Notability is now considered a guideline. In the spirit of respecting consensus, I am reworking this philosophy to reflect and respect this.

This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

When I first started paying attention to Articles for Deletion, I quickly decided it was torture. The problem was that, even with notability guidelines, notability nevertheless always seemed very subjective.

This all changed when I stumbled across a user page whose author argued that the three four Wikipedia policies (NPOV, verifiability, no original research, and biographies of living persons) are the most appropriate criteria for deciding whether to keep an article or not. This is now my philosophy as well.

• I will vote delete on an AFD article in any of the following circumstances. (However, in certain circumstances, I will vote to change the article to a redirect, rather than to delete it entirely.)
  • The article is original research.
  • The article is not verifiable, having no outside sources that can be cited.
  • The article is incurably point of view. However, if the article in my opinion could be made NPOV, I will vote for clean-up rather than deletion.
  • The article is not appropriate for Wikipedia for other reasons.

• I will vote merge for articles that are not in any of the circumstances above, but which can never be expanded to sufficient size to be a good article, much less brilliant prose.

• I will generally vote keep on an article if it is not in any of the above circumstances. Wikipedia is big and disk space is cheap. It's also not a paper encyclopedia limited by weight or expense. If article content meets official policy, in my opinion there is no need to delete it.

Comments are welcome on this subpage's talk page.