[WikiEN-l] Deletionism fails to serve the readers

[Gwern Branwen]

On  0, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> scribbled:
> Gwern Branwen schreef:
> > On  0, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> scribbled:
> > > Could it
> > > have been left alone after the copy vios were deleted if you simply
> > > didn't know enough about the topic?
> >
> > 3) As a blank page or sub-stub at best, I guess. Doesn't sound appealing.
>
> Blank pages are easier to edit for new contributors, who might be
> knowledgeable about the subject, but not about wiki-formatting, than
> redirects. If you suspected that the person might be notable, but that
> the article was a copy-vio, a blank page would probably have been better.

That's possible. I suspect you may be overestimating the competency/boldness of new contributors - if they see a blank page, for what reason would they think "This is a blank page, and I should obviously write something in it" and not "Hmm. Can one *really* edit? How the heck does one edit anyway?", "Uh-oh. Looks like some vandalism or something special going on here. Better stay away since I don't understand what's going on and why there isn't a stub or *anything at all*, not even a nice stub template encouraging me to contribute.", or even "Huh. Looks like a bug." Forgive my skepticism, but my days on Helpdesk-l taught me not to demand or expect too much of new people.

> (On the other hand: since anonymous page creation was switched off,
> perhaps substubs are even more desirable.)
>
> If the copyvio did not suggest that it would be desirable to have a page
> on the subject, redirects are of course fine.
>
> Eugene
>
>

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.
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