AFD is evil

(English) This is an essay. It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikimedians but may not have wide support. This is not policy on Meta, but it may be a policy or guideline on other Wikimedia projects. Feel free to update this page as needed, or use the discussion page to propose major changes.

Voting on article to delete is the lazy way out of creating a decent encyclopedia, news resource, dictionary, etc. AFD is evil.

Some Wikimedians believe that users who use AFD would prefer to delete sub-par articles rather than improving the articles. A frequently related viewpoint is that the deletion of thousands of articles per day is entirely unreasonable.

"Notability"

After the rejection of "fame and importance" on the English Wikipedia as policy, a policy called notability was established which some consider to be very similar to Fame and Importance, but more POV and even less inclusive. While the "Notability" policy claims to apply objective criteria such as "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be notable." the actual usage seldom meets that lofty ideal. A frequent (mis?)use of the notability policy is that if the user has never heard of the topic it must not be notable and therefor the user can delete it.

Notability is not as long or as deeply established, or as widely supported a guideline as many others so it ought not be the sole reason for deleting an article, but it happens. This essay claims AFD is bad, now can I delete the Articles for Deletion pages?

Waste of server space argument

The argument that articles waste server space and must be deleted is incorrect because the AFD is typically longer than the article and is archived in several places. Hard disks are cheap anyway. Furthermore, "deleted" pages stay in the database, just out of public sight, ready to be undeleted at any time.

What to do instead

If something is not verified, verify it and cite it. If it's original research, replace it with decent sources or move to Wikiversity subject to its policy. If it's POV, make it non-POV. If it's vanity, look it up and make it not vanity or delete it speedily. You'll save so much time and space making articles better than deleting them. So please stop this nonsense.