Talk:Roger Alford

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Since this is referenced to a work on the constituency, I don't think it should be deleted out of hand. Charles Matthews (talk) 14:44, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Futhermore, I don't think that an article created nearly two months ago is "recently created" in the sense of CSD A10. Charles Matthews (talk) 14:46, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

This is not an article in any meaningful sense: it is a factoid, which is already covered in full in the article on the constituency. If someone wants to write an article on this topic, even a stub, then obviously the topic is notable per WP:POLITICIAN. But a page which contains less info than the existing list is a pointless waste of a reader's time, and there is so little here that an editor wanting to write such an article will not be in any way helped by the existence of this pointless sub-stub. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:41, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

All MPs are individually notable, no matter how little is known about them. Notable means an article can be written about them. Stubs are good, because they can be expanded. Anyone who wants to do so will be helped by the start with the article setup. DGG ( talk ) 19:17, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

DGG, just read the speedy deletion template ... as in READ it. Notability is not at issue here.

CSD#A10 clearly permits the deletion of pages which add nothing at all beyond an existing article, as was the case with this one when I tagged it. The existence of an unreferenced sub-stub does not in any way help someone wanting to write even a decent stub, because every single fact needs to be sourced, correct categories added, and so on. That's why CSD A10 exists: because pages in the state of this one before Choess expanded it are pointless. If you want to crusade in favour of a proliferation of unreferenced articles which add precisely nothing to wikipedia, then start the process to remove A10 from WP:CSD. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:36, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Right, so I've just expanded this article into something like a proper stub. Some thoughts:

• If you're going to expand articles like this to save them, take the time to expand them in a meaningful sense; don't just throw in a URL to serve as a de minimis reference that adds no additional information. Yes, it does take a little more time and mental effort to do this.
• While, as BHG explains above, notability isn't really the issue here, I'd be wary of extending the presumptive notability of Members of Parliament too far back. For Tudor-era MPs like this one, it's probably still safe, but I would be reluctant to declare that medieval members, about whom we may have their name on a return and nothing else, should be extended an article as a matter of course. (Naturally, anyone covered in the History of Parliament Trust series ought to have an article.) Choess (talk) 20:11, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

CSD A10 clearly does not permit the deletion of any article that is not "recently created". Whatever that means, it doesn't mean that it can be applied retrospectively a couple of months later. I think there is a perfectly good discussion on the notability of any historical figure about whom few facts are known. But that debate is not helped by a use of speedy deletion to foreclose it. What is "pointless" on Wikipedia, as we know, depends on perspective, and simply asserting the pointlessness of someone else's contribution is rhetoric pure and simple. Given the deletions that have been occurring, I think there has been much done that is way out of process, and I object to it on those grounds alone. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Charles, it's not just rhetoric. Many articles on less prominent MPs are linked only from the article on their constituency and possibly from a dab page. If the article itself contains nothing that isn't in the constituency article, and doesn't even have succession box(es), then the reader has reached a dead end from which the only route out is to return to the article from whence they came. having learnt precisely nothing. We create wikipedia for readers, and it's grossly unfair to mess them around in this way.

Take a common situation, where say 20 MPs listed for a 19th-cent constituency, and seven of them have articles. If the others are redlinked, the reader gets a clear "no point going here" warning ... but a sub-stub creates a blue link which suggests substantive content, and the reader has no way of knowing which is a genuine article and which is a splat-pate from a dab page. So after several trips into the dead-end-links of sub-stubs, do you really think it's likely that the reader will persevere to find which of the blue links are actually stub articles rather than just factoids lifted from the list they have just been reading???

As to the possibility of expansion, most of these articles are either miscategorised or under-categorised, so that editors looking for stuff to expand won't find them, and the use of grossly over-generalised stub tags also hides them from editors. For example, I have lost count of the number of these articles which I have encountered in the last few hours where MPs for welsh constituencies are categorised as representing English constits, or MPs who died in the 1600s are miscategorised under UK or Great Britain stub categories, Members of the Parliament of Northern Ireland are in one of the subcats of Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament, Members of the Parliament of Ireland are categorised as constituencies, and so on.

