On 10/7/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/7/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Not if they're just offered without justification. You have to
explain WHY you think they're notable or not notable, or you're just
offering an unsupported conclusion.
I think this is a problem we'll always have with use of shorthand.
Elsewhere
on this mailing list today we've seen the action of informal community
consensus during editing seriously mischaracterized by use of the
shorthands
"tag team" and "meat puppet".
The specific problem with the shorthand "not notable" is precisely that it
doesn't give a single clue to the person reading it, what would constitute
notability.
The problem is that we need shorthand in the first place. Issues like
whether or not articles on high schools are ever deletable, and if so what
factors should be taken into consideration, should be decided first. The
problem with VFD is that the same questions get raised over and over and
over again. That's why we need shorthand. If the issues were discussed on a
higher level, then the full arguments could be laid out.
Of course, if issues were discussed on a higher level it'd be a lot harder
to get consensus for deletion. Most deletions would be speedy ones, although
there would be room for voting/discussion over grey areas in the
definitions.
Erik had a proposal well over a year ago which would look something like
this. In essence, a nomination would have to give a clear reason (which was
already agreed upon by consensus), and the votes/discussion would be solely
limited to whether or not the nominated article fit within that reason.
Also as noted earlier by a number of editors: the fact that a subject may
not be notable isn't in itself a good reason for
deleting the article.
Nearly all AfDs for notability are prima facie merge candidates upon which
nobody has as yet attempted a merge.
Apparently you're using the term "notable" to mean
"extraordinary". In that
case, yes, a subject need not be extraordinary to be kept in the
encyclopedia.
I wonder if we could agree to change policy to permit an administrator to
"speedy redirect" a merge candidate and
close an AfD where notability is
the
sole or principal reason given for deletion, or no reason is given. This
would be a good way of ensuring that the possibility of merging articles
was
not unreasonably neglected. An article could always be renominated if good
faith attempts to merge had failed.
Any user is permitted to "speedy redirect" a merge candidate. Whether or
not a clearly improper VFD entry can be removed is less clear, but if it can
be removed then it shouldn't be only administrators that can do it.