On 5/5/06, BJörn Lindqvist bjourne@gmail.com wrote:
The more decentralized, the less people involved, the more easy it is to form consensuses. So if there is a consensus among the group of Wikipedians working on Star Trek articles that "Tribble Rebellion of 2280" should be kept, then that is what should be done. I think it is perfectly clear that those who work in the topic area knows best what articles belong in it.
Following this principle, probably all content on Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki edited by Star Trek experts, would be acceptable on Wikipedia. This is, however, currently not the case. For instance, Memory Alpha has individual articles about Star Trek DVDs which would probably be merged or deleted on WP.
My belief is simply that Star Trek experts are often Star Trek fans, and Star Trek fans will not like to delete content that is verifiable and sourced only because it is not "notable" enough. Essentially, the criterion of notability strikes me as difficult to sustain under such conditions -- _unless_, instead of talking about Star Trek experts, we're talking about television experts, or entertainment experts. Then you have more diversity (and a certain healthy amount of animosity).
Splitting AfD into _broad_ topical categories might be a viable approach to achieve consensus more frequently without significantly altering the balance of inclusion vs. deletion. Then again, if we could do Boolean category intersections, we could simply offer diferent views on AfD. I think there's a toolserver tool for that already, isn't there?
No matter how we organize, I am of course opposed to excluding people from any AfD page because they are not "experts". Any reorganization should merely be aimed at improving the "social flow".
Erik