[WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion policy needed

Fri Oct 24 14:53:18 UTC 2003

The Cunctator wrote:
> It's also disturbing that pages that aren't offensive or illegal are
> being listed on VfD. There is *no need* to delete stub entries. We
have
> methods of indicating them as stubs, which is much more constructive
> than simply deleting them.

There are plenty of things that are not offensive or illegal that are
fine to list on VfD. "List pages that you believe will simply will never
become encyclopedia articles. For example, articles that represent
completely idiosyncratic non-topics, articles that could never be more
than dictionary definitions, etc." says the deletion policy.

I agree that stubs should not be deleted, but "sub-stubs" should be.
Whether something is a stub or a sub-stub is a matter of opinion of
course.

Jake wrote:
> Agreed. Very few of the pages listed have any particular reason to
be
> deleted. 

If you think that Wikipedia is for any kind of knowledge whatsoever,
then you're right. If you think (as I do) that Wikipedia should only be
for topics of a certain importance, then in fact most of the pages
listed there should be deleted. 

Again, I find it amazing that we have no policy on this. The deletion
process cannot be fixed until we agree on the most basic criteria for
deletion. We're supposed to delete pages that "will simply will never
become encyclopedia articles", yet we have no basic agreement about what
this means.

Alex