The text below was posted to the WikipediaEN-l by Alphax and is reproduced here with his permission. It is by far the most level headed approach to the whole deletion controversy that I have come across.
Spelling corrections and formatting by me.
A problem on traffic circles edit
There's a famous (or rather, infamous) one in Adelaide: Britannia Roundabout.
Worst traffic nightmare in the city. Many plans have been made (but never carried through) about what to do with it, from turning it into traffic lights to building over & underpasses.
- Does it exist? Yes.
- Is it verifiable? Yes.
- Have books been written about it? Probably not.
- Has it appeared in the media? Yes.
- Should I write an article about it? Maybe.
- Would said article be speedy deletable? No.
- Would said article be deleted via AfD? Probably.
- Is there enough information to make it to Featured status? Maybe.
What should I do?
Put it in Major roads in Adelaide, South Australia or similar.
Inclusion/deletion edit
Including things for the sake of inclusion is BAD. You end up with junk. Wikipedia is not a place to braindump.
Deleting things for the sake of deleting is BAD. If it's true, verifiable, NPOV, etc. it's the sort of information Wikipedia is able to accept. Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia. It is SUPPOSED to have INFORMATION.
Inclusionists and Deletionists are playing what they think is a zero-sum game. It's WORSE than that: the mere presence of their mindless ranting is actually HURTING Wikipedia. By arguing over what should be kept/deleted, we lose information. We lose readers. We lose editors.
What does not appear on the history tab and on my contributions is lost information that hurts additional information. But the sting of loss also trains the mind to value add. Doing what one is good at but better is happiness.
The solution edit
Become more encyclopedia-like.
For just about every value of X, where the number of total X is sufficiently large, we can make more logical and more comprehensive articles by MERGING the bits of information we have (which on their own, are perma-stubs) into more comprehensive articles on the topic.
In doing so, we play a BETTER than zero-sum game. We build articles that a "traditional" encyclopedia would be jealous of. We HELP Wikipedia by having articles that both retain information and look professional.
Just remember:
- Every time you arbitrarily delete an article, you lose a potential editor, who says to themselves, "What a stupid bunch of morons! They deleted the article on X!"
- Every time you arbitrarily keep an article, you lose a potential editor, who says to themselves, What a stupid bunch of morons! They have an article on X!"
- If you are careful to only delete things which are copyvios, original research, neologisms, dicdefs, and speedy deletable (and they are the ONLY criteria under which things should be deleted), you will only keep INFORMATION.
- If you are careful only to keep things which are verifiable, informational, and non-trivial (which is what an ENCYCLOPEDIA should have), you will only delete JUNK.
- If you use common sense, remember what NPOV is, and merge into DECENT ARTICLES, you will save a lot of bother.
Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia.
Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy.
Don't stuff beans up your nose.
For great encyclopedia!