On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 4:59 PM, [[User:Thinboy00]] thinboy00+wikipedialist@gmail.com wrote:
If an "article" (a stub) is two sentences long, it makes more sense to group it with related information. That way, we (as a community) don't need to maintain an increased number of articles (yes, they still exist, they still take up space, but we don't need to protect them from vandalism etc., we don't need to update them as e.g. external links change, and a lot more), and the reader gets to read more than a few sentences. We presume that by entering a topic, they wanted information about it (or they wanted to edit it, but at least /some/ will want to read). Ergo, if there's only a few sentences on it available, they will (probably) want related/more information/external links, which a list provides.
This is, generally, the essence of the argument for merging, and I find it completely without merit. I have on more than one occasion found myself on one of these megamerged pages, and each time I would have preferred a two sentence stub which linked to the list page. Either way all I'm really getting is two sentences of useful information, but at least with the stub my browser loads quicker and I don't have to search for those two sentences. You say "the reader gets to read more than a few sentences", but if the rest of those sentences are about something other than what I'm searching for, that's not a positive thing.
I don't buy that it's easier to maintain these megamerged pages. If anything I would think it would be easier to hide vandalism among the more frequently edited megapage - plus external links still need to be maintained, what links here stops working, categories don't work, editing is harder, etc. Would it be easier to maintain [[Arthuriana]], [[Crustaceana]], and [[Infection and Immunity]] if we merged them together into [[List of minor scientific journals]]?