[WikiEN-l] deletionism in popular culture

[Charles Matthews]

Ryan Delaney wrote:
>
>  I'm still not seeing the connection, but I'll try one last time. It 
> sounds like you're saying that discussion of deletion process 
> distracts us from working on building new, better articles on topics 
> that we already have, and that we shouldn't worry too much about 
> deleted content because it probably wasn't any good anyway. I think 
> there's some logic in this, but it's still the case that (a) sometimes 
> we ought to take a step back and consider process from a birds-eye 
> view, or else it will develop chaotically as a massive cancerous 
> collection of short-term responses to short-term problems and (b) 
> there is no drawback to pure wiki deletion that we don't already 
> suffer from the existing system, and it has several considerable 
> advantages over the status quo.
I wasn't saying we shouldn't discuss deletion process: I think in fact 
we should probably look at why PROD is underused. I think that having 
the deleted articles off the site (unless you're an admin) does make 
people not spend time looking at deleted material that has an intriguing 
title but isn't worth reading, an activity that would probably involve a 
great deal of duplicated effort. I simply disagree with (b) - it seems 
like a proponent's view, and the history of the relevant project page 
seems to indicate that most people lost interest in 2006 (when BLP began 
to loom).
>
> If you agree with B (and you ought to), then you ought to think that 
> pure wiki deletion is a good idea. Maybe you don't think it's a good 
> enough idea to invest the time and energy into getting it implemented 
> (A), but B is what's really important here-- if enough people 
> subscribe to B, it will find a way to get done.
>
Like I say, you seem to be arguing from a rather lonely perspective here.

Cha