User:Wheelchair Epidemic/Article Deletion Squadron



Please join us! All too often, an article about a perfectly trivial topic lies wounded, badly written, unsourced – but should its life be taken at Articles for Deletion? Yes! Put it out of its misery, for $DEITY's sake!

An article should not be deleted just because it is ill-formed. Oh no. Some writer worked hard on that article. But on the other hand, it's hardly our fault if it's unencyclopedic, fancrufty bollocks that stands as much chance of being a serious article as Boris Johnson is of being a credible politician.

Why is it important to read Articles for Deletion?


Every time an article is deleted, the contributions that were made to it are lost. Wikipedia administrators can access the information in deleted articles, but they are not necessarily experts on the article's topic or anything at all. Once an article is deleted, its content, value and appropriateness can no longer be evaluated by the general public. So if it hasn't got any content, value or appropriateness, it's better off gone, isn't it? Stands to reason.

In addition, the contributor who writes an article on a non-notable topic is likely to be inexperienced. If their first efforts are deleted, ideally, they will be discouraged and refrain from creating further articles, or even editing them and will leave the project.

This makes Articles for Deletion a very important place, one that deserves everyone's attention.

A common axiom is that "AFD is not cleanup". Wrong. It is. Think of it like the machines that suck the blockages out of sewerage systems. Dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

The question on whether a poor but improvable article ought to be deleted is a major point of contention, and has given rise to a large amount of waste of everyone's time, which could be better spent actually writing articles that would give the casual reader the idea that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, as opposed to some facially challenged (spotty) 13 year old's personal webpage.

What can one person do?
Firstly, nominate all of your own articles for speedy deletion G7, so that once deleted you will not have to worry about any other editor deleting them. In general, the Article Deletion Squadron is not about writing on talk pages as much as voting at AfD. You hear the cry "AfD is not a vote" a lot, but let's face it, it is, isn't it? Make your voice heard! If everyone who cares about preserving important topics votes "Delete" at one deletion discussion per day (or even one per year) the impact will benefit all our readers.

So ADELS wants to delete everything?
No. The Article Deletion Squadron (ADELS) is not about casting delete votes or making policy simply to ensure that nothing is kept. No, actually we lied about that. It is. Still, at least we don't hide the point.

What the CrapArticle template is for

 * Articles on non-notable subjects going through AfD that are undeniably utterly shit.

What the CrapArticle template is not for

 * Stuff that might actually be notable. Some of the stuff at AfD is.

Flag an article for Deletion
If an article has been tagged for deletion (Afd), and you feel it meets the above guidelines, then you can flag an article for obliteration by:


 * 1) clicking edit and
 * 2) adding the following line of text at the top of the page as shown in the example below:

If you are the main editor of the article tagged for deletion, then I'm not entirely sure why you're reading this. You need some other group of people that'll descend on AfD and vote Keep en masse. I'm not sure where you'd find them.

Example
You can flag an article for crapness by editing it to add the bolded text under the AfD tag, but within the two sets of tags, as in the below example using a Random Anime episode that went straight to DVD in 1987 AfD:



Removing a deletion tag
It is unhelpful, and possibly disruptive, to remove the deletion tag before the AfD is completed. The AfD process takes between one week and four weeks. Let the AfD closer remove it when the AfD tag is removed or the article (hopefully) is deleted. In all cases remain civil and assume good faith that other editors are working to improve articles. Even when they're not. No, really.

Tips to help delete articles

 * Browse Articles for Deletion periodically and consider tagging articles that you feel are really, really, bad.
 * Don't vote more than once on AfDs. That'd be really bad.

How to become a member of Article Deletion Squadron
To join simply add your name to our membership list; feel free to add your ideas to the project discussion page as well. Alternately, you may just express the opinion that certain articles don't meet our inclusion criteria. In that case, don't worry about joining our membership list, someone else will be happy to label you as a member in due time!

Then place this User Article Deletion Squadron on your user page:


 * Related projects
 * WikiProject Abandoned Articles
 * WikiProject Deletion
 * WikiProject Deletion sorting