On 5/18/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
Yes. VFD is supposed to be an immune system, to keep
out the *shit*. It's
far too blunt a tool to try to use as a general quality-control system,
which is why people get so very upset when articles that are NPOV and
verifiable get nominated for VFD on grounds that are, per the deletion
policy, spurious.
Why even NPOV?
We edit to fix POV text, why do we not rename to fix POV titles?
If I write about "A borgoula is a purple monster that eats little
children", you could fix verifiability by finding a citation and
changing it to "Gmaxwell claims a borgoula is" or "A borgoula exists
in gmaxwells imagination"... Why not? If I published a book on it,
we'd allow my fans to make articles about it.
When it comes down to it, if we only use the criteria of "verifiable
and NPOV" we end up with the prohibition on original research as being
the only real control on what can go into wikipedia after a little
tidying up. This is amusing because the direction to avoid original
research is often taken merely as advice and only used as a rule when
there is conflict, which is good: Consider the case of articles on
works of art or pieces of music; much of the time it is the
not-directly-citable/barely-indirectly-citable opinions that make the
articles worth reading at all.