User:Northamerica1000/Eager to delete
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. |
This page in a nutshell: This page provides opinion regarding article and content deletion on English Wikipedia |
There are many valid reasons for deletion, but at times, Wikipedia users may be a bit too eager or hasty to delete articles, content within articles, and other pages. This can create problems in terms of Wikipedia's accuracy as a whole, problems in the factual accuracy of content within individual articles, and even problems in other areas, such as when content on
Articles
Alternatives to deletion
Sometimes article deletion nominations occur without consideration regarding various Alternatives to deletion that have been in place for years. This phenomenon has occurred among seasoned veteran editors as well as new editors. The alternatives to deletion are common-sense directives that are a part of Wikipedia's policies, and should be considered.
Preliminary source searching
Users may not always perform due diligence
Not all topics are notable, but WP:BEFORE source searches are important to prevent articles about notable topics from unwarranted deletion. In instances when a topic is actually notable, but its corresponding article is nonetheless deleted for lacking notability, the encyclopedia suffers, and is made inferior.
Not a paper encyclopedia
Another type of misconception that can lead to hasty deletion is the notion that Wikipedia should emulate the style of print encyclopedias. However, per
Subjective opinion
Personal opinion about notability can also be problematic, such as when a user feels that a topic is non-notable based upon their subjective opinion about a topic, rather than upon Wikipedia's notability guidelines. If a user
Drive-by !votes
Users occasionally contribute to AfD discussions in a rapid "drive-by" manner,
Article content
Article degradation
Users sometimes perform hasty edits that remove large amounts of content from Wikipedia articles, providing an insufficient, generic edit summary summarizing their edits, but ultimately lacking a valid qualification for the content removal. Sometimes users provide no edit summary at all. Hasty content removal can be problematic in terms of removing key information about a topic that should naturally be in an article, which can make an article inferior, and even ambiguous or confusing. This can also have an unintended effect of making articles outdated.
Citation errors
Content blanking can create significant referencing problems and errors in articles, such as when a
Primary sources
Sometimes content is removed per being based upon
After AfD discussions
Rapid content removal sometimes occurs after an AfD discussion has concluded, whereby users may blank content from an article after the AfD discussion closes with a result contrary to their desired result. This can occur for a variety of reasons.
When in doubt
When in doubt about nominating an article for deletion or removing content from an article or page, consider first discussing the matter on the article's talk page, contacting the page's creator and significant contributors, or tagging the article or article section with a
See also
- Advanced source searching
- Fact checking
- {{Friendly search suggestions}} template
- Journalistic objectivity
- Reliability of Wikipedia
- Wikipedia is not censored
- Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions
- Wikipedia:Content removal
- Wikipedia:Don't assume negative notability
- Wikipedia:Guide to deletion
- Wikipedia:Overzealous deletion
- Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines
- Wikipedia is not paper on Meta-Wiki
External links
- Jemielniak, Dariusz (March 6, 2017). "Wikipedia's battle over very short articles". Slate.
- James, Andrea (February 16, 2017). "40% of Wikipedia is under threat from deletionists". Boing Boing.
- James, Andrea (February 14, 2017). "Watching Wikipedia's extinction event from a distance". Boing Boing.