[WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion policy needed

Fri Oct 24 22:19:41 UTC 2003

Toby Bartels wrote:

>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.
>
I see a lot of what's going on at VfD as causing a lot more problems 
than it's solving.  It's leaving a lot of people uneasy, and that alone 
can't be good for Wkipedia and Wikilove.  It can't be good when half of 
the population is on edge wodering what these loose canons are going to 
do next.  It can't be good when our failure to participate at VfD is 
taken as a sign of consent.  What ever happened to the possibility that 
people fail to participate in these votes because they have other or 
better things to do with their time?

It's all getting to the point where keeping articles on the Bouvier 
sisters looks more and more like the lesser evil.  Taking anti-wiki 
action to get these people's attention becomes increasingly more attractive.

There is no doubt that the Sifter project, or the 1.0 project, or even 
Nupedia require more rigid standards on matters of deletion. Any of 
those projects would be a much better place for these compulsive 
deleters to spend their time.

Ec