Wikipedia talk:Give an article a chance

Meh

It's easier and less painful to delete junk while it's fresh. The last thing we want is people spending lots of time an articles that are only going to be deleted. Friday (talk) 00:37, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

The point is, if you don't know anything about the subject you have no way of knowing it's "junk"--give people a chance to edit the article to include the (unnecessary) assertion of notability, or to list sources. Kurt Weber 19:23, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

My own question with this argument is, what's the rush to create an article? It's not a time urgent "do it or lose it" situation at wikipedia. I have seen so many hurriedly created articles that say so little that they serve no purpose; they're little more than a Title at the top of a blank sheet of paper if the article doesn't even describe anything notable about the subject. Hasty article creation is as pointless at wikipedia as "reserving a front row seat". Why not create the article when a bit of worthwhile content is ready. I guess I don't understand how anything is lost by holding off on article creation until some basic information is ready to go in it. What value is there to a reader to find an article that says nothing worthwhile yet? Professor marginalia 23:28, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd say the point here is that the principle of don't bite the newbies is being extended to don't bite the new article either. Unless it is obvious nonsense, give it half a chance. Mathmo ^Talk 03:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

love the sinner, hate the sin- don't bite the newbie, but clean up after him. There are places to build articles other than on the mainspace (I'm doing that now with a couple of unimportant projects). How would this work? Would articles have a week? A month? It seems to me much better to take the barely-existing article, move the contents to the user's page to work on (tell them why) and then delete the article from the mainspace without prejudice. Epthorn (talk) 11:47, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I think a lot of editors (e.g. me) have a writing style of starting out with a minimal stub and then gradually expanding it as they think of more stuff to add. Another editor might add something to the stub, and then that inspires me to add something else, and over weeks, months or years it becomes a pretty good article. A nomination for deletion is annoying because it forces the issue; and speedying it is especially annoying because then it's necessary to argue about how CSD was applied incorrectly and/or get an admin to retrieve the deleted article text so the article can be reworked. Sometimes I'll be focusing on a larger project and will create a few stubs to clean up redlinks; the intention is to finish the project and then return to those stubs later. A stub is better than no article at all because at least it's a starting point. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Heavy_metal_umlaut&oldid=832727 . That substub really sucked when it was first added. Should we have speedied it? Sarsaparilla (talk) 13:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Sarsaparilla is right. Epthorn, what you're suggesting goes against the whole concept of a wiki. On a wiki, articles grow organically. One person starts it with a bit of basic information; other people see it and add what they know, and so on and so forth. Moving it to one's userspace, where almost no one else will see it, makes this collaborative editing and organic growth impossible. Give an article a chance; let a wiki be a wiki. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 15:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem with this essay

We really, really need the criteria for speedy deletion to stop the encyclopedia filling up with crap and non-notable stuff. A7, in particular, is vital. Still, if there's even a slight chance of notability, an AfD should be carried out.--h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 11:53, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

And in cases where there's no assertion of importance (such that it would fall under the current A7), why not just hit it with a PROD or perhaps some template saying that an assertion of its importance is needed, rather than summarily CSD'ing it. Give an editor a little more time to come up with evidence of importance. The distinction between A7 and notability, by the way, seems kinda blurry. Sarsaparilla (talk) 13:55, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be a lot on Wikipedia that is badly written and only of interest to fans of baseball, American football and professional martial artists (e.g see DAB page for surname "Milligan"). However I don't attempt to get rid of it, as I don't know its significance. Why do some people feel they have a right and duty to delete other people's faltering work, on topics in which they have no knowledge or interest and are unable to evaluate their notability or crucial position in a network of connected articles? Vernon White ^{. . . Talk} 14:26, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we should be looking at coordinating this with other policy pages, and upgrading it to a guideline. But remember its hard to distinguish between absolute junk, and what one or two editors think is absolute junk. DGG (talk) 04:05, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Not really. If it's blatant nonsense, or if its existence cannot be verified, then it's absolute junk. Otherwise, it's perfectly acceptable. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 06:14, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I perfectly agree with Vernon White - "importance" is a very contextual topic and wikipedia is not meant to be country or culture specific. I have faced this same bias earlier and have seen people suffering the exact same chain of events mentioned in the essay. Speedy deletion, especially, should be tempered. Nshuks7 (talk) 06:38, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Criteria for Stubs

