Anthony DiPierro wrote: Places are certainly encyclopedic. Yes, that's definitely disputable. Depends on the subject. Most of them are encyclopedic, though (I don't really understand why we need lists now when we have categories, though). Some of them are occasionally. Most are kept. In some cases, I disagree with the resolution. It just means Britannica is paper. Wikipedia is not. Statistics can be twisted to back any argument. Since Wikipedia is not paper, we can afford more articles. I did not argue for an ignorance about what goes on in VFD; what I was saying is that much of the articles on which there is such heated argument (most common example: schools) are often not as relevant to the creation of an enyclopedia. Schools are relevant only to the population of a certain area. Obscure mathematical or scientific concepts, or an obscure architect, etc., on the other hand, probably have contributed more to the world than any one school. Perhaps using the word "indisputably" was a mistake. The phrase "almost certainly" is probably closer to what I was trying to say. It's just an exaggeration for a statement, much like your estimate of 90%. The relevance of the articles to the world in general should be examined. I've seen some great school articles which were kept because despite their lack of impact beyond their community, the school's article was well-written. On the other hand, a substub for a mathematician, even if poorly written (thus not betraying the scientist's impact), may be more relevant to an encyclopedia, and should be rewritten. In short, school articles are nice to have, but higher priority should be given to those who have done things on a global/national/state-level basis. What I'm trying to say is: We need to learn to differentiate between articles that are nice to have and essential. A substub article on, say, Henry Ford, should be kept and rewritten, because it's important. A school substub, should be deleted, and kept if (and only if) rewritten. Having substub school articles makes us look bad. Having well-written school articles make us look good. A substub article on Henry Ford makes us look even worse, but since information about him is easier to find, it's easy to rewrite the article. Often, doing so for schools is much, much harder. John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])

Anthony DiPierro wrote: I'd consider it a pretty significant overestimate. Britannica is clearly not comprehensive, and lacks many articles few people would dispute have encyclopedic value, such as many of the world's major national parks, presidents of nations, very popular music groups, and so on. I doubt that assessment. If you look through the articles actually on VfD, a relatively small percentage are actually controversial (the school example being one). To take the top 15 articles currently on VfD (starting at Oct. 22), there are: -- a 16-year-old high school student's entry on himself -- a page created accidentally -- a misspelled page which looks like it will be kept now that the real name has been found and verified -- a random person who lives in Georgia and once played in a high school marching band -- an original work of fiction -- something claimed to be "pseudoscientific nonsense", a claim and listing that was retracted prior to any comment -- a music album, with votes about evenly split keep/delete -- the slogan "The World has been divided into the camps of believers and disbelievers" -- a music album; almost all votes to keep -- a type of tram; almost all votes to keep -- a person who once wrote for a newspaper -- a copy of a post someone once made to Slashdot -- an obscure sport; nearly all votes to keep -- a list of palestinians killed by israelis, claimed to be unverifiable and impossible to complete; votes somewhat split -- a dictionary definition of the word "proliferate" As you can see, most of those are not particularly controversial, and of those that are controversial, almost all have overwhelming support to keep, with usually only the original lister suggesting deletion and nobody else agreeing with them. So I would reduce the 5% estimate to perhaps 0.5% at most. -Mark