 | 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. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia lacks articles on a lot of notable subjects, and theoretically it should be possible to create an encyclopedic article on any of many as-yet written topics. We as editors should strive to improve articles to show they have merit and to have them better serve the project and its readers. |
Occasionally, an article on a notable topic might find its way to deletion discussion because of either lack of diligent research on the part of its nominator, or because the nominator has otherwise decided that an improvable but as-yet-unimproved article has no redeeming qualities unless improved by someone else. Through a diligent research in both online and offline sources, editors should be as proactive as possible in improving such articles to better them for both the project and for its readers.
Being an online database, Wikipedia can maintain improvable articles with potential so that willing editors are better able to improve them through the course of regular editing. Editors should always strive for quality... but unless something is in blatant violation of existing policy, we need to respect the efforts of others and their contributions. This means our not assuming that another's work has no merit simply because it is imperfect, and means that when finding an article that needs help, we editors should do our diligent best to improve the article so that all benefit.
As a community, it is up to us all to take a responsibility for improving articles. When or if an editor decides that fixing something is beyond his ability or beneath his dignity, and chooses to then relegate an improvable article to deletion, this makes the tasks of others in building this encyclopedia that much more difficult.