BJörn Lindqvist wrote:
If people refused to AfD anything they didn't know anything about (who can really say they know anything about my local garage band?), we would be deleting a lot less crap, if less good articles. It's all a question of trading off false positives for false negatives. I have rarely seen
It used to be that way. It was always considered better to keep a crappy article than to delete a good one. The deletion policy used to read "In case of doubt *don't delete*"
AFAIK it still does. It doesn't say "In case of doubt don't nominate for deletion".
an ignorance-based debate that didn't end up getting closed as a keep, or being overturned by DRV.
So you admit the existance of ignorance-based debates on AFD? :) Sounds like a good reason to get rid of the whole thing. The ignorance is time-consuming, even for those who do not wish to get involved in the ignorance debates.
Wikipedia is full of editors generally ignorant in anything other than a few fields. Any decision involving community input would necessarily involve a lot of ignorance. If you can find something that cuts out community input with creating excessive elitism, or permits community input but avoids ignorance, feel free to put forth a proposal. Until then, I'll presume that this is the best we can do. A wiki is about letting people make mistakes (whether by fucking up an edit or fucking up a deletion nom), in the knowledge that others will correct them later on.
John