[WikiEN-l] AfD should be Arguments for Deletion

Sun Oct 23 19:11:43 UTC 2005

One of the problems with the current voting system is that people
don't feel obligated to respond to arguments that are "obviously
wrong".

I've seen a lot of AfD arguments where a clueless newbie comes in and
says, "This page isn't hurting anyone and I spent a lot of time on
it".  It would be easy to post a reply, with quick pointers to
[[WP:Verifiability]] and [[WP:NOT]], but half the time no one bothers.
 It's easier to just type " '''Delete''' nn -- ~~~~ ", after all.  So
the user is left with the impression that the decision process is
arbitrary and mean.

I've been running into the other side of this on CfD.  Someone
nominated a bunch of categories that people were using on their
userpages, including some sandbox pages of mine.  I've asked several
times why the pages are harmful, but people seem less interested in
discussion when they're already winning the vote, and simply say that
userpage organization "isn't what categories are for".

Should "no one addressed my argument" be a valid reason to not close a
deletion request?  I'm starting to think so -- most of the traditional
arguments could be addressed with a quick wikilink, and anything that
couldn't be handled that way should probably get talked about.

-- User:Creidieki