[WikiEN-l] Ignoring AfD results / Redirection and deletion

[Steve Bennett]

On 8/15/06, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Stories about AfDs failing (for no consensus) because votes are evenly
> split between "redirect" and "delete" are absurd, because all of the
> voters clearly do not want the article to continue to exist in its
> present form.
>
> Surely the opposite can also be said of a "keep" consensus AfD: most
> of the voters plainly want the article to continue to exist as an
> article, not as a redirect and not deleted.

I've raised this issue several times: No one has really decided what
"keeping" or "deleting" means. Are we talking about content, or
entries in the article name space? Every time I merge two articles,
have I actually deleted an article out of process? Is there any
difference between deleting an article (but moving its content to
another article and setting up a redirect) and merging two articles?

One day we will learn to distinguish between the two fundamentally
different concepts:

*Banning an article topic: deciding that we do not, for the
foreseeable future, want a top-level article about a certain topic -
usually because it's too obscure or inherently unencyclopaedic or even
POV
*Removing content: Taking out chunks of text from an article, usually
because it's too crufty, unverifiable, or massively violates one of
our policies.

The first case is fairly rare, but does need some sort of formal
policy to decide if the topic - regardless of what's currently been
written about it - should exist in Wikipedia. Norman Technologies
might be a good example - we just decide if that company is "notable",
and if it's not, then we definitely never (for a short term definition
of never, like a year) want an article on it - regardless of the
current content.

The second case happens all the time and *does not* need a formal
process. It simply needs a couple of clueful people to show up, say
"this stuff shouldn't be here" and to move it to the talk page so
people can work out what to do with it, if anything.

The case of merging/replacing with redirects is similar: a few people
discuss and merge the two articles if consensus agrees that a separate
article is unjustified.

Until we collectively agree on this kind of reasoning, stupid AfDs
will keep happening. Frequently.

Steve