I saw this quote in the Community Portal: "Stubs should only be deleted when there is no reasonable hope that they will ever cease to be stubs." For what it's worth, I'm not sure every encyclopedia article needs to be lengthy. I've written a number of stubs that (I humbly think) are notable, but will never be more than stubs. For instance Albinus was an important Platonist philosopher who belongs in an Encyclopedia, but we simply don't know more than two paragraphs about him. Jonathan Stokes (talk) 07:43, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Article Security Advisory System Color Chart

In the interests of article security, it is important that new articles progress through these levels as rapidly as possible. Indeed, given the threat posed by new page patrollers armed with Twinklified speedy deletion templates, it may be advisable to work on new articles offline and post them to Wikipedia only when they are fully ready for successful FA candidacy.

Collaboration schmollaboration.

Article Security Advisory System Color Chart [ ]

Label	Threat Level	Description
Stub {{Stub-Class}}	Severe	Severe risk of deletionist attack.
Start {{Start-Class}}	High	High risk of deletionist attack.
B {{B-Class}}	Elevated	Significant risk of deletionist attack.
GA {{GA-Class}}	Guarded	General risk of deletionist attack.
A {{A-Class}}	Guarded	General risk of deletionist attack.
FA {{FA-Class}}	Low	Low risk of deletionist attack.

Synthesized from Homeland Security Advisory System and Template:Grading scheme.

Chin Chill-A Eat Mor Rodents (talk) 16:49, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Does nayone read these?

Why is it that nobody follows this page, or any others like it? It's here for a reason. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avianmosquito (talk • contribs) 14:53, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Checks and Balances in the Articles for Deletion Nomination Process

There needs to be better checks and balances in the process of how articles are currently nominated for deletion, to prevent notable topics from being deleted without actual qualification per Wikipedia article deletion guidelines. This is a significant problem, because it is very likely that notable topics are being injustly deleted. It's easy to nominate an article for deletion and then type five or six words and wait to see if an article will be deleted, whereas it takes more time to refute nominations. Perhaps there should be more sophisticated criterion to nominate articles for deletion. As it is now, anyone can nominate any article without providing a just rationale for doing so, and can instead simply base the nomination upon basic, generic and inspecific statements such as "doesn't pass general notability guidelines", while not specifically stating which parts of the guidelines they are supposedly referring to. If nobody comes along to correct an injust or baseless nomination, the article is then deleted based upon unqualified, general statements that don't actually correspond with the required source searching per WP:BEFORE prior to nominating an article for deletion. This definitely makes it very easy for people to censor Wikipedia, for whatever subjective reasons. Here's how it's done: an article is nominated for deletion and an AfD entry is created, a generic rationale is provided to misqualify the deletion without actually checking for reliable sources to establish topic notability. Afterward, if nobody comes along to correct the faulty nomination, the article is deleted. It's also easy for people to message one-another to delete articles, often per an "as per nom" rationale, while disregarding the actual notability of topics. If nobody comes along and provides an objective analysis to refute the deletion of an article in which the topic is actually notable, nominated per generic statements and without the required source searching prior to nomination, then the article disappears. Hopefully Wikipedia can introduce better checks and balances to prevent this type of easily accomplished, simple censorship. One idea is to include a requirement prior to article nomination for deletion in which the nominator has to state, or check-box on a template, that they've performed the required minimum search in Google Books and in the Google News Archive required by WP:BEFORE, and in Google Scholar for academic subjects, as suggested in WP:BEFORE. This would be a simple addition to the AfD nomination process that would add significant integrity to the process, and would also encourage users to follow the proper procedures.

Please place responses regarding this matter here on this Wikipedia talk:Give an article a chance Discussion page below, rather than on my personal talk page. In this manner, other users can view and respond to responses. Thank you. Northamerica1000 (talk) 08:08, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Users interested in this discussion should reply at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Checks and Balances in the Articles for Deletion Nomination Process, where it is receiving more attention. Cheers. lifebaka++ 13:17, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

• Please refer to: Wikipedia talk: Articles for deletion— Checks and Balances in the Articles for Deletion Nomination Process. Thank you. Northamerica1000 (talk) 17:53, 22 September 2011 (UTC)