[WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

Thu Nov 6 13:07:18 UTC 2003

I will have to say that without endorsing every last detail of what he
said necessarily, I am firmly in agreement with Cunc on this one.

Rampant deletionism is not a good thing.  There's very seldom a good
reason to delete things.

Let me give an example: "Oviparous".  There is absolutely nothing
wrong with this article, and no excuse for it being listed on VfD.
(Of course, the vote is firmly against deleting.)

"Talossan language" -- a perfectly legitimate topic

"Cory Hall" -- this one did get redirected to U. Cal Berkeley, which
is absurd in my opinion.  This is a well-known building, it may
certainly have an article, even if the topic would not make it into
1.0.  When was it built?  What function does it serve?  Who was the
architect?  What famous things happened there?  All legitimate stuff.

--Jimbo

The Cunctator wrote:

> I haven't really edited on Wikipedia for a while, and I checked in
> because I wanted to add some content. But a quick perusal of my
> watchlist showed that the votes for deletion situation is ridiculous. 
> 
> The removal of any guidelines for inclusion on vfd (including the most
> important one: when in doubt, don't delete) is criminal.
> 
> So is the separation of guidelines for "regular" people and for
> administrators.
> 
> So is the "merge and delete" attitude. Merging entries into big messes
> under general titles is much, much worse for the long term health of
> Wikipedia than having many entries with specific titles.
> 
> So is the "kill all ephemera" rampage, since presuming that we know now
> what will be considered ephemera 10, 20, and 1000 years from now is
> pathetically presumptive, especially considering there are NO SPACE
> LIMITATIONS on Wikipedia.
> 
> So is the obvious takeover of the VfD page by a horde of deletionists.
> Once upon a time one vote against deletion was enough to stop deletion.
> And that is all it should take.
> 
> So is, imho, the renewed assault on the sep. 11 pages, but I guess
> that's to be expected, since the argument "some people put so much work
> into carefully researching the reports on the lives of the people killed
> that day and creating entries for them, and we can't be bothered to do
> the same for other people who have been killed, so we should delete all
> the entries" will never die.
> 
> Again, now that we have better stub-indication technology, there should
> be *less* need for deletion, rather than more.
> 
> Also, if a page has been around for a year or two and been seen by a
> bunch of eyeballs, there's probably a reason it's there, and it probably
> shouldn't be deleted.
> 
> yours,
> tc
> 
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