Let's step back and take a look:
Looking over the VfD discussions, I have noticed that in the vast
majority of cases the consensus is very clear one way or the other.
Few listings cause anywhere near a 50/50 split. In the cases where
the consensus is to delete, that means the listing was justified --
the content did not belong in the Wikipedia. Good call, let's get
rid of it and move on. In the cases where the consensus is to keep,
that means that someone was mistaken in their individual assessment
of the article, but the community recognized the value of it.
Those "deletionists" some people like to talk about are the same
people overwhelmingly voting to keep valid articles. They aren't
deletionists; they are investigators. They check to see whether
a listed article belongs in the Wikipedia according to <whisper>
standards </whisper>. Most articles that are listed on VfD do end
up getting deleted, and for good reason -- they didn't belong. The
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and it does have <whisper> standards
</whisper>. It disturbs me that I feel I have to whisper the
word "standards" as if it were a dirty word. Those "deletionists"
are merely people willing to take their time to see if an article
meets minimum standards for inclusion in the Wikipedia. The
reason you see so many votes to delete is that, for the most part,
people do a very good job in bringing only invalid articles to VfD
(i.e. the system works).
What types of articles get deleted on VfD? Vanity pages,
advertisements, original research, source material, medical advice,
memorials to deceased friends, stories that received a small article
on page 16 of their local newspaper years ago, political rants, game
guides, neologisms, hoaxes, etc. Anything that doesn't belong in an
encyclopedia. Standards. It's all about standards. This isn't about
evil deletionists wanting to methodically delete every article until
there is nothing left. It is about "is this a valid article or not?"
Some would argue "It doesn't hurt to leave non-encyclopedic junk
because no-one will look for it / wikipedia isn't paper / anyone
should be allowed to write anything they want." Forget standards,
let it devolve into a free-for-all so we can be proud of... what?
The examples I gave above are only some of the types of articles that
do not qualify for Speedy Deletion but obviously do not belong in an
encyclopedia. So we can either let admins delete on-sight anything
that doesn't belong (we don't need to go there) or else have a very
limited list of things that can be deleted on-sight and list other
questionables on a page to get community input. Hmm... that second
option sounds a lot like what we have now.
The system works. It isn't broken. It could use some tweaking,
sure. I'm open to constructive ideas to improve the system, as is
being discussed in another thread. To call VfD "broken," to say that
it isn't needed, to declare that all content is valid, to compare a
review process to a slum -- Well, I'll just bite my tongue.
Stephen W. Adair
SWAdair
