After the recent JohnnyGoodyear / Dermot Reilly bruhaha, I felt I should reiterate current (and as far as I know, long-standing) editorial policy regarding node deletions. Hopefully this will clear the air some.
Regardless of who wrote it, if a newly-posted writeup follows our HTML conventions, is integrated well into the database with links, is the writer's own work or is taken from something in the public domain and isn't material better suited to the daylogs, provided that it maintains a relatively positive rep after time on the new writeups list, we let it stand.
To flip it around, and just to be abundantly clear: an unlinked writeup or one that doesn't use HTML tags (or both) will be hidden from public view and only nuked following a lack of response from the author. GTKY-ish content will be nuked off the bat with the user pointed gently to the daylogs, or moved there if an e2God is around. Plagiarized material will be nuked once discovered and may or may not lead to a general audit of the user's other nodes for violations depending on the extent of the plagiarism. If a new writeup's rep is predominantly negative, the exact definition of which is up to the presiding editor's judgement but generally means a rep of -5 or so with downvotes vastly outnumbering upvotes, the writeup will be nuked and the writer messaged. Every writeup, even poetry with its contentious state of being here, is subject to these guidelines - whether we as editors like it or not isn't the point at all.
There are exceptions; there are exceptions to everything, particularly here, but this rule of thumb accounts for most of what we do here in the deletion department.
That part was all fact. This is where things get murky.
The question remains: was the nuking of Johnny's writeup wrong? We as CE's have a certain degree of freedom with what we do here; that's part of the appeal of it, that we are more-or-less left to patrol the database on our own and to make our own judgment calls. I'm not a big fan of broad moralistic declarations, but I will say that, had it been me, I would have let Johnny's latest stand until its rep sank through the floor because, as far as nodes go, that one had merit. It's sitting pretty at +12 at the moment, so a majority of the userbase who's voted on it agrees with me, which is really the point - it's not our job to dictate what's good, it's our job to dictate what fits, not in terms of content but in terms of formatting and spelling and grammar, to make it fit if it doesn't and to get rid of it if we can't. That's all being an editor is.
Feel free to /msg me with any concerns and I'll do my best to answer them in a timely fashion.