User talk:Yy-bo/on deletion

I came across this from the link on the talk page of Uncle G's essay; nicely written. It certainly has the feel of personal expierence - I wouldn't have imagined the number of complications related to "strong language", though they make sense - but the advice is good. Thanks for writing it. JesseW, the juggling janitor 19:48, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Sources! Sources! Sources!

One tip to give to people whose articles face deletion is the "sources! sources! sources!" mantra. Articles that cite sources are rarely even nominated for deletion, let alone deleted. Sources are the only way to counter charges of unverifiability and original research. And a article that is clearly based on sources that (because it cites them) editors can look at and read for themselves how extensively a topic has been covered outside of Wikipedia, and by whom, is often the best argument.

I've seen editors frustrated at their collections of "pet" articles coming up for deletion. Part of the frustration has, however, been the result of their very own actions. They haven't cited sources, in some cases growing whole collections of articles for months and years without citing a single source anywhere. Whereas citing sources, right from the start, and working from those sources, would usually have saved them all of the extra work of having things go through AFD (in part because it would have ensured that they were always unequivocally within encyclopaedic territory, and demonstrated this to others). Uncle G 11:20, 13 September 2006 (UTC)