This is an essay on the deletion policy. 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.

This page in a nutshell: When participating in deletion discussions, WP:JUNK and WP:TNT take precedence over WP:DINC unless you yourself intend to fix the article in question.

The Articles for deletion process is a way for editors to discuss whether a certain article meets the criteria for deletion, as defined by the deletion policy. Oftentimes, however, upon encountering an article that is not, in its current state, fit for inclusion in an encyclopedia, an editor will nominate the article for deletion, even though the article can theoretically be fixed. Whether this should have been done in the first place is a valid discussion and not the focus of this essay.

Invariably, whenever this happens, users will !vote keep with comments along the lines of:

• Keep per WP:DINC. The topic is notable, so better to just tag the article with ((rewrite)) rather than delete it. JustTagIt, 01:01, 1 January 2001 (UTC)
• Keep Sources do exist [1][2]. All we need to do is add them to the article in the right places. This is salvageable. IFoundSources!, 23:28, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
• Keep This needs cleanup, not deletion. OP should withdraw nomination. DINCfan, 16:29, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

The problem with this argument is that unless you yourself are planning on fixing the article, by !voting keep you are contributing to the overall lack of quality on Wikipedia and no amount of commitment to our deletion policy justifies doing that. Yes, every article can be fixed, but the reality is that most little visited stubs won't be. Nominating for deletion may not have been the right initial solution, but once the article has been nominated, don't be the reason why it stays on Wikipedia.

It may be tempting to respond with:

You can't seriously be suggesting that we should !vote delete just because some editor doesn't like the article and decided to nominate it? That's extremist Deletionism.

That is, of course, a strawman argument. No one is saying that you have to !vote delete. There is no competition to see who can participate in the most deletion discussions; if a terrible article is nominated for deletion and you don't intend to fix it, just don't say anything. Let the discussion follow its course. The article may be end up being soft deleted, in which case it can always be restored. Worst case scenario, an administrator can always access the content of the deleted page and email it to you if you wish to use it as the starting point for a new article.

The fifth pillar and IAR apply as much to deletion as to updating article content. Deleting the article gives editors an opportunity to start fresh, which is far more likely to produce a helpful article than tagging an unhelpful one.