User:Daniel Case/Deletion

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"(A) pompous, holier-than-thou informationist(a) like Daniel Case ..." [1]

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If you've come here because I speedied or listed for deletion an article you wrote (in which case, read this first, and then this before you really get tempted to make a complete ass of yourself), often within minutes of you writing it, all I can tell you is that, yes, in a year on Wikipedia I have become a rather confirmed deletionist.

It began when I listed "Darth Dubyous," a non-notable neologism someone tried to start an article on as a fork from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (It was coined by film critic David Edelstein, and it's cute, but it didn't catch in the language. After two weeks of having posted a warning to that effect on the talk page, I figured out how to list it for deletion and did so. Nobody voted to keep, and it was gone.

A couple of weeks later, I clicked on the New articles link under "Did you know?" on the Main page and had my first encounter with Special:Newpages.

I didn't realize until then just how much crap people try to get on Wikipedia. I learned how to speedy and list that night and have never looked back (although I don't always do newarticle patrol. I have found it's an easier thing to do when you're stressed or in a bad mood and can't concentrate on other things).

I really, really hate vanity pages. I also dislike anything written in a promotional style. I would go further than Wikipedia's policy and delete anything written in clearly promotional language, no matter how notable the subject matter, just to emphasize the point that Wikipedia is not the Yellow Pages. If it's truly notable, it can be recreated without prejudice in the appropriate style. Sometimes, such articles are about notable subjects, and get kept after being rewritten.

So, if that's what I objected to in your article, look at everything else here, especially those articles similar to what or who you believe is notable enough for inclusion, and rewrite it appropriately so that it looks like you know what you're doing. When I see an article properly categorized, stubbed (i.e., not just with {{stub}} or even {{bio-stub}} (look here for all the stub subcategories) wikified and in the right format, I'm more inclined to cut the author a break instead of whipping out one of the "{{db}}" variants or {{subst:afd1}}.

An amazing amount of articles can be of defensible notability if they are written like everything else on Wikipedia (however, at this point, very few having to do with MMORPGs are, so just let that go).

[edit] Arguments not to use against deletion

• Who are you to decide what's notable? He/She/It's notable to me and my friends ...

Wikipedia has standards for what makes something notable. These have evolved over time and been developed through community input. There are separate standards for bands, people and companies. Whether you knew these existed or not before you went ahead and created the article (and remember the page where you created has a warning that your article may be deleted) is, to put it bluntly, irrelevant to whether it will be deleted or not.

• But I thought this was for anything ...

You may have been led to believe by media coverage of Wikipedia that "anything can be on" here. I'm sorry that you found out the hard way that it's not the case. Perhaps we would have less of these problems if media outlets took the time to better understand how Wikipedia really works. (I'm just waiting for us to get whipsawed after the inevitable story where someone kills themselves after their article gets deleted, or some fifth-grade class somewhere gets all upset when their class project gets deleted. Suddenly, we'll go from being irresponsibly permissive to irresponsibly prohibitive, with nary a trace of irony).

In any case, remember this simple rule:

Anyone can edit ≠ anything can be covered

• You're telling me this doesn't exist because you can't find it on Google? I know it exists!

We believe you. But there are many things out there which exist, yet aren't and will never be on Google. We're concerned here with notability, and we use Google as the quickest way to establish whether something or someone in an article can be verified and is as notable as other things here.