[Wikipedia-l] Deletion
Daniel Mayer
maveric149 at yahoo.com
Wed Sep 25 18:13:24 UTC 2002
On Wednesday 25 September 2002 08:24 am, Fred wrote:
> Yes [Andre] you make many deletions, as I see from the log,
> most of which are fully justified. I only found one or two deleted
> entries that seemed interesting to me. (Although some substantial
> topics I'm not aware of the significance of may be there). [[infant
mortality (computer)]], fascinating topic although it ought to be
> expanded to include all devices. [[Abermud]], the father of them
> all, although not the grandaddy, that was Adventure. I guess
> I want to see interesting topics remain, even if undeveloped.
Since many others think that undeveloped topics should remain edit links then
why don't write decent stubs for the topics that interest you yet are placed
in the deletion log?
> Since [the deletion log] is such a rich resource for good articles
> perhaps it might extend back beyond 3 weeks and include an
> easy way to recover the text, small though it may be.
>....
> A close case...the Bronx Zoo will be an article, but much more extensive
> than that.
In 90% of the cases, the entire text is placed in the deletion summary.
Simply copy this and start from there (or query the database and read the
history as Brion has suggested).
Although it would be a waste of time to copy "the zoo in the Bronx" since an
actual very short stub would look something like;
The '''Bronx Zoo''' is a world famous [[zoo]] in [[Bronx]] [[New York]]. It
opened on [[November 8]], [[1899]] with 22 exhibits and 843 [[animal]]s and
with the goal to "advance the study of [[zoology]], protect wildlife, and
educate the public.
==External link==
http://wcs.org/home/zoos/bronxzoo/
Now that is a decent definition and could serve as the foundation of an
actual article. "the zoo in the Bronx" is useless crap and if I saw that
amongst 20 other similarly useless microstubs I would probably have deleted
it rather than spend a few minutes creating a short and still pathetic stub.
But if I did do this, then what about the other 19? Aren't they also
deserving? Time ain't cheap.
When many of these things enter the database each day it is not possible to
spend even 3 minutes on each of these microstubs that took the original
submitter 10 seconds to write. Furthermore, WIkipedia is not a dictionary so
I tend to not create such short stubs unless they serve a specific purpose.
It takes me 10 minutes to create a decent stub on a topic I know nothing
about. But at the same time I don't delete decent definitions submitted by
others; I add to the definitions.
Simply bookmark the deletion log and use it as a place to get ideas on
starting new articles.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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