Nathan wrote:
Your concerns are that you might click on a blue link
to a talkpage with no
discussion, right? I don't see a whole lot of merit to that, frankly, and I
think sometimes MZMcbride likes to bump up his deletion stats and find a use
for his scripts. I can't see any other good reason for deleting these pages
- it doesn't save any space, they're stored anyway. I'd rather have a
talkpage with some instructions and some format than nothing at all, through
my unscientific belief that a new editor is more likely to add to a page
that already exists than create one that doesn't.
It is indeed annoying to click on a blue link only to find that the only
thing on that page is a totally pointless and condescending template. I
would be much happier if there were a red link, or at least if the talk
page contained only templates instead of meaningful discussion the link
could remain red. Space is not a relevant factor for either side in
this discussion. You have been around long enough that you should not
need instructions about how to use a talk page. Talk pages have been
around since the beginning of Wikipedia. There is no reason to believe
that newbies have become stupider than ever, or that we need to talk
down at them in the manner of this template.
Ec
On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 10:36 PM, Charlotte Webb
wrote:
> There is a discussion on WP:AN about this [1] which has incidentally
> spilled over onto my talk page. No I'm not canvassing or asking
> anybody to comment there, but I'd just like some personal feedback, so
> I can at least figure out whether I've gone completely nuts or if the
> concerns I've raised have some degree of merit.
>
> [1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AN#Talkpage_deletion_question
>
> —C.W.
>