Wikipedia:Deletion is not cleanup
 | This is an essay on Wikipedia:Deletion process. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: If an article on a notable subject can be improved through normal editing, do not put it through a deletion discussion. |
Wikipedia is a work in progress, and as such, some articles may be in better shape than others. In some cases, an article may be in such bad shape that the only way to fix it is to rewrite the whole article from scratch. A misconception about this idea, however, is that a user might interpret this as meaning that the article should be deleted first and then recreated, which in turn would lead the user to subject the article to a deletion discussion.
The problem
[edit]If the subject of an article has been proven to pass notability guidelines, there is no need for a deletion discussion. Articles are listed from time to time at the Articles for deletion page with the rationale being something along the lines of, “This article is a mess. It needs to be rewritten.” Discussions like that are often speedily closed and the article kept because that is not a valid criterion; besides, if the article needs to be rewritten, that is what the {{rewrite}} template is for. If an article can be improved through normal editing, simply fix it, or else fix as much of it as you can and consider leaving the rest of your concerns in a new section on the article's talk page.
Exceptions
[edit]In some cases, an article about a notable subject should be deleted, if it is determined that the article falls under one of the criteria listed at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion (CSD), such as {{db-copyvio}}. Such articles can be easily tagged with a CSD tag using Wikipedia:Twinkle, upon which an administrator will come along and take the proper action, without having to wait for the end of a week-long discussion.
Discussion driving cleanup
[edit]There are a great many pages in Wikipedia, all in varying states of quality. Some are highly watched pages that a great many editors are willing to devote time and effort into fixing. Others are the overlooked creation of a single editor who may no longer be part of the project. How should one focus attention to these poor quality articles? Here are some strategies editors have used:
- Fix the problems yourself. If you think it's a problem that needs fixed right now, then stop looking for a way to make someone else do the work, and fix it yourself right now. Remember that if you're "too busy" for this problem, then everyone else is likely too busy, too. A quick copyedit to remove contentious matter about living people that is also unsourced or poorly sourced, unencyclopedic trivia, promotional and advertising language, and other obviously inappropriate content may solve many problems. Similarly, if you were thinking about the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion process, you were going to have to search for reliable sources anyway as part of the WP:BEFORE process, so do it now, and if you find any, put them in the article yourself.
- Add a relevant maintenance tag and wait. It is best to add only a small number of maintenance tags to an article, so that people will be directed to the biggest problems. Maintenance tags may linger unaddressed for years, especially on low-traffic pages. This is often unsatisfactory to the occasional editor whose goal is to make someone else fix the article immediately, but various backlog reducing projects use these tags and categories to organize their work.
- Use the talk page. If you see a problem in an article, and you are actually unable to fix it yourself, then start a discussion on the talk page about what needs to be fixed, how you could help fix it, and what help you need. Use {{Edit protected}} and similar templates if you are unable to fix the problem in the article due to page protection.
- Ask individuals for help. You can contact past editors of this article or of closely related articles and ask them to improve it. Remember that Wikipedia is not their job, and you are not their boss giving them a work assignment. You are a friend asking them to do you a favor. They are free to ignore or decline your request, so think about how you could make your request more appealing. Can you offer to do a favor for them in return? Can you make your request smaller, simpler, or more fun?
- Ask groups for help. The talk page for the article may list a WikiProject, which is a group of editors who like working together to improve Wikipedia's content. Active groups are usually willing to answer questions and give advice. You can also ask for help at content-focused noticeboards and the village pumps.
- Abusing the articles for deletion process to get immediate but short-term attention. Nominating the article for deletion usually brings attention to an article, and sometimes the result is that an editor will drop everything they're doing and make a heroic effort to improve the article before the end of the AFD discussion. However, AFD nominations that are obviously meant to prod others into improving an article also sometimes end with a Wikipedia:Speedy keep #3 ("The nomination is completely erroneous. No accurate deletion rationale has been provided"), as snowball keep, or with evidence of notability being provided in the AFD discussion without improving the article itself. If you make a habit of doing this, then you may be topic banned from AFD.