Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/The Yips

Closure
The result was Redirect to List of How I Met Your Mother episodes. Useful content is already present in that article. As an aside, I do understand the desire to bring it to AfD to develop consensus rather than boldly merging - in the future perhaps a straw poll on the article talk page would be sufficient? Pastordavid (talk) 21:17, 13 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, a discussion (not necessarily a poll) on the article's talk page would be more than sufficient. The only difference between that and AfD is that deletion can only be undone by sysops.  Using deletion to force people to follow consensus (instead of trusting the community to function well) is inappropriate.  —David Levy 21:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Post-closure discussion
[continued from Articles for deletion/The Yips]

I've been clear from the very beginning that I'm not attempting to refute your assertion that this article fails to meet the criteria laid out at WP:EPISODE. I'm disputing your inexplicable assertion that the only solution is to delete it. Again, that guideline (which you have repeatedly cited) explicitly advises against nominating the article at AfD and recommends that we instead merge/redirect. This is far more useful to readers and editors alike.

In other words, I am addressing your claims of deficiency by noting that they are accurate but insufficient justification for the article's deletion.

No matter how many times I explain the above, you continue to demand that I disprove the claims that I have no intention of even attempting to counter. As I said, this is a pre-emptive straw man argument on your part.

Someone could nominate the Mickey Mouse article for deletion with the rationale "It's about a cartoon character." Someone else could then argue that this isn't a valid reason to delete the article. The nominator could then respond with "I think that this article is about a cartoon character, and you have written nothing to refute that." This is basically tantamount to what you're doing. —David Levy 20:32, 13 December 2007 (UTC)


 * That would be the case only if "no articles about a cartoon character" were a Wikipedia guideline. Unlike in your misleading example, my reasons for deletion are not arbitrary; they're actual policies. Anyway: you simply consider my three motivations not grounds for deletion, whereas I do. That's fair enough for me, and we can just agree to disagree on this point and wait for someone to close the AfD one way or the other. --Nehwyn (talk) 20:46, 13 December 2007 (UTC)


 * 1. Jeez, that's merely an analogy (with a deliberately clear-cut example).
 * If you prefer, suppose that someone were to nominate an article for deletion with the rationale "It has very sloppy grammar." (Obviously, our articles aren't supposed to be written with poor grammar.)  Someone else might oppose deletion on the basis that there is a better solution (correcting the grammar).  The nominator could then reply with "I think that this article has sloppy grammar, and you've said nothing to refute that."  That was your approach.  I opined that there was a better solution to the problems than deleting the article, and you demanded that I disprove the problems' existence.
 * 2. Why do you refuse to address the fact that WP:EPISODE explicitly advises against nominating the article at AfD and recommends that we instead merge/redirect? —David Levy 21:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)