[WikiEN-l] Deletionism fails to serve the readers

[K P]

On 6/6/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On  0, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> scribbled:
> > 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
>
> 1) I didn't see anything - the H.P. Lovecraft was literally more comprehensive than any non-copyvio stuff. (Besides, wouldn't the non-copyvio stuff be tainted as a derivative work?)
> 2) I don't know anyone who works on pulp fiction. I know of a Fiction WikiProject, but that's about it.
> 3) As a blank page or sub-stub at best, I guess. Doesn't sound appealing.
>
> --
> Gwern
> Inquiring minds want to know.
>

I see lots of ways around this, like popping a sentence in the
article, or asking the Lovecraft editors to look it over, or a dozen
other things that would have taken less collective Wikipedia work than
an AfD.

Another problem, imo, is that there ARE deletionists.  That's why SCA
and Rock climbing get nominated in the first place, and many other
credible topics, simply because some editors are looking for something
to delete.  Then we get nominations like
idon'tknowanythingaboutitsoitcan'tbenotable..

There is seldom a single nomination among the ones I look at that is
compliant with AfD procedures--they're nominated for the wrong
reasons, they're nominated by people who don't know anything about the
topic, they're nominated because they're stubs (stubs aren't
disallowed on Wikipedia), they're nominated because the nominator
thinks it might not be notalbe (it is Articles  For Deletion).

It is frustrating, and it's degenerating and getting worse.

KP