[WikiEN-l] Article deletion

Tue Sep 13 20:18:22 UTC 2005

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>>area can outvote the people who actually know something. WP only
>>works because 99% of the time the ignorant are willing to defer to
>>the knowledgeable; but VfD process works in the opposite way -
>>the knowledgeable are made to do extra work to overcome the
>>objections of the ignorant.
>>
>>Stan
>>
>>
>VFD is part of Wikipedia, why would it work the opposite way from the
>rest of the wiki. It takes me just a minute to substantiate proof
>something is worth of an entry. Yes, it takes some time, but it's time
>well spent. That's exactly why AFD needs knowledgeable people.
>
I could come up with several theories as to why it's evolved
differently; for instance, a random's ill-informed vote for
deletion has traditionally been given as much weight as an
expert's vote to keep, whereas on article talk pages the expert
is more likely to be supported against an ignorant. Talk page
discussion is not on a fixed deadline; sometimes key input is
contingent on a library visit or for the right person to find
time to drop by, so there's no advantage to camping out on the
page. Existing articles tend to have one or several editors
committed to them, and they'll quietly fix bad driveby edits,
while new articles can end up on VfD before potential expert
defenders even notice their existence.

There are a hundred different ways that problematic new articles
could be handled, and I think it's telling that some people seem
unwilling even to consider that there might be better alternatives.

Stan