[WikiEN-l] Re: Proposal on VFD: enforcement of nomination policy

Sun Mar 6 12:11:27 UTC 2005

Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Rick wrote:
> 
>> --- Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> "Any VFD nomination not listing a reason in
>>> Wikipedia:Deletion policy may be summarily removed from the page."
>>>   
>>
>> Exactly.  And "not notable" is not one of those
>> criteria.  And yet it's one of the most commonly used
>> reasons for listing an article.
>>  
>>
> So why not add non-notability to the deletion policy? If it's one of the 
> most commonly used reasons for listing an article and yet it isn't 
> actually listed as a valid reason for deletion in the deletion policy, 
> it seems there's already a pretty big problem either with the VfD 
> process or with the deletion policy.

A formal proposal to add non-notability as a reason for deletion has 
been voted on (with a large number of voters) in the past. It didn't 
even get majority support.

The main problem is that notability depends very much on voters' POVs' 
[*] whereas verfiability (which enjoys universal support) can be 
ascertained in an NPOV way, thus the community has not proved willing to 
enshrine non-notability into policy.

Pete

[*] E.g. esoteric topics about individual characters in sub-plots of 
Lord of the Rings are kept, whereas as articles about million dollar 
turnover manufacturing busineses are deleted, reflecting the (painting 
with a broad brush) slant towards the "nerdy student/lefty" make-up of 
the Wikipedia population.