[WikiEN-l] Another AfD example

Fri Jan 20 17:34:08 UTC 2006

On 1/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
> I think one of the core problems here is that the original nominator
> should have raised the issue on the talk page of the article!!!  We have
> gotten to a cultural state where "Gee, I never heard of this" seems to
> be a good enough excuse to nominate something for deletion, RATHER THAN
> raising legitimate issues on the talk page first to see if anyone can
> help improve the article.
>
> In this case, the nominator should have said "Gee, I never heard of
> Fawcett or Playboy, and this New York Times thing sounds fishy, and I
> looked in Google and found only n listings for the name, so I wonder if
> there's a problem here.
>
> Then, pop a note on the talk page.  "Hey everybody, I don't know much
> about publishing or science fiction, but I never heard of this guy and
> had trouble verifying the information.  It's probably my own lack of
> searching skills, so I wonder if anyone can help me out here.  Is this
> article as good as it could be?"
>
> I went through a rather tortured process yesterday in which I had to
> really put my foot down to put a stop to a CfD vote which was taking
> place without _any_ community dialogue or discussion first.
>
> I do not know the exact solution to this problem, but this is part of an
> ongoing problem with have *most particularly with bios of living people
> and existing companies*.  "I haven't heard of this" seems to be an
> instant excuse for "non-notable" and "AfD", which is offensive to the
> subjects, when the real approach should be _at a bare minimum_ and
> effort at dialogue with other editors *before* jumping to a "vote".
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________

 Here's an idea.

Why not add a template to the article/category/whatever talk's page. Stating
that a discussion about this article is warranted, for whatever reason
(notability, bad category and so forth).  So that a category is created with
all those articles and people can have a say on it on the article's talk
page. If after a month or so of discussion people still agree that it should
be deleted, then it can go to AFD/CFD etc.

Of course, no '''Delete'''' 's or ''''Keep'''' 's should be on that
article's talk page.

Garion