User talk:Crotalus horridus/Archive/Deletion discussions

Hi, I saw that you have been spending quite a bit of your time (so far, at least) on Wikipedia's Votes for Deletion (VFD). I wanted to give you a little bit of background in regards to the controversy behind some of the VFDs around here. Generally, Wikipedians line up in one of two camps concerning whether certain classes of articles should be deleted or not - deletionists or inclusionists. For example, most deletionists would agree that an article about a high school, regardless of its content but especially if its consists of only "X high school is in Y in the state of Z" or the like, should be deleted because high schools are not inherently notable. Inclusionists, on the other hand, might argue that all high school articles are welcome on Wikipedia (so long as the information is independently verifiable) because schools are inherently notable and Wikipedia does not have the size limits a normal encyclopedia does (often expressed as "Wikipedia is not paper"). Of course, both camps would agree that an article about a high school that says merely "X high school is the best school ever!" should be deleted as vanity. This controversy extends to other classes of articles beyond high schools, of course, like some churches, neighborhoods, and the like. I'm not trying to sway your opinion one way or the other (though I do have a strong opinion on the matter), but I thought you might enjoy knowing a bit more about what is going on around here since you are a new user. Welcome to Wikipedia and happy editing :). - Jersyko 14:35, May 21, 2005 (UTC)

I would just add that unless a stub is clearly vanity or garbage, adding a VfD within minutes after the entry is posted is not a very good practice for several reasons. While schools are inherently controversial here at Wikipedia, I would urge you to apply the same wait-and-see approach across the board. The whole purpose of a stub is to act as an invitation to create an article. Frequently, it is difficult to tell whether the subject is encyclopedic. I have seen many good articles start as stubs. For example, a stub may start as "John Q. Unknown was an American politician" and it may turn out that he was a Territorial governor, U.S. Senator and later president of a well known college. Unless the subject of a stub is very well known, it is a rare stub that gives enough detail to know immediately whether the subject has the potential to become encylcopedic.

You may have already seen these, but I would refer you to Wikipedia:Stub and Wikipedia:Deletion policy. The deletion policy states that among the problems which do not require deletion are a stub with potential (which should be expanded) or a minor branch of a subject that doesn't deserve its own article (which should be merged, with a redirect to the new location). DS1953 15:06, 23 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Also, you've kinda stepped into a hornets nest on school articles. I'd refer you to Wikipedia:Schools before you nominate anymore of those. --BaronLarf 18:45, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Hi there! You nominated a school for VfD... however, these tend to generate lengthy and unproductive debates. Please see

you put Matthew 2:16 up for deletion

however, that VfD concerned only a few verses from Matthew 1, wheras a proposal by User:Uncle G covers a much larger group of verses.

would you be prepared to make a similar vote at

~~~~ 9 July 2005 15:44 (UTC)

Articles are generally (or should be) deleted because the topic is not encyclopedic. There was an article on this topic that was deleted for precisely this reason, by a very strong consensus. Article content isn't particularly relevant, because if the problem is just that the content is poorly written, then it should be re-written, not deleted. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, one or both of the following situations applies to you, and you may therefore be interested in related discussions.

• You expressed an opinion about the proposed deletion of an article concerning one of the first 200 verses of the Gospel of Matthew. Would you therefore like to join a centralised discussion about the other 199 articles at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/200 verses of Matthew
• You expressed an opinion about the proposed deletion of an article concerning one of the first 19 verses of the 20th Chapter of the Gospel of John. Would you therefore like to join a centralised discussion about the other 18 articles at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Verses of John 20

You may also be interested in a discussion of whether or not the entire text of a whole bible chapter should be contained in the 6 articles concerning those specific chapters, and whether or not they should only use the translations favoured by fundamentalists. This is being discussed at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Whole bible chapter text.

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