First I would observe that there was a nearly unanimous consensus in Wikipedia Articles for deletion Winzapper to retain the article Every established user who commented at the AFD besides you supported retention of the article Under such circumstances the AFD discussion would almost certainly have been closed as keep regardless of who closed it I doubt that there would be many administrators willing to delete an article as a result of an AFD discussion in which many established users supported retention of the article and not one established user besides the nominator supported deletion unless the article constituted a serious WP BLP violation a copyright violation or was otherwise exceptionally harmful or there was clear evidence that comments favoring retention were the result of canvassing abusive sockpuppetry or other unacceptable activity Why Simply put the strengths of arguments offered at AFD discussions do not exist as absolute quantities which are not subject to any reasonable dispute Instead the perceived strength of arguments varies as a function of the person evaluating them So an administrator who decided to delete an article in the face of essentially unanimous support of established users for retaining it would be putting himself in the position of claiming that his personal judgment regarding the merits of the arguments presented was so far superior to the judgment of every other established user who expressed an opinion at the AFD that his personal opinion properly outweighed nearly all others An administrator might properly advance such a claim only in rather exceptional circumstances which were not present here This is not to say however that AFD discussions are decided purely by counting the votes of established users they clearly are not Rather the applicability of the principle that AFD is not a vote is subject to limitations which are most clearly reached when there is absolutely no support by anyone except the nominator for the deletion of an article Administrators have been known on occasion to delete articles as a result of AFD discussions in which a clear majority of established users supported retention of the article if they personally believe the arguments for deletion to be more firmly supported by Wikipedia policy or otherwise more persuasive even in such cases however they generally require some substantial support for the deletion of an article before deleting it though the supporters of deletion may be distinctly in the minority As a corollary to the principle that administrators quite rarely delete articles against a nearly unanimous consensus for retention at AFD it is quite rarely the case that there would be a nearly unanimous consensus for the retention of an article that was in clear violation of Wikipedia policy or otherwise clearly needed to be deleted While it is true that Wikipedia s verifiability and notability policies require that articles concern topics of which there is significant coverage in multiple third party reliable sources and while the presence of such sources in the article itself at the time of the AFD provides the clearest possible evidence of notability there is no support in either Wikipedia policy or practice for the contention that any article which comes to AFD without the necessary sources to establish its notability and to which no such sources are added during the AFD discussion must therefore automatically be deleted Rather where it is reasonably believed that the sources necessary to establish notability are likely to exist the community may choose to retain the article even if such sources are not present at the time of the AFD So if someone were to nominate say our article on the National Electrical Code for deletion on the grounds of inadequate sourcing and failure to establish notability the article would properly be retained even if sufficient sources weren t produced during the AFD discussion Often the belief that acceptable sources can be found for an article is little more than subjective opinion Consequently arguments of the form keep I believe this subject is notable are valid at AFD if a sufficient number of established users assert them