There's an interesting article about "The Charms of Wikipedia" in the recent New York Review of Books. It's written by Nicholson Baker, probably most famous for his novel 'Vox.' (I read 'The Fermata.')

He writes a bit about deletionists on Wikipedia. "A lot of good work—verifiable, informative, brain-leapingly strange—is being cast out of this paperless, infinitely expandable accordion folder by people who have a narrow, almost grade-schoolish notion of what sort of curiosity an on-line encyclopedia will be able to satisfy in the years to come." He quotes Andrew Lih who said, "The preference now is for excising, deleting, restricting information rather than letting it sit there and grow."

He writes about his own experience with Wikipedia (under the handle Wageless) and how he fought to keep dozens of entries from being deleted. In the article he includes a long list of entries he "argued for keeping." Near the bottom, between "Whitley Neill Gin, flavored with South African botanicals" and "Michelle Leonard, a European songwriter" is "Whirled News Tonight, a Chicago improv troupe."

So, Whirled News had a Wikipedia entry. Someone marked it for possible deletion. Three people voted to delete it. Three people voted to keep it (one a "weak keep"). One of those three proponents, easily the one most strongly in favor of keeping it, was Nicholson Baker. He even looked us up on LexisNexis for articles to support our notability. We got deleted anyway. Then he mentions us in the New York Review of Books.

Granted, he did the same for "Pyro Boy, a minor celebrity who turns himself into a human firecracker on stage" and "the Jitterbug telephone, a large-keyed cell phone with a soft earpiece for elder callers," but still, it's pretty neat.

You can read the full article here.