lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
Yes. I'm assuming that is the rule about making things redirects instead, and keeping old pages in the database to avoid 404 errors
from search engine results. (new junk pages with no useful content
can be deleted safely). MANY deletions violate this rule.
I'm probably a major offender here, so I'd like to argue that perhaps the policy needs to be changed or clarified. First, articles that have no content or history should be deletable with less formality. What we want to prevent is the loss of content.
Secondly, Wikipedia is dynamic in nature, and I don't think we should play by the same rules as static websites in terms of keeping old links alive.
I've posted a suggestion that would help this. It's also at the foot of this page: http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_talk%3AWikipedia_policy_on_permanent...
see the "Suggestion for non-existing pages" section. It's already posted to SourceForge