[WikiEN-l] Is Merging Worse than Deletion?

[Delirium]

[[User:Thinboy00]] wrote:
> A merge often happens when
> there is /insufficient/ content.  If the content hints at
> nonnotability, it is usually deleted.  We should better encourage
> unmerging (is that a word...?), and create a /simple, easy to use/
> system/gui for doing so.  However, merging itself is not evil.  If an
> "article" (a stub) is two sentences long, it makes more sense to group
> it with related information.  That way, we (as a community) don't need
> to maintain an increased number of articles (yes, they still exist,
> they still take up space, but we don't need to protect them from
> vandalism etc., we don't need to update them as e.g. external links
> change, and a lot more), and the reader gets to read more than a few
> sentences.  We presume that by entering a topic, they wanted
> information about it (or they wanted to edit it, but at least /some/
> will want to read).  Ergo, if there's only a few sentences on it
> available, they will (probably) want related/more information/external
> links, which a list provides.

I'm not sure I really see the improvement though. If anything, these big 
list articles are much harder to organize, edit, and keep decent than 
smaller, focused articles are. As far as I can tell the main impetus for 
them is really a feeling that not-particularly-famous characters in some 
not-particularly-famous universe don't really "deserve" their own 
articles, and that merging them all into one somehow reduces clutter.

I'd guess that sort of embarrassment about articles on topics deemed not 
particularly noteworthy is why it comes up almost exclusively with 
fictional characters---you don't see anyone pushing to merge 500 minor 
Roman consuls into a big article like [[List of Roman Republic consuls 
about whom history has recorded no more than about 4 sentences worth of 
information]], or lots of very small towns in Minnesota into [[List of 
Minnesota towns with fewer than 100 people]]. They just each get their 
own, short article. This is more convenient for a number of reasons; for 
example, the Roman consuls who lived in the 3rd century BC can be 
conveniently found via [[Category:3rd century BC people]], which would 
be hard to do if they were all in a big list.

-Mark