This topic has come up countless times in the 3 years I've been contributing to Wikipedia. Everyone wants some sort of policy which will automagically result in more great articles, but no one wants to do any heavy lifting.
* When we had trouble with poor spelling, someone wanted to deploy spell-check software. But we soon realized that wouldn't work, because of pairs like THEIR and THERE which require artificial intelligence -- which is STILL too unreliable for this.
There is no substitute for good writing. Nothing else will improve a bad article but good writing. Deleting stubs will not *cause* a good replacement article to appear. Votes to determine "consensus" use up 3 to 10 times as much energy as it actually takes to fix a marginal article.
About once a month, someone will VfD an article I've written. A power struggle then ensues. In nearly every case, the outcome is that I improve the article so much that it is not even CLOSE to the originally-listed VfD item -- and the article "survives".
I'd rather people would contact me on my talk page and complain about my poor writing than launch a campaign to condemn my work. Struggling against condemnation is dreary and often discouraging.
My thanks go out to all those who have dropped me a line, saying, "Did you know that the 200-word article you just wrote is on VfD, and the vote is 7-1 for deletion?"
To sum up: I think VfD is a waste of time, and I prefer not to participate in these votes. If an article is VfD'ed, and I think the topic is important enough, I'll just revise it and remove the 'notice' (with a comment in the edit summary or on the talk page explaining my improvements).
Ed Poor, aka "Uncle Ed" Stubborn Pioneer of Excellence in Writing
I could not agree more. I would like to limit vfd to only things that pose a real liability, like slander, copyvios etc, not simply articles that need improvement. It is a complete waste of everyone's time to have people listing articles that they don't think are good enough for deletion simply to try to provoke. Mark
--- "Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
This topic has come up countless times in the 3 years I've been contributing to Wikipedia. Everyone wants some sort of policy which will automagically result in more great articles, but no one wants to do any heavy lifting.
- When we had trouble with poor spelling, someone
wanted to deploy spell-check software. But we soon realized that wouldn't work, because of pairs like THEIR and THERE which require artificial intelligence -- which is STILL too unreliable for this.
There is no substitute for good writing. Nothing else will improve a bad article but good writing. Deleting stubs will not *cause* a good replacement article to appear. Votes to determine "consensus" use up 3 to 10 times as much energy as it actually takes to fix a marginal article.
About once a month, someone will VfD an article I've written. A power struggle then ensues. In nearly every case, the outcome is that I improve the article so much that it is not even CLOSE to the originally-listed VfD item -- and the article "survives".
I'd rather people would contact me on my talk page and complain about my poor writing than launch a campaign to condemn my work. Struggling against condemnation is dreary and often discouraging.
My thanks go out to all those who have dropped me a line, saying, "Did you know that the 200-word article you just wrote is on VfD, and the vote is 7-1 for deletion?"
To sum up: I think VfD is a waste of time, and I prefer not to participate in these votes. If an article is VfD'ed, and I think the topic is important enough, I'll just revise it and remove the 'notice' (with a comment in the edit summary or on the talk page explaining my improvements).
Ed Poor, aka "Uncle Ed" Stubborn Pioneer of Excellence in Writing _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Which is ABSOLUTELY against policy.
RickK
"Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote: To sum up: I think VfD is a waste of time, and I prefer not to participate in these votes. If an article is VfD'ed, and I think the topic is important enough, I'll just revise it and remove the 'notice' (with a comment in the edit summary or on the talk page explaining my improvements).
Ed Poor, aka "Uncle Ed" Stubborn Pioneer of Excellence in Writing _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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So is deleting things simply because you think they are 'not notbale'. Mark
--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Which is ABSOLUTELY against policy.
RickK
"Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote: To sum up: I think VfD is a waste of time, and I prefer not to participate in these votes. If an article is VfD'ed, and I think the topic is important enough, I'll just revise it and remove the 'notice' (with a comment in the edit summary or on the talk page explaining my improvements).
Ed Poor, aka "Uncle Ed" Stubborn Pioneer of Excellence in Writing _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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the only such things that get deleted are deleted after having gone through the due process of VfD.
I am sick and tired of people like you who bitch and complain about how "VfD is broken" and then don't become involved in the process, or just whine about it because they can't impose their will on the community. VfD is NOT broken. If you can't get enough people to vote the way you want things to be done, then it is clear that you are in the minority, and your position cannot prevail.
RickK
Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote: So is deleting things simply because you think they are 'not notbale'. Mark
--- Rick wrote:
Which is ABSOLUTELY against policy.
RickK
"Poor, Edmund W" wrote: To sum up: I think VfD is a waste of time, and I prefer not to participate in these votes. If an article is VfD'ed, and I think the topic is important enough, I'll just revise it and remove the 'notice' (with a comment in the edit summary or on the talk page explaining my improvements).
Ed Poor, aka "Uncle Ed" Stubborn Pioneer of Excellence in Writing _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Do you Yahoo!? vote.yahoo.com - Register online to vote today! _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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