User:DennyColt/Forthepeopledraft

For the people

Please read also the introduction of this essay on making solid arguments in deletion discussions if you came via a direct link to this subsection.

Examples:
Delete We don't need this, causes more problems than it's worth. --F_T_G_O_T_c 13:21, 5 March 2003 (UTC)
Delete Navel gazing at its worst, we don't support x-y-z... --For the good of the community. 21:18, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Arguments that fall outside of policy, or rely on a person's own view on what the community believes, aren't particularly helpful or needed unless they can be backed with evidence of the same. Whether an article is deleted or not is a function of community consensus based on the key policies and guidelines such as WP:ATT, WP:V, and WP:RS. Deleting something because a group of editors feel an article or subject shouldn't get any validation/endorsement,or because some have collectively determined that the Wikipedia community doesn't care for it, or "for the good of the community," is an ineffective and unhelpful argument for articles in the main name space. Whether or not we as editors like, care about, or think something is good for our sense of community doesn't matter--what matters is, will someone try to look this up online, via Wikipedia, and does the information we have pass our core article policies? If one (or more) of us doesn't like x, doesn't think we need y, or thinks that z may someday cause a problem, simply ignore, or keep watch on it--removing it for our own good is not valid, as what we do is for the readers of the encyclopedia, not our personal tastes or predictions on future editor activity about that topic. Keep in mind, that issues involving legalities, WP:BLP, and WP:OFFICE issues aren't part of this, but seperate: they can be valid deletion reasons, but say that is why you support deletion. Saying that we should "delete this article, to stave off future disruption," isn't valid--and it assumes supreme bad faith of your peers, because it assumes that a minority of your peers will practice disruption later on Wikipedia to get their way later. If such a thing happens, it's a problem with those editors that don't conform to the community standards--not a problem with the article itself.