At 02:47 PM 23/09/02 -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
I wrote in very first part:
Here is my idea:
And I seem to be at least the 3rd to suggest it. But I receive the messages in digest form, and I'd thought of it a couple of weeks ago anyway, so I don't feel bad about claiming it for my own.
Heh. I've suggested it at least twice myself, over the many months I've been here. :)
Personally, I fall into the "delete pitiful stubs" camp; if there's no useful content in an article then a great way to represent that fact is for there to be no article there. Nothing of significant value is lost, an unambiguous signal for new content is gained, and Wikipedia looks a lot "nicer" for the casual browser.
Keeping deleted pages in an easily-retrievable form would make me feel a lot more comfortable doing this sort of thing. I largely quit deleting stuff after I ran out of 0-length articles and other obvious garbage to clear-cut many months back.