Who’s going to win the battle for Wikipedia’s Soul: the inclusionists or the deletionists?

It is this question that lies at the heart of a very interesting article in The Economist. The inclusionists argue that Wikipedia should feature as many articles as it’s contributors can produce, so long as even a few users find it interesting. Let’s just call it the “longest of the long tail” strategies. In contrast, deletionists believe the site would be more successful if it “maintains a certain relevance and quality for its enteries.” To read a humourous post about deletionists at their best, see Mike Dover’s post from October.

The bulk of the article seems to push people towards supporting the inclusionists, as it covers the increasingly infamous Kafkaesque bureaucracy of Wikipedia in great detail. The deletionist argument isn’t covered to the same degree, and I believe one particularly important fact is left out – a totally inclusionist approach would likely increase the number of errors and successful troll attacks greatly, as there is a lot more terrain of specialized knowledge to monitor.

So the question is, if forced to choose one side, which would you choose? I think I lean towards the inclusionist side, with the appropriate caveat in regards to intelligent tools being integrated in order to maintain the quality level (etc.)… but to be honest I’m not 100% sure. Anyone else have any thoughts?