Ryan Delaney wrote:
I'm still not seeing the connection, but I'll try one last time. It
sounds like you're saying that discussion of deletion process
distracts us from working on building new, better articles on topics
that we already have, and that we shouldn't worry too much about
deleted content because it probably wasn't any good anyway. I think
there's some logic in this, but it's still the case that (a) sometimes
we ought to take a step back and consider process from a birds-eye
view, or else it will develop chaotically as a massive cancerous
collection of short-term responses to short-term problems and (b)
there is no drawback to pure wiki deletion that we don't already
suffer from the existing system, and it has several considerable
advantages over the status quo.
I wasn't saying we shouldn't discuss
deletion process: I think in fact
we should probably look at why PROD is underused. I think that having
the deleted articles off the site (unless you're an admin) does make
people not spend time looking at deleted material that has an intriguing
title but isn't worth reading, an activity that would probably involve a
great deal of duplicated effort. I simply disagree with (b) - it seems
like a proponent's view, and the history of the relevant project page
seems to indicate that most people lost interest in 2006 (when BLP began
to loom).
If you agree with B (and you ought to), then you ought to think that
pure wiki deletion is a good idea. Maybe you don't think it's a good
enough idea to invest the time and energy into getting it implemented
(A), but B is what's really important here-- if enough people
subscribe to B, it will find a way to get done.
Like I say, you seem to be arguing from a rather lonely perspective here.
Cha