I was looking on http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3APolicies_and_guidelines for something along the lines of "don't create a new page for EVERY tiny little thing".
couldn't find it.
so here's a suggestion in the shape of a story
I recently found the following mini-web of pages: * roadrunner -- a list of the different meanings, including the cartoon character * Acme -- a multi-stub: several meanings, 2 paragraphs or so for each, including a section on the Acme in the cartoons * Wile E Coyote -- the cartoon character
Being bold, I turned took all the stuff on the cartoons and made "Road Runner cartoon". It's a non-stub made out of stubs. It's not bad as an article, and has potential to grow. Then someone came along and made "Wile E Coyote" and "Acme" back into links.
There's a similar situation over at Winnie-the-pooh -- a dozen stubs for each of the characters, saying, basically: "X is a character in Winnie-the-pooh". This information would be of greater use to the reader on a a single "Winnie-the-pooh" page, say with a header == characters ==.
I'm not sure this can be cleanly stated as some sort of policy without resorting to fluffy cartoon animals. It's a little fuzzy just when to apply this sort of merging and when not to. With the RR articles, there was so much overlap between them.
plus I worry that the list of guidelines is too long already.
erm. there's probably a point to be distilled out of the above ;)