[Foundation-l] Talk pages Considered Harmful (for references)

[David Richfield]

This article starts as a complaint about external links being moved to
talk pages and never making it back to the main page, and then becomes
a rant against deletionism.

About external links, the real question is: what is a good number of
links to have at the end of an article?  Everyone will surely agree
that an article with 100 external links at the end is not ideal.  What
people want from Wikipedia is a site where others have sifted through
the chaff to present the most relevant information.  What article
needs more than about 5 to 10 external links to cover the issues that
haven't been addressed in the inline citations and the text?

As for deletionism, I understand that it's a serious issue, but for a
quick and dirty random sample, let's take a look at the last 20 closed
deletion discussions:

Deleted:
* Bill Batstone  - non-notable musician
* Stefan Duncan - non-notable visual artist
* Jason Gagliardi - non-notable author
* Bosnianism - supposedly original research.  I know nothing about the
topic, but it sounds dubious at best.
* Anton Strastev - No "keep" opinions - "Poorly written page on
non-notable person."
* Hoarding (Psychology of) - duplicates info in "Compulsive hoarding",
not notable on its own.
* Jamie Hanley - failed political candidate who didn't achieve public
office, not notable in any other sense.
* Esh (Unix) - non-notable minor unix shell.
* Hannibal Reitano - socialite journalist
* Byron Rakitzis - programmer, musician, student, one-time winner of
Obfuscated C contest.
* Trent Evans - "A person whose only claim of notability is that he
put a coin under the ice before a hockey game. "
* Reading My Eyes - A song which never charted.
* Jorge Castro (actor) - A Puerto Rican Theatre actor.  Doesn't have
an article on es.wikipedia.
* BRINK (magazine) - No comments in support of keeping the article,
apparently fails notability criteria.

Kept:
* Yaesu FT-1000MP - discontinued amateur radio receiver: no consensus
for deletion.

Merged / Redirected:
* Martin County Sheriff's Office - redirected toMartin County, Kentucky
* Ladies Masters at Moss Creek - wrong name, relisted at "redirects
for discussion"
* No More Sorrow (Linkin Park) - Song was never released to radio:
redirected to album article.
* Animals on the Underground - Merged to "Tube Map"
* List of historically significant Michigan Wolverines football games
- Merged to Michigan Wolverines football.

I think this is an example of a working immune system.  Which of the
deleted articles do you think we needed to preserve on Wikipedia, as
opposed to someone's blog?

-- 
David Richfield
e^(πi)+1=0