On 10/7/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Not if they're just offered without justification. You have to explain WHY you think they're notable or not notable, or you're just offering an unsupported conclusion.
I think this is a problem we'll always have with use of shorthand. Elsewhere on this mailing list today we've seen the action of informal community consensus during editing seriously mischaracterized by use of the shorthands "tag team" and "meat puppet".
The specific problem with the shorthand "not notable" is precisely that it doesn't give a single clue to the person reading it, what would constitute notability.
Also as noted earlier by a number of editors: the fact that a subject may not be notable isn't in itself a good reason for deleting the article. Nearly all AfDs for notability are prima facie merge candidates upon which nobody has as yet attempted a merge.
I wonder if we could agree to change policy to permit an administrator to "speedy redirect" a merge candidate and close an AfD where notability is the sole or principal reason given for deletion, or no reason is given. This would be a good way of ensuring that the possibility of merging articles was not unreasonably neglected. An article could always be renominated if good faith attempts to merge had failed.