UESPWiki:Archive/CP Talk Page Deletion

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Talk Page Deletion

Alright, it has come to my attention that there is a disagreement about whether talk pages where questions are incorrectly posted should be deleted after the question is moved. An example of this situation is Morrowind Mod talk:EnableDisable. I will post my full opinions on it a bit later, but I know a few other people need a place to discuss this.--Ratwar 00:58, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh I'd say keep them for historical reasons. This isn't an obtuse wiki and those bits and pieces can't be too bad for it. I'd say they even add character.

There will probably be a page there eventually, so it's only taking up a stubs space. Even when a page is deleted, its revision history remains in the database, so there would only be a very trivial, almost cosmetic change.

Outdated searches and web caches will probably have the old page, so the redirect will help people find what they were initially looking for. A 404 is worse than a blank page with a redirect.

Someone might make the same mistake and find someone has already created the unrelated question or comment on the talk page, and follow the redirect instead of making a similar mistake as the first person.

We should remember that we're all here in Good Faith. We don't need to make a huge deal about deletions or contributions unless they are "blatant vandalism, lying, and unwillingness to collaborate." Whatever needs to be done to make a crisp, organized wiki will make us all happy in the end. Lukish_ Tlk Cnt 01:32, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

As the one who proposed the page for deletion, I want to assure everyone that I assumed good faith of the editor. I simply prodded the page because after the question was moved, there was no purpose for the page any longer. That being said, I can see Lukish's points, and I agree with them, I had no intention of creating a debate on the topic. As an aside, there was a small disscussion on Elliot's talk page ({{dm}}?) about this very incident. Dlarsh^{(Talk,Contribs,E-mail)} 04:11, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I prefer the idea of deleting such redirects/move explanations and instead inform the editor who posted the question. The exception in this case is when discussion of a larger scale (when someone has already replied) is taking place. In that case leave the move notification in place.

The reason we prefer non-existant talk pages over (practically) empty ones is that you can immediately see when a discussion has been opened for a specific article or not (the red link). It's also in line with the guideline we have for normal articles. They shouldn't exist simply as placeholders.

The idea for a search engine is that users find the article they are looking for, not a seemingly related question on a talk page. --Timenn-<talk> 08:40, 1 October 2009 (UTC)