User:Novem Linguae/Essays/Thoughts on notability and AFD
A wiki rite of passage: getting your article deleted at AFD
I'll bet most editors can relate to this: They were a newer editor. They spent time writing an article about something they liked. They may have even read
This is a terrible new user experience. A newer editor works hard, thinks they're following the rules, then gets their article deleted.
Why does this happen? Because our notability guidelines are so complicated that it takes many thousands of edits plus working in a notability-adjacent area (
In the AFD of your article, it may feel like the nominator or the !voters are picking on you or your article. This is almost never the case. It's usually just business. It's usually just that more experienced editors are familiar with our complex quagmire of notability guidelines, and you are not quite there yet.
Reading WP:N is not enough
Reading the notability guidelines is not enough to wrap your head around how notability actually works at AFD. Sometimes the notability pages get out of date with current practice due to reverting and stonewalling by a minority faction. Sometimes newer users weigh and cherry pick a certain section of the notability guidelines incorrectly. Sometimes a certain niche of notability is not properly documented (example: WP:ANYBIO's various medals and orders), and the only way to learn it is to check the outcomes of recent AFDs in that niche. Just reading the pages will not make you a notability expert. Trust more experienced users at AFD and their interpretations of notability guidelines and AFD norms.
How to master notability
There are a couple ways. I did it through
However you decide to do it, it will not happen overnight. It will be a journey that takes time and effort. Notability isn't some binary thing. It is a living thing that has its own heartbeat, and that slowly changes with age. The final source of truth for notability is the outcome of recent AFDs in that area. Over time, if the regular's interpretation of the guidelines changes, and their !voting changes on a large enough scale, then the guideline itself will undergo a de facto, undocumented change (example: species articles are always kept at AFD, but it is not an
Another trap: !votes that don't follow GNG will be ignored by the closer
AFDs may look like votes. But that is not the case. There is a closer that will close the discussion at the appropriate time, and this closer will almost always ignore !votes that do not correctly follow our notability guidelines, particularly
In fact, you may notice in this essay that I write the word !vote with an exclamation mark. This is because this is how it works with all closes everywhere on English Wikipedia. In fact, it's part of our
Anyway, when your AFD has 4 keeps and 3 deletes and closes as delete, and you get upset and wonder why, this is why. The system is rigged against folks with unusual spins and interpretations of the notability guidelines, and is rigged against
Inclusionism and deletionism
These are naughty words to a lot of people. People don't like these labels. But they may be useful. Let's explore them a bit.
- Inclusionists - Folks that are generally less strict than the status quo about keeping articles. They often mention WP:AFC, draftspace, and draftification.
- Status quo-ists - Folks that are pretty in alignment with current notability practices. They often mention WP:THREE best sources and do a Template:Source assess tablein their head to determine notability. If they are in the mood to spend a half hour typing it out, they may even post the table in the AFD.
- Deletionists - Same as status quo-ists, but they lobby for the gutting and deletion of WP:NSPORT)
- Newbies - They fail to mention any policies or guidelines in their AFD !votes, or interpret them very incorrectly. They think they are affecting the AFD outcome, but their !vote will be ignored by the closer. If they spray poor !votes in dozens or hundreds of AFDs, they will eventually get taken to WP:ANIand topic banned from AFD.
I am personally a status quo-ist. I spent a lot of time and effort learning what our current notability practices are in
I think the majority of editors are status quo-ists, which is why it is currently the status quo :)
The premise of GNG and the status quo-ists is reasonable: That it is impossible to write a policy-compliant article (an article that doesn't violate
Trends
In my opinion, Wikipedia is currently trending in the direction of deletionism. Every year or two, our SNGs contract a bit more. I predict any attempt to create or expand an SNG right now would fail.
I think this trend towards deletionism may be a natural part of a wiki's lifecycle. In the beginning, there is a huge vacuum of articles and a bunch of article writing needs to occur, so the early years of a wiki favor inclusionism. As the encyclopedia fills up and there are less topics to write about, priorities shift from article writing to quality control, so the later years of a wiki favor deletionism.