On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Keith Old wrote:
Geoff,
I realise that voters of Articles for Deletion need to sensitive to peoples opinions when voting. Having said this, I would object rather strongly if an admin closed a vote in Articles for Deletion on the grounds that a voter referred to the subject as not being notable.
After all, one of the reasons for Speedy Deletion is that an article has not established notability of the subject. As well, the main reason for keeping an article is the belief that a user might find information on the subject useful. In other words, the topic of the article is notable within a certain field of study.
While I agree with your point, from my participation in AfD I've come to see that far too often "non-notable" is used in a vague sense, without any definition of what the submitter thinks the criteria for notability is. It's one thing, for example, to say that a web-based community is non-notable because it has a small number of members: then the article can be defended against deletion based on the membership size, or perhaps another point can be introduced to prove notability. (Say, in regards to my example, it is revealed that this web-based community has its origins in the first BBS in Latvia.) It's another to just say "Non-notable website" with no further explanation. Even if a subject _is_ non-notable, the contributor would benefit from learning why that is the case.
As for cruft, I never use the word myself as one man's cruft is another man's interest. Having said this, I don't think an admin should close a vote on such a trivial ground and I would support it being relisted as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, "cruft" does get used (or abused) a lot on AfD, both alone & compounded with other words. (One combination that I still scratch my follically-challenged head over is "stalkercruft". I still have no idea what that might be, or how I would recognize "stalkercruft".)
My intent with this proposal is to force people to be less lazy in their nominations. I for one always treat every nomination I make as a case where I have to prove my case; & at the same time, try to remember that the discussion is about the article, not me or the contributor. It would be nice if more people did this. (Although the temptation to poke fun at an article I admit sometimes is too powerful to resist.)
I think that we will always need an Articles of Deletion process and I think that this system works as well as any could. It should aim to encourage as much participation as possible so should be open to all users.
Agreed. I did not intend to say anything to the contrary.
Geoff
P.S. I'd say more, but I'm about to leave for a 4-day trip away from home & Wikipedia. I leave the discussion to everyone else's capable hands.