[WikiEN-l] Deletionism fails to serve the readers

[K P]

On 6/6/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On  0, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> scribbled:
> > http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=3803
> >
> > - d.
>
> "And then, while I was at it, I re-created another entry recently deleted for not being notable enough — that of Sonia Greene, a pulp fiction writer and publisher of the 1920s who was briefly married to H.P. Lovecraft. Of all the insulting things to have happen, her entry had been erased, and people searching for her were redirected to an entry on Lovecraft. How's that for you, future scholars? Looking for information about a minor pulp fiction writer? Too bad she's not notable — but we can redirect you to an entry on a guy she was married to for two years. (A guy, I might add, who pissed her off so much that she burned all his letters when they divorced.) Yuck."
>
> Dammit, I *hate* it when people mis-characterize the [[Sonia Greene]] thing. Like I told the Wired guy as well, Valrith didn't blank and redirect to H. P. Lovecraft because Sonia wasn't notable, he did it because the entire article was a tissue of multiple copyvios and there wasn't any material to be preserved or anything else that could be done (neither he nor I were Greene experts).
>
> --
> Gwern
> Inquiring minds want to know.
>

This is quite common on AfD, though, that articles are deleted because
they are too short or stubs.  Truthfully, I doubt there are many other
editors who are deleting stuff to make sure they are too short then
nominating them for deletion, but there are organism and botany
articles that I have written or watch that are a single line of text.
Was there really no material to preserve after the copy vios were
deleted?  Could folks who edit pulp fiction have been asked?  Could it
have been left alone after the copy vios were deleted if you simply
didn't know enough about the topic?

KP