[WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

[Lee Pilich]

At 08:02 06/11/2003 -0500, Cunc wrote:
>I haven't really edited on Wikipedia for a while, and I checked in
>because I wanted to add some content. But a quick perusal of my
>watchlist showed that the votes for deletion situation is ridiculous.
>
>The removal of any guidelines for inclusion on vfd (including the most
>important one: when in doubt, don't delete) is criminal.

They were removed in order to save space, I think - a shame, but the size 
of VfD really is ridiculous these days. They are linked to from VfD, and 
I'm pretty sure that people who delete pages are aware of them.

>So is the separation of guidelines for "regular" people and for
>administrators.

I agree that looks a bit odd. The idea, I think, is to have one page which 
details the deletion policy, and another page which explains to admins what 
they should actually do when deleting a page. It may well be better to 
merge them. If you feel strongly about it, well, you know what to do...

[snip a couple of bits i basically agree with]

>So is the obvious takeover of the VfD page by a horde of deletionists.
>Once upon a time one vote against deletion was enough to stop deletion.
>And that is all it should take.

But once upon a time, we didn't have people making pages like [[List of 
people with one arm called Michael]] (contents: "*[[Madonna]]") and then 
defending them to the hilt on VfD. Well, OK, I've made that example up, but 
comparable things do happen now more than they used to.

That said, I do agree that there is a general move towards deleting more, 
and that this is a bad thing.

[snip]

>Also, if a page has been around for a year or two and been seen by a
>bunch of eyeballs, there's probably a reason it's there, and it probably
>shouldn't be deleted.

I do agree with you that stuff is getting put on VfD that should really 
never be put there, but if you actually look at what *does* get deleted 
you'll probably find it's not *quite* as bad as it first seems. I think 
that the number of old pages that get deleted, for example, is very tiny.

Besides, if you don't like the way traffic is being handled through VfD, 
you should handle more of it yourself. Maybe that's what I'll start to do.

LP (Camembert)