I agree with Tony. Some of the categories within the deletion
policy, such as "no potential to become encyclopedic" or
"idiosyncratic non-topic" are quite generic, and while "What Wikipedia
is not" spells out further where consensus has been reached concerning
types of articles that are not "encyclopedic", etc, policy will never
exhaustively ennumerate all the categories of non-encyclopedic
articles that might be added to the encylopedia and which there will
be a consensus to delete.
It is a good thing that the policies include generic, umbrella,
grounds for deletion and that the precise significance of these is
decided on a case-by-case basis through consensus. For example, if I
add an article about Engine #1 of my local town's volunteer fire
department, it would be verifiable (etc), since the engine is
mentioned on the town's web site. One will not find in the deletion
policy, or in "What Wikipedia is not" that articles about specific
fire engines are ruled out. However, there would most likely be a
consensus that such an article would not be a suitable subject for an
encyclopedia article, and that it would at most merit a mention in the
article about the town. (Unless it was an unusually famous fire
engine for some reason.) It should not require consensus for an
amendment to the policies listing before the article can be listed on
VfD and consensus expressed to remove it.
On Sat, 5 Mar 2005 15:10:33 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport(a)bluebottle.com> wrote:
Matt Brown said:
I am much in favor of your suggestion that nominations at VfD that do
not reference a reason listed in the deletion policy should be removed
forthwith.
Doesn't seem too unreasonable. However I conceive of deletion policy as
being more than just the words in the policy document. In practise there
are occasions when there is consensus to delete but nobody can agree what
item of deletion policy applies. This isn't a mistake--people can
genuinely hold different opinions on whether a given item qualifies. I
see VfD, in this conception, as a kind of ad hoc court system. A beauty
contest, if you like. It's not ideal, but items that don't easily fit into
the written deletion policy are generally harder to get consensus to
delete, so it does work reasonably well most of the time.
I think the flexibility is good.
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