On 5/8/06, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
- Delete, subject is not appropriate for an encyclopedia.
- Keep, subject _is_ appropriate for an encyclopedia.
which is about as subjective a standard as you can get. We can certainly appoint someone to judge the relative arguments and decree an outcome, but the question is fundamentally one of differing perceptions of what Wikipedia should strive to be, not one of simply applying existing policy.
Perhaps it should be more "subject is not appropriate for *this* encyclopaedia *at this time*". There may come a time when Wikipedia has 40,000,000 articles, including in depth articles on tens of thousands of garage bands. At such a time, it may be appropriate to include them.
Just another thought - could we consider forcing an AfD to be a fact-finding mission about a single question? That is, the nominator asserts that the subject is not notable. The comments should all be about the notability of the subject - if a cogent argument can be made that the subject is notable, then it should be kept. Remarks about verifiability, spelling etc would then be kept out of that discussion.
Steve