User:TerrorIsland

A Defense of Deletion
I think one can be a very valuable participant in the wikipedia community even if the only thing they ever do is nominate articles for deletion and argue on VfD.

Some people are probably able and interested in participating in literally every aspect of the process, from creating new articles to refining old ones, to standardizing layout and typographical editing. Creating good NPOV content takes both skill and effort. Not everyone is suited to make such contributions. Similarly, not everyone has the copy-editor's eye for typographical or stylistic errors. For some people, that just isn't the best way for them to participate.

However, there is more to having a good encyclopedia than just having lots of content. There is more to it than just having lots of content that has been edited well. A vanity article, even if well written and edited to perfection still does not belong on wikipedia.

It is good that a lot of people are willing to contribute new content and edit existing content, but I think that sometimes cutting away the dead weight might help. If there are less random two line dictionary entries, the odds of someone stumbling across an article that they can do something worthwhile with is increased.

I am not a rampant deletionist. I want a robust, comprehensive encyclopedia, and I think that it not being a paper encyclopedia means that there are things traditional encylopedias won't cover that Wikipedia should. But that doesn't mean that we should open the flood gates to anything at all.

I think that people often villify so-called 'deletionists', as though there is something sacrosanct about generating as much material (of indiscriminate quality or subject matter) as possible, and that trying clip away the dead branches of wikipedia is somehow trying to undermine its goal. Good editing always involved identifying what needs to be removed. A task as large as wikipedia will obviously have many people working on particular parts of the process. If Wikipedia is a body, complaining that someone only nominates articles for deletion is like complaining that your liver does do its fair share of pumping blood. That's not its job.

A simple guide to good argument
Imagine that some person suggests deleting some article, X, for the reason that it's non-notable.

Replying: "The subject of this article is notable, because ..." does address the initial complaint.

Replying: "That person has only contributed by nominating articles for deletion' does not address the initial complaint.

A suggestion about templates
Wikipedia could stand to have a lot more templates. What I mean by that is, make up a form for an article type (like "band") that has slots for all the relevant information. That way, (a) all band articles will look (stylistically) the same, and (b) anyone creating such an article will have a guideline to prevent them from making the article a stub. Then, on the page for creating an article, make it really easy to put the template in. Like a button that says, "insert template" next to a drop down menu of all the different article-type templates.