User talk:Dreadsword

Welcome!

Hello, Dreadsword, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, one or more of the pages you created, such as Devil's Ballsack, may not conform to some of Wikipedia's guidelines, and may soon be deleted.

There's a page about creating articles you may want to read called Your first article. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on this page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few other good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Questions or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! - Sir Pawridge talk contribs 16:16, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed deletion of Devil's Ballsack

The article Devil's Ballsack has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

As per WP:N

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. - Sir Pawridge talk contribs 16:16, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Devil's Ballsack

What the article requires, but did not contain, is any real reliable sources to verify, or to demonstrate the notability of, the phenomenon. Wikipedia is not a place where any person can just write an article about anything they want and expect it to be kept just because they assert that it's true; you need to provide real media sources about it which demonstrate that it's true and that it's actually notable enough to an international audience to merit inclusion in an encyclopedia. Bearcat (talk) 17:09, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Whether Bigfoot (or the Loch Ness monster, for that matter) can actually be proven to exist as actual living creatures or not is not the point; there are reliable sources out there which specifically attest to their notability as cultural phenomena. It's not whether the creatures exist or not; it's that there's a verifiable and notable and genuine phenomenon of people debating whether they exist or not. That is, regardless of whether they're real, living creatures, their existence as notable concepts — as genuine, documentable, verifiable cultural memes — is properly referenceable.

At any rate, the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability in reliable sources — which means real media (newspapers, magazines, books, etc.) writing or broadcasting content about the topic which attests to its notability. Sworn affidavits don't cut it, and neither do photographs — I could, for example, quite easily provide photographic and legal proof that my cat exists, but that doesn't mean she belongs in an encyclopedia. We require real coverage in real media — because the question, again, is not just whether the thing exists, but whether it's significant or important enough to merit inclusion in an encyclopedia, by virtue of having garnered real coverage in real media.

And, for the record, although we have a variety of deletion processes for different circumstances, there's no requirement that we always choose the most generous process. If an article fits the criteria for immediate deletion, then it can be deleted immediately. Bearcat (talk) 17:57, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]