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Rochustoday at 11:35 AM1 replyview on HN

I find it strange that they deleted the article. The topic is relevant and of sufficient interest. I think there is a deeper bureaucratic pattern behind it. In every once-useful organization, there comes a point where the rules stop being instruments and become relics: nobody asks whether they still serve the original purpose, because the bureaucracy now exists mainly to defend its own procedures. That is basically Parkinson territory, and also the classic drift into cargo cult administration.

The result is predictable: genuinely useful things get removed, while irrelevant but procedurally compliant nonsense survives. Lenz’s “die Freuden der Pflicht” comes to mind, the self-satisfied worship of duty detached from reason or outcome. And in modern internet terms, that is just another form of enshittification: the institution keeps its forms, its process, and its moral self-image, while the actual value quietly rots away.

That said, with the advent of systems like Perplexity I barely ever go to Wikipedia anymore. And nowadays I spend more money to archive.org than Wikipedia.


Replies

Gander5739today at 6:00 PM

> The topic is relevant and of sufficient interest.

According to what authority?

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