User:Suryadas

Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopædia (WP:NOT)
After an unpleasant encounter with a group of deletionists, I've become an enthusiastic inclusionist.


 * Information that is verifiable should never be deleted. People come to Wikipedia for information, and although I support deletion of test-pages or pure junk, I don't believe that deleting information does any good to Wikipedia. The essense of any encyclopedia is the supply of information, and as wikipedia is not a paper dictionary we have the unique ability to provide volumes of information without having to worry that it will not appeal to everyone. Information need not appeal to everyone in order to be useful.


 * Notability (WP:N) is counterintuitive to what I see as the nature of Wikipedia. Any encyclopedia can write an article on London, but Wikipedia can write articles on neighborhoods of San Jose. Including information that is "non-notable" provides more information to the people who are looking for it, and it doesn't harm those not looking for it. Someone looking at The Simpsons could click on Recurring jokes in The Simpsons, click on Tube Bar prank calls, and find out the origin of the popular Simpsons gag. Imagine if, in the same manner as the Simpsons, you could find out detailed information about all of the articles encountered while surfing random articles. Imagine if all of the facets of every esoteric topic could be looked at in the same manner as the Simpsons. The articles may be short, and rarely accessed, but just because a topic isn't popular doesn't mean it doesn't deserve a detailed encyclopedic article. We should embrace non-notable articles, because the ability to cover every topic imaginable should be the goal of an encyclopedia.


 * Bad articles are still articles. If a user created an article, most likely there is some information contained within that article. Whether it's formatted horribly, has POV, grammatically incorrect, or using some copyrighted material, there is information contained within. It's better to inprove than to destroy. Substandard material will eventually improve; if that's too slow for you then be bold and do something about it. Wikipedia cannot become the total sum of all human knowledge if we delete the information that people can find nowhere else.