Exclusionism

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Exclusionism is philosophy held by some Wikipedians that seeks to maximize the usefulness of an article by removing irrelevant or superfluous information. Exclusionists may make their exclusions on grounds such as relevancy, lack of references, POV material, article size, information already existing in another article, and so on. Exclusionists may have derived their philosophy in part from the claim that: "Often what is not said is more important than what is said." Wikipedians who practise exclusionism are known as exclusionists.

Exclusionist motto:

Prevention is better than cure.

Exclusionist imperative:

Seek to exclude irrelevant and superfluous material from all Wikipedia articles. If you do not wish to exclude, modify. Only delete when exclusion would leave nothing substantial.

Exclusionism may be regarded by some as the opposite of Deletionism or as an alternative philosophy. It is possible to be an inclusionist and an exclusionist at the same time.

Whereas deletionists simply wish to delete articles they see as poor, an exclusionist prefers to omit what they see as poor, superfluous or extraneous material in an article while retaining the article itself. They would only delete an article if they felt their omissions would leave nothing substantial.

An exclusionist would be more likely to delete rather than attempt to modify anything they saw as not NPOV. They might also omit rather than modify material they feel is contrary to their own POV about how an article should be, although it should be noted that this itself is a POV-driven action.

Exclusionists make their decisions to exclude on grounds such as relevancy, article size, information already existing in another article, POV material, lack of references, and so on. They may also construct seemingly complete articles before publishing them, in the hope they will then be viewed as fait accompli.

Interested exclusionists are welcome to suggest more policy changes. The Association of Exclusionist Wikipedians has been established.

See also

• Conflicting Wikipedia philosophies

• Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians
• Association of Deletionist Wikipedians
• Association of Mergist Wikipedians
• Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgements About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who Are In Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn't Mean They are Deletionist