Deleting poorly sourced articles that cannot be improved is not a bad idea. Enshrining the idea that we must do so on the level of policy, however, is a terrible idea.
Why? It is something we must do. I guess the difference is that people like you think it's just "not a bad idea" and a necessary evil. I think it improves the encyclopedia. Seeing crap stubs that have sat uncited and untouched for years go down the tube is a relief. I don't have to worry about some newspaperman latching on to them or little billy getting an F over them.
On Feb 1, 2008 4:03 PM, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 1, 2008, at 6:39 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
Get over it. Nobility has been being used as (effective) policy for many months, if not years.
It's been used. I've yet to see any evidence of its effectiveness, and particularly no evidence that it is meaningfully superior to a general policy of deleting based on qualitative rather than quantitative judgments.
Of course deleting any article is going to get emotional, people are invested in article's they write. But that level of emotion doesn't negate the fact that we just simply can't include every possible topic under the sun and still produce an accurate and reliable encyclopedia. Space is not the issue, quality is. The breadth has to stop somewhere, so we can get to depth.
Anybody who claims that the deploying of notability on AfD has a thing to do with assessing the quality of articles is lying to you.
And the WP:V addition is a fabulous idea. I've always operated that way, and it is (to me) the core reason we need notability: we can't be accurate on a subject if there aren't reliable sources available. If accuracy is literally impossible, then we shouldn't have an article on it.
Deleting poorly sourced articles that cannot be improved is not a bad idea. Enshrining the idea that we must do so on the level of policy, however, is a terrible idea.
-Phil
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