[Wikipedia-l] Page deletion policy

[Toby Bartels]

One of the guidelines on [[Wikipedia:Policy on permanent deletion of pages]]
(currently #6) says for the most part:

  Generally speaking, delete pages that simply will
  never become encyclopedia articles, e.g.,
  with titles that will never be misspellings,
  that represent completely idiosyncratic non-topics, etc.

I've interpreted this differently from most of the other guidelines,
in that it says to delete a page, while most say to *not* delete.
But others have interpreted it to say to *not* delete pages
that have titles that might become the titles of articles.
(For examples, see the listings that The Cunctator has removed
from [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]].)

I think that this needs to be straightened out,
and the language on the page may need to be clarified.
IMO, pages with no content but with reasonable titles
are the worst of all, when they are linked from other articles.
The reader wastes time following links to useless pages;
the writer doesn't write an article that might be sorely needed.
[[Special:Mostwanted]], in particular, becomes skewed.

What is the opinion of the list?


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