User:Mackensen/Salt the earth

Wikipedia occasionally has problem pages: crap articles that are continually re-created after being deleted. Some editors have hit upon creating said article, blanking it, and protecting it. This strikes me as an imperfect solution: people can still link to that page, and where there are links, they shall follow. The talk page will fill with discussion and become a cause celebre with trolls and vandals. No, this shall not do. A far more thorough solution is called for.

Putting the above tag on a page would have these effects:
 * The page is protected.
 * Any text below the tag is blanked.
 * Any links to the page will appear as bold text on their respective pages (as if they were linking to the local article).
 * "Go" on the search option ignores the existence of the page.
 * The page redirects to the main page or some similar place.

The guiding idea is to make the page a black hole, an abyss, oblivion itself. The article does not exist, cannot be linked to, cannot be searched for (with no links, Google will come up empty), cannot be accessed, and can only be discussed as a tangent.

A modest proposal, I think. Mackensen (talk)


 * This would lead to people vandalizing articles by sticking the tag in them, and then we wouldn't even be able to put something on that article to show that it has been salted unfairly--we'd most likely have to personally get in touch with an admin. The idea on the whole is good, but there's a couple of glitches which may need to be ironed out before it becomes plausible. - Vague Rant 08:24, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, I think it would definitely be limited to admins, and there'd have to be list somewhere, so that admins knew which articles had the tag. Mackensen (talk) 08:26, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * How would you control who uses it? It's a template, anyone can use templates. Of course, as a link on the page (like they have rollback) it could work. - Vague Rant 08:28, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)


 * Make it a possible, setting, like protection itself. Thus the row across the top goes: [edit this page] [history] [protect] [salt the earth] [delete]... Mackensen (talk) 08:31, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Crappy_article&action=salttheearth. . . I like it. &#8212;No-One Jones (m) 08:36, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I'd prefer it if these articles weren't bolded, as it could cause some serious headaches to new users, I'd rather have them another specific color so we can see it's a oblivion page. Bold pages can also redirect to themselves. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 13:14, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)