On 9/23/02 10:22 AM, "Andre Engels" <engels(a)uni-koblenz.de> wrote:
All right. The
big deleters (Engels, Jheimens, Mav) have adopted a more
aggressive policy for deleting pages than the stated one (on
[[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]] and [[Wikipedia:Policy on permanent
deletion of pages]]).
Primarily, they delete stubs.
I don't know where you get the impression that "Primarily, [we] delete
stubs."
but it is a very bad description of what we do. Yes, we delete stubs, but not
all stubs, just the very bad ones. I know you disagree with the deletion of
stubs, so I bend backward, but there is still a limit - and to me that limit
is reached if a stub is _less_ than a dictionary definition. Your anger seems
to have been aroused by maveric deleting impulse noise with the text "Unwanted
low-quality loud sound(s)". Now, I now too little about impulse noise to give
a definition of it, but I do know that if someone who does know about it
writes about it, (s)he will not let that definition stand. Which means that
it does NOT fall under "stubs that at least have a decent definition and might
in the future become articles".
I apologize; I didn't mean that you delete stubs more than anything else; I
meant the primary issue of contention is that you delete stubs.
My anger hasn't been aroused. This is more about patterns of behavior than
specific examples, but if we must discuss individual cases, the real problem
with the deletion of "impulse noise" was that it happened within half an
hour of appearing on the Votes for deletion page. That's much too fast,
whether or not its definition is sufficient.
The thing to remember is that deletions are effectively immutable; thus the
burden to justify deletion should be extreme (or at a minimum, the process
should be slow).
Some of the harm in deleting weak stubs:
* discourages potential contributors who see their work deleted, instead of
improved
* prevents people who find stubs to goad them to improve the entry from
doing so
* hard to quantify weakness--how "decent" must the entry be?
* hides measure of interest in the entry
We need to either amend the stated policy or change current deletion
behavior; either way, we should discuss these issues first.