I'm not Rebecca, but please allow me to try addressing some of your queries...
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Rebecca wrote:
The very essence of what makes Wikipedia work is consensus.
Fine! Then why are we bothering with votes?
I don't understand. Voting gauges whether there is a consensus or not.
People have put things on VFD before that I've agreed with. I've argued a case that they shouldn't be deleted, and it's very rare that such an article has then gone ahead and be deleted. If you put up an argument, and the majority *still* think that it should be deleted, then tough. That's the way it works.
Maybe that's the way you wan't it to work. Why should I need to put together an argument about something that I know nothing about just to try to convince someone who knows even less about the subject that it's worth keeping?
You don't need to. You can research it on Google, or let somebody else handle it. If nobody does, perhaps that's an indication the article's not notable enough to be encyclopedic. The audience on VfD is large enough for somebody to respond sooner or later, despite your argument that the majority of the community doesn't visit it.
VFD *is* growing too large to be maintainable, but that's a result of our continued growth, rather than some evil plan by the deletionists to go on an annihilating spree. A solution to that needs to be found, and I'm not sure what, but allowing junk to remain in the pedia is not the answer.
Much of this so-called "junk" is perfectly harmless. General growth is only part of the reason. Nobody is suggesting that the deletionists are even capable of concocting an evil plan. I find them more like a Dr. Strangelove who will struggle for survival even if it kills him. The delusional missions of zealots are always pursued with the best of intentions ... a phalanx of perfectionists in chasing the impossible. Many of the disputed articles are stubs, and even in their totality will likely take less space on the server than the verbiage about whether to delete them.
Stubs yes, but their notability and/or verifiability is another. What will people think of how trustworthy our information is if we permit rubbish such as a biased advertisement for a discussion forum to languish on Wikipedia?
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])