[WikiEN-l] Proposed: stop all deletes for 6 months, then reconsider

Sun Nov 9 00:08:52 UTC 2003

"Stan Shebs" <shebs at apple.com> schrieb:

> I've never argued against the deletion of bad content, but the VfD page has
> become a stalking horse for the debate about WP's scope. That's a fine 
> debate
> to have, and we should be working to develop consensus about scope; but
> instead of filling up meta with a rational discussion, we have daily
> catfights on VfD.

But such a discussion will be based on examples, whether real or fictional. And can never leave to any clear and standing rule. Whatever rule is chosen, there will always be cases that are exceptions on either side of the line (unless the outcome is an ultra-inclusionist statement to include just about anything that makes sense and gives no reason to believe it is false (and even then - how is one to define 'no reason to believe it is false' anyway?)).

> A bunch of my content these days comes from books (remember those?) rather
> than the net; and so one of these days I'm sure some moron is going to
> list one of my new articles on VfD "because it only has 20 Google hits",
> as if Google is now the only definition of human knowledge or something.

Not the only one, but it is one. There's more to judge it by - I once used google to save an article on VfD based on only one google hit (it was [[William Gott]]). A good article doesn't need google to state it is a valid subject, because the article itself says why it is.

Andre Engels