Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Starting an article

 __NOINDEX__
 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was  Merge  to Your first article if anything needs to be merged. Change to redirect now, leaving history for any future merging. -- GB fan 13:52, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Starting an article


The Merge tag at the top of this page and at the top of its twin sister page Your first article have been lingering for a long time. Neither this article nor its twin page is an excellent article yet, but the aim and the content is virtually identical, there is nothing really to merge. One of these articles should be deleted, NOW. Continuing this discussion isn't doing The Project any good, it's only showing that we can't make a decision about the obvious. The other article is at this point at a slightly better state of development, therefore delete this one NOW. Even if my assessment on that is wrong, neither article is getting the development it needs to become excellent. Once this article is gone editorial energy will flow in the correct direction, development can continue. As it stands two poor articles linger. This topic is actually one of the most important in the entire Project, it is supposed to tell newcomers how to do what we do. This has been a lingering issue for more than a year, or maybe years, which is a waste of everyone's time. Once this page is gone no one will miss it, then we can focus on developing the remaining article into an excellent and useful article, which at this point neither one is. Atani (talk) 18:12, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Merge as proposed on the talk page. There is a rough consensus in support of the merge; I'm not sure why someone hasn't just done it yet. Leaving a redirect here is a good idea. Ivanvector (talk) 18:51, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The reason no one has merged these two articles in over a year, like many other cases throughout The Project, is that in many cases it takes more time and energy to get a merge done correctly than it does to simply improve an existing article, an entirely new level of analysis is required. Everyone here understands this, or should understand this.  Unless the areas of overlap are relatively small, it can take more energy to merge two articles than write a new one.Atani (talk) 17:36, 6 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Merge as per Ivanvector. If Atani doesn't like this page, just go ahead and merge. There is full support for that at Wikipedia talk:Your first article. -- P 1 9 9 ✉ 19:34, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Speedy close. This is an attempt to circumvent the merge discussion at Wikipedia talk:Your first article. -- P 1 9 9 ✉ 19:38, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't think it is. That discussion has been moving in -u-l-t-r-a- -s-l-o-w- -m-o-t-i-o-n- for more than a year, and the consensus hasn't really changed. Maybe it should be a request for closure at WP:AN but this works just as well. Ivanvector (talk) 21:59, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed, this is a perfectly servicable (if somewhat unorthodox) way of bringing thigs to a close. For the record, I support merging this (slightly more terse) page into Your first article as per the slow-motion discussion on its talk page. For information, Your first article has 1,195,825 incoming links, while Starting an article has 286,661 - another small reason for the merge to be from SAA to YFA. – Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 00:05, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * There is a meme here at Wikipedia which is that merge should always be prefered to delete. The correct criteria should be: what improves The Project the most and consumes the least editorial energy.  Discussion is good, consensus is good, but when pursued to the point that it prevents simple decisions from being made - not good.Atani (talk) 17:36, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

There is a difference between reaching a consensus and making a decision.

To reiterate my position. There is nothing here really to merge. The two articles as they currently exist are so close to one another in content and scope that, in my opinion, it is a waste of editorial energy to even parse them to find out what is worth merging - much less the energy of actually merging them and making sure it is done properly. The continued discussion is only blocking editorial energy that could be used to quickly improve the survivor. Once either one of these two articles is deleted, editorial energy can be brought to bear to bring the remaining article up to quality standards, neither one currently meets standards. This is a simple editorial decision. Newspaper editors do this all the time, kill one of competing articles and reallocate resources to produce or improve another article. There are lots of times when great care should be exercised before deleting articles, this isn't one of them. As Wikipedians we need to learn to distinguish the difference.Atani (talk) 17:15, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.