No, I think it's an unconscionable mess.

And fax machines work, but that doesn't mean anything in the universe that's not a fax machine is worse than a fax machine.

The question is whether it would be profitable in a free market, not whether it is profitable in the existing market. Clearly it is not profitable in the existing market because nobody is doing it.

How is essential defined here? Which of the following goods and services are essential?

• insulin for a diabetic
• acetaminophen for someone with a broken arm
• acetaminophen for a child with muscle pains
• a refrigerator at home to prevent food spoilage
• hospice for a terminally ill patient
• a liver transplant
• a sex-change operation
• a mammogram for a 55-year-old
• a mammogram for a 16-year-old
• genetic testing for Huntington's
• jaw surgery to eliminate TMJ
• a high-quality mattress
• a quadruple bypass
• a gastric bypass
• cholesterol-lowering drugs
• anxiety-reducing drugs
• an electric toothbrush
• sex
• setting a broken leg

Every single one of these things could save lives or drastically improve one's quality of life. Some of these are commercially available, some are available in hospitals, some are neither. Is it the presence of a doctor that turns some of these things into "essentials" and others into goods? Which of these should we allow profits on? If a government system does not cover any of these things, is it unethical?

If profits are unethical, should we allow profits on anything? Why?

I know this is a smarmy post—I'm not trolling, honestly. But I find people come into these conversations with a pre-existing mental framework that "health = essential" and therefore "profiting on health is unethical" without much exploration. Not everything offered in the health care industry is essential or life-saving, and many goods and services which are absolutely essential and life-saving are offered privately with no objections from anybody (e.g., refrigerators). What makes "health care" exist outside of the framework of goods and services in general? Most health care spending is dedicated to gradually improving quality of life, not saving people from axe wounds. If allowing profit and unrestricted competition is a bad way to improve people's quality of life, why are we even talking about health? Shouldn't we jump to the conclusion that anything that improves people's lives should be strictly non-profit and centrally planned?

There is legitimate criticism of Wikipedia. A shitload of it. I'll be the first to say that some aspects of Wikipedia are absolutely horrendous.

But I almost never see that legitimate criticism in these threads. All I see is:

1. "Its completely arbitrary as to what the mod of the day thinks is 'notable' or not."
   No, it's quite consistent. There's a discussion where people list reasons (read: do not vote) why the article should be kept or deleted. If the discussion clearly shows why the article should be deleted, in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy (namely, Wikipedia's notability guideline, which editors are told to read before writing the article), then and only then* is the article deleted by an admin. If the discussion does not reach a clear conclusion, the article is not deleted. The above comment is clearly based on misunderstanding of how the deletion decisions are made.
2. "How can you be sure there's a general rule deciding which is notable and which is not?"
   Well, it's easy to be sure. Click here. Now you can be sure. In fact, if you read any deletion discussion, someone will link to the rule, because that's what those discussions are about. When you create a page, there's a boldface link to it. Every major page on Wikipedia's guidelines links to it. The above comment is clearly based on misunderstanding of whether there's a rule or not.
3. "It's all up to the individual reader. For 90% people an article explaining compiler design is of no notability."
   (Really? 600 million people are interested in compiler design? But that's beside the point.) Wikipedia's definition of "notability" is different from the colloquial definition of "notability", just as the electrical definition of "potential" is different from the colloquial definition of "potential". All fields have jargon, Wikipedia has its own. Reading the above guideline would make this clear.
4. "...it leads to Eastern European weightlifters being deleted because pimply-faced American 'admins' haven't heard of them, but that every single Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon card ever created has its own separate page."
   Actually, articles are not deleted because admins have not heard of them,* but because of the above process that I mentioned. The case would've been better stated with a link to said weightlifter's discussion, but few in these threads can be bothered with supporting facts (remarkably, it's those same people who keep getting their articles deleted! what a weird coincidence!) Furthermore, not one of the 9000+ Magic cards or the 5000+ Pokemon cards has a page, so this comment was not only based on misunderstanding, but on the commenter being a person who enjoys making up complete bullshit.
5. "Unfortunately, "I think this is silly" is the unspoken reason that a lot of articles get deleted."
   That doesn't explain why so many silly articles are not deleted, or why so many articles that get deleted are completely mundane.
6. "What the Wikipedia administrators should realize is that an online encyclopedia doesn't have to fit into a given shelf space."
   The problem is 1) assuming Wikipedia admins don't understand basic physical facts, and 2) responding to an argument that was never made -- a "strawman". Articles are not deleted to free up server space; they are deleted because they are horrible and Wikipedia is not built as a repository for horrible things, it is designed to be a high-quality resource. Articles whose topics have never been addressed in reliable sources are low-quality resources that cannot be transformed into high-quality resources with any amount of effort, and therefore they lower the reliability and quality of the encyclopedia, as well as encourage the proliferation of such writing. Wikipedia enforces its guidelines because it's not enough to let everyone write whatever they want, there needs to be some threshold to at least maintain a minimum standard of quality.

These discussions never get anywhere because people who understand the process generally don't get their articles deleted. Whenever I've had an article deleted, it was one that clearly did not meet Wikipedia's guidelines (i.e., one that was written before I knew what I was doing). Whenever I've had an article kept, it was one that clearly met Wikipedia's guidelines. Now, everyone's experience is different. Maybe these giant conspiracies are really happening and I've just been lucky. But I've been editing Wikipedia for years, and I haven't had these problems.

It's not that Wikipedia is perfect. But the people who have the most problems are the people who keep saying things that aren't true and keep complaining about hypothetical, ephemeral examples instead of using quotations and links. There's a correlation there.

* I'm not saying no admin has ever abused his power, and I'm not saying the process works perfectly. I'm saying admins do quite well for a large group of humans, and the process works quite well for a process created by a large group of humans.

Maybe people should just read the goddamn policies before submitting data.

Yeah, I'm curious too. Lendrick, if you agree that it's OK to delete articles on some topics, how would you decide what to delete?

A majority vote wouldn't be fair, because admins would delete anything they hadn't heard of.

A Google search wouldn't be fair, because it would be radically biased toward modern topics and internet culture.

The current policy's as fair as you can get. Something's notable if it's been covered in reliable, independent sources. That precludes two-week-old blogs that no notable sources have written about, but allows for obscure topics that are fairly well-known to specific subcultures.

Not one Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon card ever created has its own separate page.

And I'm gonna take a stab and guess that you don't actually have an example of an Eastern European weightlifter being deleted because an American admin hadn't heard of him.

But don't let the facts get in your way. Those "pimply-faced" admins obviously have no idea what they're talking about.

God, that's some obnoxious condescension right there. Those poor, well-meaning fools just haven't realized that an internet website can be bigger than a book! They just don't understand!

Deleted pages are kept on the server. No one's ever said it was a storage issue.