David Goodman wrote:
Come join the talk at deletion review if you think its
so easy to
restore articles. People cant even se ethem to work on without asking
an administrator. (though there are some, including myself, who will
always userify for a good faith editor).
I think it's more likely that of the 20, not 1, but 10 could be
rescued--and some have already been, in some cases by merging. Of the
contested afds, I think that's probably the proportion. since we keep
fewer than half of the contested ones, we are losing the potential for
50 articles a day, 18,000 a year.
I do not consider that trivial. The deletion of improvable articles
because the small number of participants at AfD who are interested
and willing to rescue them is one of the reasons for people losing the
interest in Wikipedia. Who after all actually wants to come to
articles for deletion, but those who want to delete articles.
Fixing an article involves a lot more work than deleting it. The firemen
who would do that are further discouraged by the crowd that is hurling
rocks from the rooftop.
An editor may very well have the reference material at his fingertips,
but it could take him a long time at solid work to bring the article
into shape. On top of that he will likely also need to spend time
defending his resuscitation of the article. The ones who are really able
to do this are quickly discouraged by a confrontational atmosphere.
Rampant deletion makes Wikipedia less reliable because it leaves capable
people unwilling to make needed corrections because they want top avaid
fights.
Ec