Template:AfD footer
From Free net encyclopedia
First, be certain that deleting the page is what you want to recommend. If you can improve the article instead, do so. Consider if it might be better to redirect the article, rename it, merge it into another existing article, or mark it for cleanup; you can do those boldly without listing the page here.
Also, the only pages that should be listed here are articles and their associated talk pages. Go to the appropriate pages to nominate templates, categories, redirects, stub types, pages in the Wikipedia namespace, user pages, or images and other media, or to report a copyright violation.
Before nominating a new article created minutes ago, reflect on the fact that many good articles started their Wikilife in pretty bad shape. Unless it is obviously a hopeless case (in which speedy deletion may be in order), consider other approaches, such as sharing your reservations with the article creator, mentioning the problems you have identified on the article's discussion page, and adding an appropriate template to the article's page, for example {{importance}}.
Consider notifying the creator and/or main contributors of the article that you are nominating the article. For your convenience, you may use {{AFDWarning|Article title}}.
If you expect that the AfD page will be edited by newcomers to Wikipedia (possibly because the article itself is linked from some visible place outside Wikipedia), or if you notice this happening after the AfD page is created, you might want to insert the {{Template:AfdAnons}} template into it.
Finally, before using this process, consider whether the article is a candidate for speedy deletion. If it is, then that method should be used because it is more appropriate and it involves less work all round. See Wikipedia:Speedy deletions. Also, if deletion looks obvious but the page doesn't strictly qualify for speedy deletion, you can try the new lightweight Wikipedia:Proposed deletion process.
Note that if you are an anonymous user, who has not yet created a user account, you will not be able to complete the AfD process, as anonymous contributors are currently unable to create new pages (as required by step 2 below). If this is the case, consider creating a user account before listing an article on AfD.
WikiProject User scripts may have some scripts to streamline these steps.
Once listed, deletion discussions can, optionally, also be transcluded into an appropriate deletion sorting category, such as the ones for actors, music, academics, or for specific countries; which helps attract people familiar with a particular topic area. Please see the list of categories.
This template is a self-reference and so is part of the Wikipedia project rather than the encyclopaedic content.