Welcome

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Welcome to Wikipedia. To find out more about how to make useful contributions, take a look at the welcome page. To stay in Wikipedia, an article has to be about something notable, that is, of general interest. Click on notability for an explanation of what that means, and notability (books) for more detail about books. Also, it must give independently verifiable sources. Articles that don't meet these requirements are deleted. Follow the links below to learn more:

  1. To find out more about creating articles, read the introduction, tutorial, and guide to creating your first article.
  2. Do not write articles about yourself, your company, your band, or your best friend - that's a conflict of interest.
  3. Wikipedia is not an advertising service.
  4. For experiments, please use the sandbox. JohnCD (talk) 20:53, 25 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

The Little Spain Chronicles

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A proposed deletion template has been added to the article The Little Spain Chronicles, because another editor is suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add {{db-author}} to the top of the page. JohnCD (talk) 20:53, 25 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

November 2007

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  Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, we remind you not to attack other editors, as you did on User talk:JohnCD. Please comment on the contributions and not the contributors. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Acroterion (talk) 02:36, 26 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Answers to your question

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Addressing other editors as "you fucking prick" is not going to get you any respect - what will happen is (a) people won't answer you and (b) if you go on like that, you will get blocked from editing.

But I will have one try at explaining to you what is going on and what Wikipedia is about. All the information is there, in links from the "Welcome" paragraph st the top of your user page, but there is a lot of information there, so I will try to help by giving you some direct links to the most relevant bits.

Why was the article marked for deletion?

Although Wikipedia allows anyone to edit, and anyone with a user account to create articles, it has strict standards for what is allowed to stay in. Articles have to be about something generally interesting enough - the Wikipedia term is "notable" - and the information has to be backed up by independent, reliable sources. Detailed standards have been worked out for what counts as notable: see Notability in general and Notability (books) in particular - the book needs to have been the subject of independent articles or reviews. Unpublished work won't meet that, and Wikipedia is not a crystal ball says that what might happen in the future is not generally suitable for an article.

So I am afraid the article you are writing, about your unpublished writing project, is never likely to get accepted as a Wikipedia article. That's not my decision: it's just not the sort of thing Wikipedia is for. There are websites out there which would be happy to let you post about it (Myspace? Facebook? I put "Websites for writers" into Google and a lot came up, but I don't have time to check them out) ...but Wikipedia is not one of them. An advantage of one of those sites is that it would be your article - once you have put an article in Wikipedia you don't own it, anyone else can edit it and people probably will.

"Why is it that a contributor like you can suggest the article for deletion?"

WP is good at encouraging people to contribute, less good at getting them to understand what's wanted. So a lot of unsuitable articles flood in. Ordinary editors, like me, help out by looking at them as they come in and putting tags on ones that aren't suitable or need improvement. The worst ones get a "speedy delete" tag, an admin looks down the list and if he agrees they're gone. Others get a "Proposed Deletion" tag which explains what's wrong and stays there for five days, during which time anybody can improve the article and remove the tag. At the end of five days, if the tag is still there, the article goes, but if you read what the tag says you'll see that anybody, including you can remove the tag for any reason. That stops the PROD process. If someone still thinks the article unsuitable, it would go to "Articles for Deletion", AfD. There it sits in a list, 100 or more articles added every day, with a statement by the person who put it there about why he thinks it should go. Any editor can add their opinion. At the end of five days, an admin decides what the consensus is - not on a vote basis, but on the arguments presented. More about all this in WP:DEL and Help, my article got nominated for deletion!

"I want to finish this article before it gets deleted"

The PROD doesn't expire till 30 Nov. If you take the PROD tag off that stops the PROD process; then the article would go to AfD which takes another 5 days. As I've explained above, I don't think it would survive AfD - that isn't my decision, it would be a consensus of all those who look at it. So you have some days to finish it; but wouldn't it be better to find a web site that wants this sort of thing and would let you keep it?

" ...or I will just keep remaking it."

...and it will keep being deleted. I have known an article recreated 8 times. In the you end would get blocked from editing, and the title would get "salted" to prevent you recreating it under another user-name. A waste of everyone's time and energy. Better to find somewhere else for it. JohnCD (talk) 17:44, 28 November 2007 (UTC)Reply