I'm not Rebecca, but please allow me to try addressing some of your
queries...
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Rebecca wrote:
The very essence of what makes Wikipedia work is
consensus.
Fine! Then why are we bothering with votes?
I don't understand. Voting gauges whether there is a consensus or not.
People have
put things on VFD before that I've agreed with. I've
argued a case that they shouldn't be deleted, and it's very rare that
such an article has then gone ahead and be deleted. If you put up an
argument, and the majority *still* think that it should be deleted,
then tough. That's the way it works.
Maybe that's the way you wan't it to work. Why should I need to put
together an argument about something that I know nothing about just to
try to convince someone who knows even less about the subject that
it's worth keeping?
You don't need to. You can research it on Google, or let somebody else
handle it. If nobody does, perhaps that's an indication the article's
not notable enough to be encyclopedic. The audience on VfD is large
enough for somebody to respond sooner or later, despite your argument
that the majority of the community doesn't visit it.
VFD *is*
growing too large to be maintainable, but that's a result of
our continued growth, rather than some evil plan by the deletionists
to go on an annihilating spree. A solution to that needs to be found,
and I'm not sure what, but allowing junk to remain in the pedia is not
the answer.
Much of this so-called "junk" is perfectly harmless. General growth
is only part of the reason. Nobody is suggesting that the
deletionists are even capable of concocting an evil plan. I find them
more like a Dr. Strangelove who will struggle for survival even if it
kills him. The delusional missions of zealots are always pursued with
the best of intentions ... a phalanx of perfectionists in chasing the
impossible.
Many of the disputed articles are stubs, and even in their totality
will likely take less space on the server than the verbiage about
whether to delete them.
Stubs yes, but their notability and/or verifiability is another. What
will people think of how trustworthy our information is if we permit
rubbish such as a biased advertisement for a discussion forum to
languish on Wikipedia?
John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])