 | This is an essay on the deletion policy. 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: Don't vote to merge at an AfD discussion just to go for a middle ground. Make sure there's notable content that can be merged. |
It is common in deletion discussions for editors to advocate merging the article into another article as an alternative to deletion. While this may represent the best outcome in some cases, like when subjects lack independent notability but may still deserve mention in another article, the number of AfD discussions closed as merge can create a significant backlog in articles to be merged. It is not uncommon for some of these articles to remain in this backlog for many months. Therefore, merge !votes should be avoided if used only as a middle ground. Instead, editors should always ask themselves, "What should be merged"?