[WikiEN-l] Partial solution to rampant deletionism

[Rick]

I don't understand why it's necessary to attack anyone who disagrees with you by saying that their arguments are straw men.  By doing so, you belittle the other person and make any attempt at conciliation impossible.
 
These are NOT straw men.  These are items which are currently on VfD, which it has been proposed, should not be deleted, under any circumstances.
 
RickK

Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
Rick wrote:
>Please tell me how to improve [[Tsesungunille]], an article about a
>place that the original author made up.

This one fails the 'confirmability' test anyway, so it isn't a good
example.

>Or [[Old Granny Sweat Weed ]] ... Or [[Disappearing hoagies]] ... Or
>[[Abek]] ... Or [[The mode of production of free software ]],

As far as I can tell, these all fail the 'confirmability' test, and so
they aren't at issue in the current discussion.

Remember, the debate is primarily between two factions (though of
course there are surely many subtle positions within these two
factions). And neither faction is saying that nothing can ever ever
ever be deleted no matter what.

Confirmability is an important safeguard accepted by most or all
completionists. Hand-entry (as opposed to mass import) is an
important safeguard accepted by most or all completionists.

Straw man examples don't really help us to clarify the discussion.

Q. "Should I mass-import 20,000,000 census entries then?"
A. "Mass-importing is a different issue, which short circuits an important
safeguard against trivia"

Q. "What about things that aren't confirmable at all?"
A. "Delete them. That's not what we're talking about."

Now, I think that *even after* we remove those two categories from the
discussion, we *still* have legitimate arguments on both side. I'm
firmly in the completionist camp rather than deletionist camp, but I
do accept that other views _which don't engage in straw man argument_
have some good points that we should consider.

--Jimbo

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