User:DennisTheTiger/projects/Wikipedia:Change Our Minds

If you are reading this, odds are good that you have not only commented on an article being submitted for deletion (or deletion review), but you are also wondering just how to save it, whether you've said so or not.

The short answer: you need to change our minds, especially if the vast majority of so-called "votes" here say "delete" or somesuch.

See, we here at Wikipedia are looking for simple standards that an article needs to be upheld to: in particular, notability and verifiability. That's just two of them, and there are other subsections that you'll probably be pointed to if your article is a biography, about a band, about a song, about a mall... you name it, it's there. We are not seeing this, and that's not only why we're saying "delete", odds are pretty good that this is why it's in Articles for Deletion to begin with.

There are, of course, exceptions. Bad faith nominations for deletion get dealt with pretty quickly.

So that said, we're generally not prejudiced to deletion.

So all this said, what can be done on your part?

What To Do

 * Be objective. Remember that the issue is not you, it's the article - and even more than that, it's the information as present in the article.  The keys, when working with this aspect, tends to be a few different things:
 * The subject of the article, unto itself, must be notable. Quite simply, notability is not inherited.  As an example, actor Keifer Sutherland is pretty well notable - but his secretary is not necessarily notable unto themselves.  To go further into reductio ad absurdum (that is, to reduce the argument to the most absurd outcome), if humorist Dave Barry kept a blog on Livejournal, that blog may connote notability, providing it, itself holds up to our general notability guidelines; but, that notability does not then automatically carry over to all blogs as hosted on Livejournal.
 * To repeat, this is not about you as a person, it is about the article. You have nothing to prove about you, necessarily.  However, if you want to keep the article, you have everything to prove about it.


 * Understand what arguments you should avoid when commenting in the discussion. To put it frankly, this article on what to avoid comes from a lot of experience in dealing with such arguments - to the point where it has become simpler to point over to that article. =)


 * Make all efforts to fix the problems as per our guidelines.


 * Understand that we just might be missing something. Hey, look, we're all humans on the other side of the network that Wikipedia lives on.  As such, sometimes, we make mistakes.  Maybe we didn't find the proof when we looked because we entered a search term on Google that turned up nothing, however remote that possibility may be.  (We tend to be good about that, nevertheless.)  There are plentyof places to look, mind you.  But, whatever comes up,


 * If you see that you have new messages, read your talk page. That's easy to find, and there are likely things that somebody put in here that pertain directly to you, the editor, about your approach - and they were likely put there because it was felt, by the poster, that these notes did not belong in the deletion discussion, and could accordingly be considered irrelevant. I will do this, because I feel that there are times where it is better to discuss things outside of the scope of an AFD to avoid possibly embarrassing you.


 * Finally, read up on what arguments you need to avoid when discussing this. Yes, I have mentioned this twice, but this bears repeating.  These are things we've seen before, and to be perfectly blunt, these arguments don't help the case in the slightest.

What NOT to do

 * Don't negotiate in spite of the guidelines.

These guidelines are what help us meet our goal of making this site encyclopedic. Going against those guidelines is, quite simply, counterproductive to this.


 * Don't argue verbosely, with indignance, or ad nauseam in favor of the merits of keeping your article.

A general pattern we see, sometimes, is that the length of the argument to keep in an AFD, or an indication of indignance over a nomination, or things of that nature, tend to be inversely proportional to how notable the article's subject is. Especially on the verbosity part, and doubly so if the notional tl;dr thought goes off in our minds as we're reading the information. I treally does tend toward being a sort of "red flag". But to put it a different way, in your argument, please be as concise and brief as you possibly can.

This doesn't mean that, if you have a lot to say, we don't want to read it! Far be it from any one of us from going so far as to say anything like that.

Having said this, if we really aren't geting it, as far as you can tell, it shouldn't stop you from expounding on this a bit. But if you say there are resources to prove what we are saying does not exist, and it is there, then you really need to tell us where it is if we're not finding it, because beyond this, the article won't survive if you don't. (In otherwords, don't tell us that it exists if we can't find it, and not show us where it is. Or, to put it yet another way, "pics or it didn't happen".)


 * Don't spend so much time trying to convince us that you lose time to fix the article

When discussion opens for whether to delete any given article, from that point, you have seven days before discussion closes. If nothing happens in the discussion, it is relisted for further consensus, buying it another seven days. This may be repeated until a consensus is reached. But the fact remains, you should not assume that this is going to buy you any time - it's not always a safe bet.

On the other side of the coin, if we are talking about deleting it, and discussion is pointing in that general direction, it likely will be deleted - and trying to prevent us from deleting it by solely arguing the merits in the discussion is not necessarily going to help. You still need to prove to us that it is, indeed, notable.


 * Don't threaten us with anything you think you can do to make our lives difficult

This includes, but is not limited to, flaming us, disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point, argumentum ad hominem, or even threatening legal action. That last one can get you banned in a heartbeat - if you're doing that, then we can only assume that you are going to take this seriously, and therefore, we must take it seriously accordingly - and thusly, you run the strong risk of being blocked for a period of time. See that link for why this poses a problem.


 * Finally, don't do anything we shouldn't have to tell you not to do

As in the link provided here, we should not have to tell you not to stuff beans into your nose. In other words, please use some common sense in your arguments in favor of keeping the article.

Solutions to fix your articles
Perhaps the most obvious solution is to bring in information from reliable sources that indicates that the subject meets our general notability guidelines

Other Thoughts
Perhaps a good comparison is to being sued. In most countries, being the defendant in a lawsuit is not a surefire guarantee that you're going to lose the case (and, accordingly, every dime in the bank), it is simply a summons for you to show up to a court to state your side in a story. A third party reviews this, and a final decision is made when all available is presented. Similarly, by having your favorite article in AfD, we are simply reviewing and discussing it for deletion. We may come up with better information for the article, but it's probably going to be up to you to do so if you think the article should be kept - especially if you're defendingn an article.

To put it simply, the above guidelines will help to change our minds. Do your research. Google is very much your friend here - we may even give suggestions. Ask questions, please. We'll give you pointers.

One thing not to do, of course, is to simply declare how much you like the article. That simply doesn't help.