Administrators at Wikipedia delete some 2,000 articles a day--that's about half the 4,000 entries added daily to the online encyclopedia. How do those administrators decide which articles stay and which ones get cut? The evaluation process begins with suggestions from volunteers as to what makes a person or organization "notable."

So writes Noam Cohen in the article "Giving The Heave-Ho In an Online Who's Who," published Sunday in The New York Times.

"Each day dozens of new Wikipedia articles about people--and about historical figures, fictional creatures, obscure concepts, run-of-the-mill organizations and even shopping centers--are deleted, having been deemed sufficiently unnotable or otherwise unworthy of being listed," Cohen writes.

To illustrate, Cohen looks at the give and take over articles relating to a list of songs using cowbells, the cartoon character Garfield's teddy bear Pooky, a relatively unknown javelin thrower Chuck Greene, the pro-American monarchist The Constantian Society, and congressional candidate Dianne Farrell, a Connecticut Democrat.

The Times article provides a concise look at the open source model in action.