[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Andrew Gray]

2010/1/21 The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>:
> Just restored a former prime minister.

I am carefully staying out of this on all sides (hey, I've got a
weekend off, I'm looking forward to some peace), but this flags up one
issue I'd really like to see brought up in these discussions:

* an emphasis that these are "procedural" deletions, and not in any
way reflective of the merits of the topic of the article.

A high proportion of these unsourced-BLPs are going to be on the sorts
of topics that no-one will particularly cry to see deleted; drive-by
puff pieces and contentless stubs. However, a lot more will simply be
"bad articles on good topics"; significant figures, whose notability
even the most exclusionist would agree on, but who we have not yet
managed to write a halfway decent article on. (I could name a few,
easily!)

We're historically prone to having people (especially at CSD) assume
that an earlier deletion is itself a strong black mark - if an article
was deleted earlier, there must have been a good reason for it, they
figure. Whatever comes out of this, it would be good to see something
firmly stating that these articles were deleted because they were
textually bad, not conceptually bad, and people are encouraged to
recreate them as better versions.

(and now, back to planning my trip)

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk