Note: this article was originally written in Spring 2004, in response to the belief of some editors that notability or importance should not be criteria for inclusion at all. Some of it sounds odd to me today, because even fairly strong inclusionists now seem to accept that a notability bar exists somewhere. They just have different ideas about where to put it.
I am a convinced deletionist.
That doesn't mean that I want to delete articles that aren't very good, or every article on something I haven't heard of, or every article on a non-academic subject, or anything like that. It does mean I'm convinced that while it may be hard to define what is "notable" or "important" or "encyclopedic", verifiability cannot be our only criterion for inclusion. In some cases, the best interests of our readership are served by NOT including an article, even if the information it contains is verifiable.