Note: This page is neither official policy nor official guideline, nor an attempt to create official policy or official guideline. This is a personal statement by Andrew Lenahan, known on Wikipedia as Andrew Lenahan - Starblind.
As one of the most active commentators on Articles for Deletion, I like to think that my comments or "votes" take into consideration the individual merits of each article while remaining true to a central philosophy, a personal inclusion guideline of sorts. It can be simply stated thusly:
"A topic should have an article if a non-stub article can be written without resorting to trivia, unverifiable material, or unencylopedic material."
...and that's the gist of it. If you want the gritty details, here are some clarifications and explanations of the above.
- This doesn't mean that all stubs (or even substubs) should be deleted. The guideline merely states that a full article can be created, not has been created.
- What does "trivia" mean in this context? For the purpose of this guideline, trivia is any information that doesn't directly relate to the primary topic of the article. It does not mean detailed, highly-specific information related to the topic. For example, in an article about a politician, information about their pets and what sort of music they like is trivia. This is not to say that such information shouldn't exist in articles (provided, of course, it can be sourced), but no article should rely on such information to push it past stub length.
- What does "unverifiable material" mean in this context? unverifiable material is any information which cannot be backed up by reliable sources. Verifiability is one of the most serious problems facing Wikipedia and must not be taken lightly. Unverifiable material does not belong in any article, period. Come up with a reliable source, or it goes. End of story.
- As a word of encouragement, however, sometimes sources aren't as hard to find as it may seem. With the staggering volume of books, magazines, newspapers, and academic journals that come out every day, it's amazing what you can find if you look hard enough. An example: Somebody made a stub about the Axehandle hound, a mythological creature, and it was put up for AfD almost immediately as unverifiable. I was pretty sure I'd read about it somewhere but wasn't sure where, and Google wasn't much help. After several hours of looking, I managed to find not just one but several sources in actual printed books, and rewrote the article completely based on sourced material, which ended up getting kept. So yes, it is possible to find sources for obscure stuff if you're willing to look around.
- What does "unencylopedic material" mean in this context? Some things, while easily verifiable, just aren't encylopedic. For example, a local paper might report on a bad traffic jam, which makes it verifiable from a reliable source, but that doesn't mean an article should be written about the traffic jam. I plan to write a little mini-essay on this topic, with real-world examples, in the near future. The bottom line: verifiability is great, but not everything that's verifiable should have an article, or be part of an article.
And that's that. If you agree, disagree, have questions, or just want to hear yourself type, my talk page is open. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 15:42, 9 October 2006 (UTC)