It's an important question. Sometimes I see rejection of actual good material,so it happens. Often it's well-meaning noobs running afoul of either the essential complexity (encyclopedias are hard) or the incidental complexity (Wikipedia's a bit of a beast). And sometimes it's people who are sure that THEY ARE RIGHT and HOW DARE THOSE PEOPLE. So we always need to look at specific incidents.

If you are a deployment engineer/Windows desktop dev, check out the article on installers. [1] Most of those are obsolete, small and pretty much useless. The one we've been using for 15 years is not listed. Check out the article history. Every time someone tries to update it and add modern, actually useful tools, someone else comes from the woodwork and deletes it. Some of the deletionists don't know what a repackager is.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_installation_software#...

Just an example, in my area of expertise. Some of the rejected edits were mine.

I looked at the last year or so of edits and didn't see anything obviously problematic. What edits specifically concern you?

OK, digging through recent history, the 12:23, 22 October 2020‎ deletion removed tools like Advanced Installer, InstallAware and RayPack. These are tools that actual deployment engineers, repackagers and Windows software developers use every day to do our job. They are also recommended by Microsoft for MSIX. [1]

I have no idea why they don't meet Wikipedia's "notability" criteria or why such a 10 or 20 years old tool has or hasn't its own page - and I don't care. The list left (other than InstallShield and WiX) is a joke and you can plainly see that none of those editors has any expertise in the field. The end result is that that article is useless or worse for anyone reading it. Which I thought was the whole point of Wikipedia.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/desktop/deskto...

Got it. The edit somewhat cryptically refers to WP:WTAF, which is an essay titled "Write the Article First"; its point is basically that one shouldn't litter articles with references to things that aren't actual pages.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Write_the_article_fi...

That you don't care about core Wikipedia values means that your attempts to edit it will always be frustrating for you. I get that they can be mysterious to outsiders, but unfortunately they're necessary. In particular Wikipedia isn't a place for people with expertise to come write things. It's a place where people with no particular expertise use expert material elsewhere to create an encyclopedia. That means every item must be traceable to reliable sources (which they call verifiable) and articles must have enough sourced material that you can write a basic article from it (which is what they call notable).

If you are an expert on this, then I'd suggest you write a signed article in some publication with a reasonable editorial apparatus, or in some other way that qualifies as a Wikipedia reliable source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources

Then you can mention the article on the talk page and a Wikipedia editor can look at incorporating the material. Or if you think a reliable source already exists, try mentioning that. But no, you can't just put in things you think are true on Wikipedia if you don't have sources. Because however much it might help for this specific case, allowing that generally would quickly make Wikipedia a garbage heap.

There was extensive discussion on the talk page about criteria for inclusion and one of those criteria is that only software that has a dedicated wikipedia page or with citations showing notability should be included on the list. It doesn't matter that you know something belongs on a list, you need to show that it belongs on the list.

Which I'm sure is a reaction to self-promoters trying to edit the page in hopes of boosting their thing to prominence. People who don't edit Wikipedia have no idea how much of a problem spamming attempts are. This can easily lead to beleaguered editors who are inclined to stomp on anything that looks like it might possibly be spam. That's a terrible experience for well-meaning first-time contributors and I'd love to see it improve. But I get how they end up that way.