User:NeoFreak/Essays/Deletionism

This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." -Albert Einstein

Bearing in mind that wikipedia is not paper that is also not an excuse to fill wikipedia with crap,

. Sure, having uber-cool video game guides, vanity articles filled with original research, every neologism and bizarre sexual fetish/device imaginable, your sister's church youth group, a practical shrine to your favorite author/actor/pornstar, a complete breakdown on the construction process of Han Solo's blaster or your after school student group doesn't directly impact the quality of other articles. You'll often hear the phrase, "well it's not hurting anything". Yet it is.

Wikipedia is a free, open source encyclopedia that alot of people are watching (and using). Nothing can be more important to a project like this than its public and academic image. If people see shody writing, typos, stupid or just unencyclopedic articles and bias in the majority of the project then all of the hard work and great editing done by the core of this project will gone largely unnoticed because you wanted to explain the best way to obtain a +4 Demon Sword of Slaughter or make an article about your Vampire usenet group.

Combine this with the fact that you can write the best article in the world but it will be of no use if people can't find it. Entire subject become navigational nightmares when you are forced to navigate through or out of walled gardens and mazes of mis-titled steamers. The amount of shit that gets AfD'd from wikipedia with the most ambiguous of titles boggles the mind. If you can't justify the need for the article then it probably doesn't belong here. When in doubt, delete it, you can always write it again.

Only you can stop wikipedia from turning into a joke.