Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2010 April 29

Timothy A. Wilkinson – Decision endorsed – Tim Song (talk) 13:48, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.

MSgt Wilkinson is a recipient of the Air Force Cross for the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, the way I look at is if you delete his article you must delete every other Air Force Cross, Navy Cross and Distinguised Service Cross recipients' articles. If we are going delete military pages because they are only famous for the action that made them worthy for the decoration, then when do we start deleting Medal of Honor and Victoria Cross Recipients? Feickus (talk) 12:43, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse - I think Feickus's criticism is more properly aimed at the policy behind WP:ONEEVENT and WP:MILPEOPLE rather than this particular deletion. This is not the place for that argument. The deletion review guide notes as much. Novaseminary (talk) 19:58, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse per inherent silliness of any nomination based on "If you delete X, you must delete all Y". No, it doesn't work that way. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 20:24, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. A clear consensus to delete but people need to stop citing WP:MILPEOPLE as a guideline. It's not. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:34, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse per Mkativerata, and as (s)he put it, WP:MILPEOPLE is a WikiProject page and carries no weight. Stifle (talk) 08:48, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. There was certainly a clear consensus to delete and none for keeping this article at all. Bettia (talk) 09:33, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn (redirect, merge subject to target talk page). BIO1E is not a reason for deletion where merge is an option. Contrary to the closer's statement, the redirect !votes were not wikt:refuted at all; they were barely addressed. Expansions on the story are best discussed at that article, not at random spin-out article AfDs, and so the best thing to do with all such articles is to redirect. The delete !voters seem to be weary of these contributions by unencultured new editors, but it is better to direct newcomers to a productive path (redirect to the main article) than to drive newcomers away. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:27, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse deletion per the clear consensus to delete. The argument to redirect was well-refuted by Novaseminary (talk · contribs) so deletion (instead of a redirect or merge) is a reasonable result. Cunard (talk) 05:33, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Novaseminary commented in reply, but did not refute, and her comments were not sound. Redirects are cheap. It is easily possible to maintain a redirect for every name that is verifiably associated with the battle and for which a Wikipedian has already attempted to write an article. Also, given that at least one person believes this participant is notable, the redirect is a reasonable search term. Wikipedia's internal search function is not very good, and such redirects are helpful. (helpful is a good rationale for a redirect, not an article.) Novaseminary's "searches will bring up the article without the redirects" is not correct unless one assumes that the project is now complete. I daresay that the project is not complete, and if you disagree, fork it now. If the person's name is not in the article, the search function won't bring the contributor to the article. My assumption here is that contributors are here to contribute something that is not already here, and this is why it is reasonable to be directed to an article that may not already have the information. It is true that consensus said "delete", but they were wrong. Their comments were correct, but they were wrong in asserting (without rationale) that their comments (WP:notability-based) were reasons (WP:notability-based) for deletion. Their comments reflect the fact that the article is not a suitable stand-alone article, and that is the limit of the scope of the notability guidelines. It remains a possibility that such material may have a place in the main articles, and the main article talk page is the venue for such discussions, and an existing redirect will encourage these and later contributors to make their points on that main article talk page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:30, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn The closer claimed that the argument for merger/redirection had been refuted but it was not addressed by the delete camp whose contributions included feeble stuff like "Can't tell you how many of these I've been in lately.". When such empty votes are discounted there was no clear consensus. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:03, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Closer's comments I have to disagree about the lack of consensus. None of commenters, including the 2 who opined merge/redirect, advocated keeping the article as a stand alone, so I don't see how a straight overturn is supported. Of the 2 commenters that were not "delete", only one actually gave a rationale. I thought it was a reasonable rationale, which if supported by consensus could have carried the day. However, Novaseminary's response was reasonable as well, and his position better represented opinions of the other editors who commented in the discussion. Thus, while I had no personal issue with a redirect, I could not say that consensus was reached in this discussion to place one. Having said that, I note that the decision to redirect to that title remains available to any editor so inclined once this discussion is closed. I also userfied the article at the nominator's request at the close of the AfD. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 14:26, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It was even unanimous that the article should not be kept as a stand-alone article. I think it better to leave a redirect with the history intact than to leave the history in someones userspace, because any hope for including the material anywhere should be directed at the talk page of the target. There is no reasonable prospect of any single editor being able to improve the material to make it stand-alone worthy. I think this is also consistent with the debate if acknowledging that "fails notability" by any flavour of notability-test, does not necessarily mean "delete". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:18, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]