Lee Daniel Crocker (?) wrote:

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. Certainly in some cases it's warranted; if someone moves "James Earl Carter" to "Jimmy Carter", and the old one has been around for a long time (not just a few days), then it's reasonable to expect that there may be external links to it and there's no reason not to leave the redirect. But if it is, say, a misspelling, I'd rather just delete it. We are under no obligation to keep our mistakes around forever, and if someone links to it and finds it broken, we have done him a service by forcing him to correct it. Likewise, if someone creates a page and I think it needs a different title, if I catch that error within a day or two and move it, I'll just delete the old title. There's not point in cluttering the database with a redirect that's just a mistake, and hasn't been around long enough to accumulate links.

As a member of the Redirect Don't Delete Party, I've no inherent opposition to deleting pages that have only been around for a few days. It's these pages that have been here since February that bother me.

-- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia-l@math.ucr.edu