User:Geo Swan/opinions/When complying with BEFORE is not straighforward

When complying with BEFORE is not straighforward

WP:BEFORE calls on wikipedia contributors to conduct their own internet search on the topic of any article they are considering merits deletion. Weak articles should not generally be deleted, when the underlying topic they try to cover measures up to our notability criteria. Rather, in those cases, those articles should be kept, and fixed. . Contributors who found a weak article, they had considered merited deletion, that turned out the underlying topic was notable had multiple choices open to them:

1. they could place appropriate editorial tags on the article;
2. they could voice their concern(s) on the article's talk page, or another appropriate fora;
3. they could leave a question or comment on the User talk page of the contributor who they found had added material they considered problematic;
4. they could make the effort to actually fix the article, themselves;
5. they could decide their concerns weren't serious enough, after all, and merely put the article on their watchlist, and wait to see if anyone else took the initiative to fix it;
6. they could just walk away, because we are all volunteers, and other issues seemed to merit their attention.

Complying with BEFORE isn't always straighforward

1. Some individuals who nominate articles for deletion, do not seem to realize that the suggested web searches AFD offers won't work, when our article name has required disambiguation.

   Almost all topics that have names that require disambiguation require extra efforts to confirm or refute whether the topic measures up to our inclusion criteria. Further terms have to be added to the search criteria.

2. Some individuals may genuinely measure up to our inclusion criteria, and yet RS that substantiate their notability get drowned out, because they have an even more notable namesake.

   Extra efforts is required to confirm or refute whether the topic measures up to our inclusion criteria. Further terms have to be added to the search criteria.

3. Some individuals may get a new article started about them, following their participation in a high profile event, who had been notable, prior to the event. RS coverage of the notability factors that preceded their involvement in the recent high profile event get drowned out.

   Chesley Sullenberger - Captain Sully - the amazing pilot who landed on the Hudson River, with no loss of life, is an excellent example of this phenomenon. In the first 24 hours after the amazing landing there were about a dozen good faith but ill-advised contributors were convinced Sully was merely a BLP1E, and they tried to

   1. redirect the BLP to the event;
   2. nominated for speedy deletion;
   3. blanked the article;
   4. prod'ed the article;
   5. initiated an AFD.

   Adding further terms to the search criteria did not help, on the day Sullenberger landed on the Hudson. I found it necessary to plough through hundreds of references to find those that substantiated his notability, prior to the landing.

4. Another case in point - a contributor who tried to comply with BEFORE took an article about a law firm formed in 2006 and nominated it for deletion without performing web searches on the long histories of firms that merged to form the law firm.

Simple google tricks

• Google search terms can be amalgamated into a single term, by enclosing them in quotes.
• The keyword OR is interpreted as a boolean, and provides for more complicated searches.

"al qaeda" OR "al qaida"

searches for either "al qaeda" or "al qaida"

• The site keyword can be followed by a website, confining the search to webpages under that site. Or, -site can restrict the search to all webpages, except those under the site.

site:cbc.ca	restricts the search to webpages under http://cbc.ca
-site:mil	restricts the search to all webpages except those under http://*.mil