[WikiEN-l] VfD is broken

[Ray Saintonge]

John Lee wrote:

> Eric B. and Rakim wrote:
>
>> 1. There is no reason to delete any of the pages there at all. 
>> Copyvios already has a special page. And there is also already 
>> candidates for speedy deletion and simple vandalism that is deleted 
>> on sight.
>
> Please provide examples. Speedy deletions are for contributions that 
> don't make sense. VfD is for those that do but aren't encyclopedic. 

And "encyclopedic" is a subjective judgement where the deletionist 
support a very narrow interpretation.

>
>> 4. Articles about "non-notable" stuff does not hurt Wikipedia. Since 
>> noone cares about the stuff, noone will link to it and noone will 
>> search for it and NOONE will ever see it!
>
> A keyword search can easily bring up non-notable articles. When 
> somebody sees an entry resembling a blog posting, what will they think 
> of Wikipedia? 

A person looking for "non-notable" articles can certainly find them, but 
casual visitors would not be the ones making such searches.  The "What 
will they think ...?" question is nothing but a scare tactic.  It is 
speculative and based on no evidence whatsoever.

>> 7. The Wikipedia concept is that anyone can edit a page and that only 
>> those who edits a page gets to determine what information goes into a 
>> page. Its like "do it yourself cause you can't tell anyone else what 
>> to do cause there is no way to force them to do it." Now that concept 
>> doesn't work with vfd cause someone can say "uuuh.. delete unless it 
>> is improved in a week.". That person basically forces those who care 
>> about the article to write what they know about it or it will be 
>> killed. It is not fair at all.
>
> Well, honestly, tell me, what is there to write about someone's smelly 
> socks? 

So what's the link to the smelly sock article, or is this just another 
straw man?

> If it's a notable article, it will be improved anyway. Are you 
> suggesting we tolerate garbage just because the garbage's topic is 
> something notable?

Nobody has suggested tolerating garbage.  You're just making that up so 
you can have something to argue against.

> Honestly, if I had to pick between deleting a (hypothetical) article 
> on Ronald Reagan which is full of unrelated nonsense about doing drugs 
> or keeping it in the hopes somebody would improve it, I'd do the 
> former without skipping a beat. Having an article only gives the 
> impression to readers that we tolerate junk. I'd rather receive 
> complaints from readers that we don't have an article on Ronald Reagan 
> than complaints that our article of Ronald Reagan is useless, which in 
> turn will lead to questioning the credibility of other innocent articles. 

Arguing about hypothetical articles is arguing about articles that don't 
exist.  You can go ahead and delete all the non-existing articles that 
you want.  If the Ronald Reagan article contained all your speculative 
nonsense it would be fixed, not deleted.  Why can't you treat the other 
articles in the same way?

> You are missing the whole point of VfD. The point is to ask a wide 
> audience - that "thousand people" - "Is this article worth keeping, or 
> do we move it elsewhere/delete it?". The point of VfD is consensus. 
> Placing the request on the Talk leads to a very very limited audience 
> - how many Wikipedians read Talk pages on a regular basis? And 
> unitarily moving it is even worse. 

What kind of wider audience?  One composed of people who know as little 
about the subject as you?  At least those who respond on the talk page 
will have some interest in the subject..  Consensus is hard work about 
finding a solution that will please most people.  A simple (or 
simplistic) delete or keep solution does not leave room for consensus.

Ec