On 7/15/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Is it technically feasible to have a bot that records the time of the most recent edit of an article, and shows that time on the AfD page? Every new edit would then reset the clock before the article could be deleted.
It may be worth considering that there are two general classes of articles which we often delete:
1. Subjects which might be worth writing about, but not the way the current article does so. A recent example I remember was the article [[Rendering water]]. (The article explained that rendering CGI water was "difficult", but said very little beyond that.) Allowing cleanup during AfD for these articles would often be helpful.
2. Subjects which should not have articles written about them, period. Many lists fall under this category (such as one that's currently up for AfD: [[List of movies broadcast by Nickelodeon]]), as well as a number of high-profile articles like [[Brian Peppers]]. No amount of cleanup will make such an article necessary or appropriate.
Allowing AfD to distinguish better between these two classes might be of value. Currently, the closest we get to making a distinction is occasional closes "without prejudice against a [sourced/verifiable/comprehensible] article".