User:DennisTheTiger/projects/Wikipedia:Change Our Minds

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If you are reading this, odds are good that you have not only commented on an article being submitted for deletion (or deletion review), but you are also wondering just how to save it, whether you've said so or not.

The short answer: you need to change our minds, especially if the vast majority of so-called "votes" here say "delete" or somesuch.

See, we here at Wikipedia are looking for simple standards that an article needs to be upheld to: in particular, notability and verifiability. That's just two of them, and there are other subsections that you'll probably be pointed to if your article is a biography, about a band, about a song, about a mall... you name it, it's there. We are not seeing this, and that's not only why we're saying "delete", odds are pretty good that this is why it's in Articles for Deletion to begin with.

There are, of course, exceptions. Bad faith nominations for deletion get dealt with pretty quickly.

So that said, we're generally not prejudiced to deletion.

Perhaps a good comparison is to being sued. In most countries, being the defendant in a lawsuit is not a surefire guarantee that you're going to lose the case (and, accordingly, every dime in the bank), it is simply a summons for you to show up to a court to state your side in a story. A third party reviews this, and a final decision is made when all available is presented. Similarly, by having your favorite article in AfD, we are simply reviewing it for deletion. We may come up with better information for the article, but it's probably going to be up to you to do so if you think the article should be kept - especially if you're defendingn an article.

To put it simply, the above guidelines will help to change our minds. Do your research. Google is very much your friend here - we may even give suggestions. Ask questions, please. We'll give you pointers.

One thing not to do, of course, is to simply declare how much you like the article. That simply doesn't help.