Fred Bauder wrote:
Ok, Yes, Toby's suggestion that an article with a good title but no content should be deleted is good policy.
It seems like silly makework to me.
The article will be recreated again anytime anyone clicks on one of the links leading to it.
If it is a good title then it is an invitation for anyone who encounters it to add to it.
A poor title seems of no loss. However, unless it is replaced with a good title which it previous links are edited to point at, it seems likely that it will reoccur quickly.
Somebody had to code the initial link to the poor title to create the article in the first place. It seems to me that the only solid way to eliminate poor titles is track the links and recode them to a better title. If the new title is a new article then unless someone undertakes a research project it will likely be fairly empty or stubby for a while.
I think that having the Wikipedia Guard or Militia routinely deleting empty good titled articles may only slow down the growth in bread and depth of the Wikipedia. Some people may like organizing the link structures and establishing good initial titles and interconnections. Why should this contribution be routinely deleted? How much subsequent work is then lost from contributors who while browsing may choose to add an easy paragraph but who will not undertake an entire stub and the effort required to link it appropriately into an entire encyclopedia?
Some areas of the Wikipedia already feel pretty circular and concise. They have no sloppy or poor titles hanging out for random fortuitous contributions from readers. They have a concise complete feel to them that screams static encyclopedic overview with no place for further detail.
To summarize, I am unconvinced that routine pruning of good article titles is useful to attaining our goals of depth, breadth, and reliability. Rather, I think it may actually be harmful.
regards, Mike Irwin
P.S. It might be an interesting experiment to build a detailed maze of good article titles and stubs in some underdeveloped subject area of the Wikipedia and toy around with some twikification techniques. If a couple of regulars cooperated in an area of common interest it might convince newcomers that Wikipedia is truly alive with sufficient utilization to keep its content dynamic and growing. As it is I think the first multi Wikipedian contact in near realtime of many newcomers may often be in a negative atmosphere of panic and anger as the mailing list is attracted to some poor content locus for deletion sprees.
P.S.2 To address the issue of the most wanted list. Perhaps its code could be enhanced to provide a weighted list or set of lists. Thus two paragraph stubs referenced 26 times which have little or no outbound links would get some attention from people who prefer checking most wanted lists rather than subject browsing or random inspection for twikification efforts. Perhaps we could identify some syntax factors that make a good Wikipedia article such as (perhaps): length, median word size, median sentence length, average paragraph length, number of commas, number of inbound links, number of out bound links, editor rating, reader rating, etc. An advantage of this approach is that eventually various automated quality scanning tools could help people target material needing their particular gifts or interests.