[Wikipedia-l] Sysop status

[Toby Bartels]

Lee Daniel Crocker (?) wrote:

>Secondly, Wikipedia is dynamic in nature, and I don't think we should 
>play by the same rules as static websites in terms of keeping old 
>links alive.  Certainly in some cases it's warranted; if someone 
>moves "James Earl Carter" to "Jimmy Carter", and the old one has been 
>around for a long time (not just a few days), then it's reasonable to 
>expect that there may be external links to it and there's no reason 
>not to leave the redirect.  But if it is, say, a misspelling, I'd 
>rather just delete it.  We are under no obligation to keep our 
>mistakes around forever, and if someone links to it and finds it 
>broken, we have done him a service by forcing him to correct it.
>Likewise, if someone creates a page and I think it needs a different 
>title, if I catch that error within a day or two and move it, I'll 
>just delete the old title.  There's not point in cluttering the 
>database with a redirect that's just a mistake, and hasn't been 
>around long enough to accumulate links.

As a member of the Redirect Don't Delete Party,
I've no inherent opposition to deleting pages
that have only been around for a few days.
It's these pages that have been here since February that bother me.


-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>