemisphere

The Current Version