[Wikipedia-l] policy suggestion: don't create pages for everything

[tarquin]

I was looking on 
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3APolicies_and_guidelines for 
something along the lines of "don't create a new page for EVERY tiny 
little thing".

couldn't find it.

so here's a suggestion in the shape of a story

I recently found the following mini-web of pages:
* roadrunner -- a list of the different meanings, including the cartoon 
character
* Acme -- a multi-stub: several meanings, 2 paragraphs or so for each, 
including a section on the Acme in the cartoons
* Wile E Coyote -- the cartoon character

Being bold, I turned took all the stuff on the cartoons and made "Road 
Runner cartoon".
It's a non-stub made out of stubs. It's not bad as an article, and has 
potential to grow.
Then someone came along and made "Wile E Coyote" and "Acme" back into 
links.

There's a similar situation over at Winnie-the-pooh -- a dozen stubs for 
each of the characters, saying, basically: "X is a character in 
Winnie-the-pooh". This information would be of greater use to the reader 
on a a single "Winnie-the-pooh" page, say with a header == characters ==.

I'm not sure this can be cleanly stated as some sort of policy without 
resorting to fluffy cartoon animals. It's a little fuzzy just when to 
apply this sort of merging and when not to.
With the RR articles, there was so much overlap between them.

plus I worry that the list of guidelines is too long already.

erm. there's probably a point to be distilled out of the above ;)