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Ray Saintonge wrote:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
<snip>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Lingnan_Primary...
near the bottom, the portion that begins:
<snip>
...and the subsequent discussion, and this _very interesting_ comment:
"I am using the criteria all of us should use: the principles central to writing encyclopedic articles on WP. Pages which violate those policies should be removed, whether they've been on WP for 3 weeks or 3 years, whether they pertain to the United States or to sub-Saharan Africa. Likewise, pages that are written in accordance with such principles should be kept, no matter how obscure or unknown to WPns at large."
<snip>
My first impression of the last quoted paragraph is that it's tautological. Then by being referenced there it confuses standards with the application of standards. The time and place references in the paragraph are redundant since the princilples would be equally applicable without them. The paragraph could be summarized in, "If it's a good page keep it; if it's a bad page delete it." Who would argue against that?
Well, it's not that far from what I've been saying. If the article contains useful information that could be merged into a better article, merge it. If the article could be transwikied to solve problems with WP:NOR or WP:NOT, transwiki it. If the article is a copyvio or CSD, delete it. Other than that, if it's informative, neutral, contains references, and is suitable for any other encyclopedia, keep it.
The underlying assumption is that the article proposed for deletion is a bad one, and since everybody knows that it's guilty why bother with a trial?" Let's proceed directly to the execution. I'm sorry but the rest of us are not so brilliant as to understand this swift logic, we still need to be shown why it's a bad unencyclopedic article.
Well, it's because it's listed at a page called "Articles for Deletion", isn't it!
Time to rename AfD. AGAIN.
When it was called "Votes for Deletion", people thought it was some kind of contest. Editcountitis crept into it and people would vote for the sake of voting. Extreme Article Deletion crept into it too. People would say "Damn! Pokemon is in! Better get rid of schools, bands, roads and all those Rambot stubs to make up for it! Double bonus points for deleting whole countries nobody's heard of!"
The question is: What is The Bit of Wikipedia Formerly Known as AfD designed to do? Is it to get articles that you don't like deleted? Or is it to seperate the chaff from the grain?
Hrm.... "Wikipedia:Article Threshing". I like it :)
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