[WikiEN-l] Re: note David Gerard's just placed on [[WT:AFD]]

[David Gerard]

>> Now to comment on your suggestion: I think this is fundamentally
>> unworkable. Articles can change rapidly,

>Yes, some articles do change rapidly.  Some articles change *very
>slowly* (like one substantive edit per 6 months, or even slower).  This
>method is not appropriate for articles which are not stable.  But the
>vast majority of Wikipedia articles *are* stable.  When we've got all
>the stable articles fully referenced, we can work out a way to handle
>the last 2% or so that change quickly.  This is not a issue of
>feasibility, just a ~2% limit on the domain for which this applies.


Yes. We have the numbers to prove this (see earlier posts to this
list). Almost all articles are uncontroversial. (A large proportion of
articles don't even have a talk page yet.)

Although intense discussion focuses on the small percentage of
troublesome articles, we must always keep in mind that these are the
*exceptions*. And that edge cases make bad law.

(The last is the problem with AFD - almost all deletions are
uncontroversial, it's the rest that make it troublesome.)


- d.