On Nov 7, 2007 12:17 PM, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"John Lee" wrote
Hindsight is 20-20; in the first place, how many of us would look up a contributing editor's edit history when considering an article's
content?
I do get discouraged. How are we going to solve this one of non-native English speakers having contributions speedied, if it is always argued that failures are somehow "OK"? A7 is mainly there to zap teenagers and totally clueless contributors. Deletion has become _ever so casual_. There is the page history (of course), there are the backlinks, there is the contribution history. In fact the contribution history cuts both ways: you find other junk and vandalism, or you find evidence of clue.
But recall, in this case, how would you salvage the article's content? What useful article could be made out of the content contributed? In borderline cases, where there is useful content, I do a lot more digging, but this is a very clearcut case to me of pretty much useless content. As I said, in this case we aren't working to establish whether we deserve an article on this particular topic, but whether this particular article as it stands would be a useful article at all (or could be made into one), assuming this topic should be covered. In this case, reading the original revision, I don't see how we could salvage it.
Johnleemk