[Wikipedia-l] Sysop status

[lcrocker at nupedia.com]

>Yes.  I'm assuming that is the rule about making things redirects 
>instead, and keeping old pages in the database to avoid 404 errors 
>from search engine results.  (new junk pages with no useful content 
>can be deleted safely).  MANY deletions violate this rule.

I'm probably a major offender here, so I'd like to argue that perhaps 
the policy needs to be changed or clarified.  First, articles that 
have no content or history should be deletable with less formality.  
What we want to prevent is the loss of content.

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.

And finally, anything outside encyclopedia namespace should be more 
freely deletable as well.  Anyone who links to a talk page deserves 
what he gets.