Wikipedia:Deletion is not cleanup

This is an essay on Wikipedia:Deletion process. 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.

Shortcut WP:DINC

This page in a nutshell: If an article on a notable subject can be improved through normal editing, do not put it through a deletion discussion.

Wikipedia is a work in progress, and as such, some articles may be in better shape than others. In some cases, an article may be in such bad shape that the only way to fix it is to rewrite the whole article from scratch. A misconception about this idea, however, is that a user might interpret this as meaning that the article should be deleted first and then recreated, which in turn would lead the user to subject the article to a deletion discussion.