[Wikipedia-l] Re: Why oh why resurrect nonarticles????

[Daniel Mayer]

On Wednesday 28 August 2002 04:06 am, Karen wrote:
> Gibberish is not an article. Blank pages are not an article. And
> nonsense phrases posted by a casual passerby are not an article. They
> just take up space that a real article could use. If it was a real
> article it would say something like 'Kate Hudson is (blah blah blah)'.
> Leaving this doesn't encourage the writer to make real contributions -
> if anything it encourages them to leave more nonsense to clutter up the
> space!

I totally agree - and thank you for making the distinction between and 
article and a mere page. 

A BLANK OR GIBBERISH PAGE IS NOT AN ARTICLE. So there isn't any reason why it 
shouldn't be voted for deletion if not deleted outright (of course, if it 
looks like a non-malicious newbie experiment we shouldn't be harsh when we 
delete the page -- at least say hi in the delete summary). 

Stubs on encyclopedia or almanac topics that have decent definitions /should 
not/ be deleted however -- these are the beginning of articles. So long as a 
subject is adequately defined (something I find to be a non-trivial task -- 
"a large city in Texas" DOES NOT cut it though), then passer-bys can 
incrementally build the definition into a proper stub and then into an 
article based on their incomplete knowledge of the subject.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)