 | A fact from Erica Kennedy appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 26 June 2012 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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Stub
editI just created this article based on the news report of Kennedy's death. It's the first article I've ever created so please be patient with me. I know it's a stub that needs a lot of work and any help you can offer is appreciated. Feel free to discuss my new "child" with me at my talk page. Guyovski (talk) 02:37, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
== Proposed deletion discussion ==
I have to express some concern that the deletion tag was placed on this article seconds after I created it, the only notification I received was a template on my talk page, and I don't have an opportunity to discuss the merits of deletion in any forum that other people are likely to know exists. The latter especially makes it unlikely that there will be any discussion of issues involving multiple editors. So the way this matter has been handled may be within the letter of Wikipedia policy, but I see it as heavy-handed and unkind.
As to the substantive issues, this article is, in my opinion, written in an encyclopedic style, so I don't agree that it is a news report. I also assert that the subject of this article has sufficient, if minor, notability to merit a Wikipedia article. I acknowledge that this article has significant drawbacks in being a stub and relying on only one source, but I have already created a talk page entry asking for assistance in expanding it. I am a very new editor and need such help. Many other articles are even shorter stubs with even worse referencing but they have not been proposed for deletion, and I have personally seen articles with NO cited sources that have not been proposed for deletion. Consistency demands that this article be given a fair chance to survive.
I have not removed the deletion tag from the article because I want to be more fair to the editor who placed it on the article than that editor has been to me, namely, by giving that editor an opportunity to respond to what I have said here. Anyone else who wishes to respond is of course welcome to. Guyovski (talk) 03:01, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
New authorship
editAs per my talk page, I am taking the position that I am no longer the original creator of this article. What I originally wrote was an encyclopedia entry, but it was totally rewritten to become just a bare news report of Kennedy's death. That appears to be the form in which the editor who proposed deletion found it, and her recommendation to delete it now strikes me as understandable, and a recommendation with which I fully agree. For that reason, I am retracting everything I said in the above section and editing it with strikethrough. The article is being rapidly improved and looking more and more encyclopedic, but it no longer has any connection whatsoever to what I originally wrote, which was my only contribution to the article. As a result, I am ceding authorship of this article to anyone who wants it. All material on my talk page that relates to this article will be purged as clutter once other editors have had an opportunity to make copies of it. I plan to wait 24 hours before I do the purge. Thank you for your time. Guyovski (talk) 04:02, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
- It is fairly common for newly created articles to go through an immediate deletion discussion; you would not believe how many articles we see about bands that have never played outside of their garage, biographies of the east podunk dogcatcher (1930-1942), etc. WP:PRODs are especially common; a prod is just someone saying "hey, I think this should be deleted. Does anyone object?" It turns out that a lot of those garage band article creators never look at the page after creating it. It's pretty normal for the article creator to deprod, which is often followed by an WP:AFD discussion. The key is to not take it personally, but instead look at the reason given for the proposed deletion and try to fix the problem (which usually turns out to be a notability issue).
- In this case Cindamuse deprodded it herself/himself, but let me give you some hints for dealing with prods and afds: first you should study Wikipedia:Proposed deletion, which is linked to in the prod notice. if you study that page, you will see a link to Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people. Study that one too. Also useful: Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines to cite in deletion debates and Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion. None of this applies now, because the article is not currently up for deletion, but these are things worth knowing.
- We also have a nice guide at Wikipedia:Your first article. I highly recommend it.
- Right now the page is marked "This page is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring." so it is best to sit back for a while and see how it goes. I have often been pleasantly surprised after I created an article and it blossomed under the care of other editors into something much nicer than what I originally wrote.
- You will always be the original creator of this article, no matter how many changes are made to it. On the other hand, once you written an article, you no longer own it. Anyone can edit text that you have written, as each edit page clearly states. See Wikipedia:Ownership of articles to learn more. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:02, 19 June 2012 (UTC)