I am definitely not an opponent of stub articles, but they do not serve any purpose unless they actually add some content to wikipedia, or at the very least facilitate navigation by adding succession boxes so that the reader can jump directly between holders of the same post. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:32, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I understand your arguments, I believe. But I think you have a too narrow view of how Wikipedia works. I don't find such articles by searching categories. I want to put this to you: if 10 stubs are created, and over time 5 are upgraded to fuller articles, I think you are still going to be arguing that 5 are still stubs. In other words you are the "glass half-empty" person here. I think that argument is not in the interests of the encyclopedia: if, for example, the other half include Robert Cheeseman, subject of a Holbein portrait, or any of the other interesting examples I have found, then I say the benefit of having stubs to improve is just very clear.

None of this, by the way, excuses your misuse of admin powers in deleting out of hand large numbers of pages claiming CSD A10 applies, when it is a huge stretch. Nothing excuses your misuse of edit summaries to do more than summarise your edits. And your decision to tag for speedy deletion without notification is beyond the pale.

Let me be quite plain here: a conduct RfC on you can hardly be avoided now. And saying such stubs "do not serve any purpose" is one person's opinion, which I take to be out-and-out wrong. Enforcing it outside the exact policies we have is high-handed and reprehensible. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:57, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Charles, as I'm sure you are well aware, I am not the only editor to view the sub-stubs as a pointless make-work, and since you were party to previous discussions, I think it's a pity that you choose to make such a false claim.

Anyway, can I take it we agree that the sub-stubs are no use to the reader? (If if I have misunderstood you, then please do explain how they help the reader)

If so, then we are left with the possibility of the sub-stubs being expanded. I watch articles on MPs very closely: I have thousands of them on my watchlist, and I routinely monitor lots of the relevant categories. There are quite a few editors who routinely create stubs on MPs: short articles, only a few sentences, but referenced to reliable sources, fact-checked, properly categorised, and usually with succession boxes. Those article may not add much beyond the list, but they do add something, and they meet the basic criteria of being referenced and accurate. I have watched thousands of these stubs over the years: some of them have stayed almost unchanged for years, while others have been expanded. All of them serve a purpose: those which have been expanded are now offering real substance to the readers, while those which are still as-stubby-as-created offer the possibility of future expansion whilst (crucially) being accurate, assisting navigation (by allowing a navigation path between MPs), and telling the reader at least a little bit more than the list article.

I have been very selective in my deletions. The articles which I have deleted all have at least two of the following flaws

1. say nothing beyond what's in the list article, and quite often significantly less than is in the list article
2. have no succession boxes, so they don't help navigation: they are a dead end. Succession boxes are of course not a requirement, but their presence allows a stub with little substantive content to serve a useful navigational role
3. they are miscategorised, or under-categorised, and usually have incorrect or grossly over-generalised stub tags, so they are hidden from editors or readers using one powerful route to find possibilities for expansion
4. frequently contain significant errors of fact, even in the very few points asserted
5. A high proportion were wholly unreferenced

They don't help the reader now, are hidden from those wanting to expand them, and have content which requires replacement rather than addition ... the result is that nearly all of them really needed a complete rewrite even to bring them up a worthwhile stub standard. It's not as if potential new articles on MPs are hard to identify: they are listed for several centuries, and usually well-disambiguated. Someone with no other sources than the online and free sites by Rayment, Kimber and Lundy can quickly produce a useful and well-formed stub on any MP after 1660, with no more work than is required by starting with one of Boleyn's sub-stubs (most of which are created simply by copy-pasting the text from dab pages).

So please try again to explain how these uninformative, inaccurate, miscategorised, unreferenced, factoids help editors to expand wikipedia? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:44, 5 August 2010 (UTC)