[WikiEN-l] Soft deletion redux

[John Vandenberg]

On 5/4/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> When not to soft-delete: "Biographies of living people" is something I don't
> agree with.
> Unless the article is defamatory (which is an obvious problem case), these
> are the articles that would primarily benefit from soft-deletion.
> A lot of people forget to provide evidence a person is notable and quite
> often adding one or two sentences with a source can solve this.
> I would include "bio articles that are clearly notable based on a Google
> search, but don't show it in the article." as candidates for soft-deletion
> if they don't survive with a keep result. Unless a bio can be proven to be
> self-promotional or not notable at all, there's no advantage in not using
> this system.

This will dovetail nicely with the stable versions enhancement that we
hear is just around the corner.  The soft delete would of course be
marked stable, and an experienced editor would need to review the
progress before it goes "live" again.

I dont like the idea of a soft delete redirecting to the deletion
discussion, as it is oft full of more libel than the article would
have been.  Lots of juicy words for spiders to latch onto and give in
sound bite format on search results ("the cause of 'so and so' ...
prompts thoughts of hidden agendas, impure motives and dirty dealings"
instead of an flowery bio [http://tinyurl.com/yogv7d]).  If all Afd's
links were nofollow, then there wouldn't be a problem.

--
John