On 11/20/05, Brown, Darin Darin.Brown@enmu.edu wrote:
Why is "no claim of notability" a crietrion for speedy delete? Why should it even be a criteron for deletion? There is difference between CLAIM OF NOTABILITY in the article and ACTUAL NOTABILITY. In this case, anyone familiar KNOWS the subject is notable, but just because the STUB fails to provide evidence, this is considered enough for speedy delete or delete?
Because new articles on completely questionable and unknown and usually dubious things are created at the rate of around a hundred a day. The vast majority of articles speedied in this fashion are created by anonymous IPs. High school kids seem to spend all day long creating articles about people in their class that they don't or do like. Sometimes it is pretty hard to tell some articles which later turn out to be "legitimate" topics from the mountain of crap. I usually try Googling but that doesn't always help, especially when the name is fairly common.
What's the worst-case scenario here? If the fellow is really so notable, it is likely someone else will come along and write an article about him in the future with enough information in it to keep it from getting speedied. Just because something gets speedied as not containing enough information to meet the basic standards of stub creation does not mean it is a permanent decision. It is really not that big a deal.
Why don't admins want to "wait a few days" in most instances? Because by that point they've probably forgotten the article ever existed, and it becomes part of the mountain of crap that people delight in pointing out Wikipedia is full of.
FF