[WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

[Bryan Derksen]

Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 10/3/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>My point is that far too often, it's not "someone else" doing the
>>writing. Hence the use of the word vanity.
>>    
>>
>
>If this is true in general of non-notability deletion listings of articles
>about comics, bands, schools and whatnot, it's news to me. Are you
>absolutely *sure* that non-notability deletions on Wikipedia are usually
>simply because the person writing the article is not a third party but is
>someone associated with their production, operation or distribution? Because
>that's what you seem to be saying.
>
>  
>
Even if there was a notability requirement there'd still be a lot of 
this arguing going on. I don't get involved in VfDs often, usually only 
when an article I've got watchlisted gets nominated, but one I'm 
currently arguing is a good counterexample; the article about the guy in 
the US National Guard who changed his name to Optimus Prime. The only 
reason that's been put forward for deleting his article is that he isn't 
notable aside from his unusual name. Well, why can't having an unusual 
name be notable? I certainly consider it notable enough to have had the 
thing watchlisted for over a year now.

Anyway, I actually think that the current policy is a great approach, if 
people would just pay attention to what was already there. In my poking 
around with the policies in arguing this case I noticed that not only is 
"non-notability" not a criteria for deletion, but it's explicitly listed 
in the policy as something that shouldn't be dealt with by VfD. Under 
the title "*Problems that don't require deletion*" is the entry:

Problem:
Such a minor branch of a subject that it doesn't deserve an article
Solution:
Merge he useful content into a more comprehensive article and redirect

So really, most of these "non-notability" issues shouldn't ever be 
brought to VfD in the first place - just merge them into main articles, 
like that traffic circle case from a few days back, and let the wiki 
process determine whether the merge was adequate or not. If peoples' 
beef is really with the _information_ being in Wikipedia, that's also 
something that can be sorted out via the wiki process - articles get 
trimmed and streamlined and split into sub-articles all the time without 
going through a voting process.