On 5/18/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Yes. VFD is supposed to be an immune system, to keep out the *shit*. It's far too blunt a tool to try to use as a general quality-control system, which is why people get so very upset when articles that are NPOV and verifiable get nominated for VFD on grounds that are, per the deletion policy, spurious.
Why even NPOV?
We edit to fix POV text, why do we not rename to fix POV titles?
If I write about "A borgoula is a purple monster that eats little children", you could fix verifiability by finding a citation and changing it to "Gmaxwell claims a borgoula is" or "A borgoula exists in gmaxwells imagination"... Why not? If I published a book on it, we'd allow my fans to make articles about it.
When it comes down to it, if we only use the criteria of "verifiable and NPOV" we end up with the prohibition on original research as being the only real control on what can go into wikipedia after a little tidying up. This is amusing because the direction to avoid original research is often taken merely as advice and only used as a rule when there is conflict, which is good: Consider the case of articles on works of art or pieces of music; much of the time it is the not-directly-citable/barely-indirectly-citable opinions that make the articles worth reading at all.