How do you respond to a Wikipedia Articles for Deletion nomination?

An Articles for Deletion nomination is a formal community process with a defined procedure. Engaging it correctly, on its own procedural terms, gives the article its best chance. Reacting around the process, concealing the COI relationship, or ignoring the nomination are the responses most likely to result in deletion.

How the AfD process works

• Any editor may nominate an article for deletion by filing a rationale on the AfD discussion page.
• The discussion runs for approximately seven days, during which any editor may argue keep, delete, merge, or redirect, citing policy and sources.
• At close, an uninvolved administrator reads the consensus of the discussion, not a head count, and decides the outcome: keep, merge, redirect, or delete.

First-response checklist (within the first 24 hours)

1. Read the nomination rationale carefully. Identify every specific policy ground the nominator has cited (notability, sourcing, neutrality, etc.). You need to address each one separately.
2. Disclose your COI in the AfD thread immediately. An AfD nomination draws scrutiny from experienced editors; a COI relationship discovered partway through a deletion discussion is far more damaging than one disclosed upfront. Use the standard paid-editor disclosure language.
3. Compile your best independent secondary sources before posting. Assemble every substantial independent piece that covers the subject directly, major outlet profiles, analyst coverage, industry recognition from editorially independent bodies. Gather these before writing your keep argument, not after.
4. Draft your keep argument around policy, not outcome. The argument must cite the relevant Wikipedia policy (WP:N, WP:GNG, WP:ORG, WP:RS) and show specifically how the sources satisfy it. A keep argument that reads as advocacy rather than policy reasoning carries less weight with the closing administrator.
5. Post a structured keep statement citing each source with its publication, the nature of the coverage, and the policy it satisfies.

During the seven-day window

• Monitor the discussion for new concerns raised by other editors and respond to each substantively and specifically.
• Do not edit the article directly during an active AfD, it signals that a COI party is making content changes under community scrutiny, which worsens the impression.
• If other editors raise sourcing concerns, add citations via the Talk page using the edit-request process, not by editing the article directly.
• Respond to factual mischaracterizations calmly and with citations; do not argue about the outcome or accuse the nominator of bad faith.

After the decision

• If kept: address any conditions the closing administrator noted. Strengthen the source record against future nominations.
• If deleted: do not recreate the article immediately, recreating a deleted article through the same channels leads to speedy deletion under WP:G4. The correct path is to build materially new independent coverage first, then re-submit through Articles for Creation with the prior deletion disclosed and COI acknowledged.
• If the deletion misapplied policy or had procedural errors: Wikipedia’s Deletion Review process (WP:DRV) allows the community to revisit a closure. This is a narrow channel, it applies to process failures or significant new information, not to relitigating a loss.