On Sep 7, 2005, at 11:37 AM, Fastfission wrote:
I think it is worth reiterating that it is the job of the *article content* to establish notability, not the job of the voters. In an ideal VfD world, one would blame the articles for how they were voted, not the voters.
In this case, VfD was actually a positive process in article improvement -- something not too uncommon, I think, and an aspect of VfD which has been somewhat underemphasized in the calls for deletion reform.
In fact, I personally think this is the *only* way to call attention to such questionable articles. As I've pointed out on Talk pages, there is a backlog of something like 30-50,000 articles tagged for {{cleanup}}. Simply tagging something questionable for {{cleanup-importance}} only adds to the hidden pile. If an article may not be important enough, putting it up on AFD brings it to the attention of hundreds of Wikipedians - "Hey, look, there's this article I can't make heads or tails of and it may not be encyclopedic. What do y'all think?"
Is this is the *best* way to do that? Probably not. But as long as the {{cleanup}} process is hopelessly broken, AFD is the only effective means of getting a questionable article in the limelight.
-FCYTravis
Travis Mason-Bushman Public Relations Director GAINSCO/Blackhawk Racing travis@gpsports-eng.com