[WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion policy needed

Fri Oct 24 21:19:59 UTC 2003

Alex Rosen wrote in part:

>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.

One reason that this hasn't been spelt out explicitly very much
is that the notion that Wikipedia should limit itself to "important" topics
has, IME, been at all popular only relatively recently (the past year).
The old notion was that, since [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not paper|]],
we could (potentially) include articles on every poker variation
and every Simpsons character (I mention these examples specifically,
since The Lord High Jimbo himself agreed to them on that meta page ^_^).
But this idea is less popular now, as we strive to make Wikipedia
look more professional.  Personally, I wish Sifterpedia were professional
(instead of almost nonexistent), Wikipedia remaining relatively expiremental.

One should also note the difference between /potential/ articles
and stubs that probably won't go anywhere anytime soon.
I definitely agree that /most/ Simpsons characters shouldn't have
articles at the moment, since we don't have content for those articles.
Thus they ought to redirect to a larger article like
[[List of Simpsons characters]] (or whatever it's called).
But /potentially/, somebody might come along and expand the material,
thus creating articles on individual characters that didn't use to have them.
That would be a Good Thing (IMO)! but it would also have some opposition now.

-- Toby