Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators

Deletion guidelines for administrators

Even sysops should mostly use the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page when they think a page should be deleted. Every sysop should also read and understand wikipedia:deletion policy.

Deciding whether to delete

1. Whether a "rough consensus" has been achieved (see below)
2. Use common sense and respect the judgment and feelings of Wikipedia participants.
3. As a general rule, don't delete pages you nominate for deletion. Let someone else do it.
4. When in doubt, don't delete.

Candidates for speedy deletion

1. No meaningful content or history (eg "sdhgdf"). See patent nonsense.
2. Test pages (eg "Can I really create a page here?").
3. Pure vandalism (see dealing with vandalism).
4. Very short pages with no definition or context (eg "He is a funny man that has created Factory and the Hacienda. And, by the way, his wife is great.").
5. Reposting previously deleted content, where the page was not listed on votes for undeletion.
6. Pages created and edited solely by a banned user, after they were banned. (see bans and blocks). This is slightly controversial!
7. Personal subpages that have been listed on Personal subpages to be deleted.
8. Deleting a redirect that has no useful history, to make way for a non-controversial page move.
9. Temporarily deleting a page in order to merge page histories after a cut and paste move.

In these cases, sysops may choose to delete the page without it being listed on VfD, or after it has only been listed on VfD for a day or two, rather than the full week.

Opinions do differ as to the correct approach to pages with only external links. Copyright infringement is not an exception to the five day rule: see below.

Ideally, when a sysop deletes a test page or other page with no useful content, it is a good idea to put a note on the author's talk page explaining things, pointing them to the sandbox in cases of tests. Be friendly! Most everyone was new once.

Rough consensus

An aspect of Wikipedia that confounds many people is the fact that there is essentially no formal voting, and informal votes or straw polls are rare. The general rule on disputed topics is that Wikipedia has to come to "rough consensus," meaning that a very large majority of those who care must agree. The exact method of determining rough consensus varies from time to time, case to case, and person to person. The lack of voting has caused some very long delays for some proposals, but most Wikipedians who have witnessed rough consensus after acrimonious debates feel that the delays often result in better results. (And, if you think about it, how could you have "voting" in a group that anyone can join, and when it's impossible to count the participants?)

(with apologies to the "Tao of IETF") [1]

Administrators necessarilly must use their best judgement, attempting to be as impartial as is possible for a fallbile human, to determine when rough consensus has been reached.

On deleting pages

Here are some guidelines administrators should follow in making the decision to delete a page or not, when considering entries on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion.

1. When deleting a page one may or may not want to delete its talk page or any subpages as well. If not then, depending on the reason for deletion the content of the page to be deleted could be copied to the talk page, to understand what the discussion is about. The VfD discussion can be copied here also. See also Wikipedia talk:Archived delete debates.
2. Simply deleting a page does not automatically delete its talk page or any subpages. If you delete these as well, do that first, and then the main page.
3. If you delete a page, remove it from VfD as well.
4. Do not delete a page containing a personal essay or other content from the main article namespace without first posting a copy elsewhere (e.g., in a different namespace or on the meta), unless the content is simply vandalism. Wikipedia is not a repository for all manner of nonsense that happens to be posted. To be clear, however, a good faith attempt to write an encyclopedia article, no matter how poorly worded, biased, or otherwise flawed, will not be considered vandalism.
5. Copyright: See Wikipedia:Copyrights for deletion policy on copyright infringement (and m:Wikipedia and copyright issues and m:Avoid Copyright Paranoia for perspective).
6. Don't delete pages unless you know how to undelete as well! See Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages by sysops and wikipedia:votes for undeletion.
7. Redirects to deleted pages should be deleted or redirected elsewhere to avoid broken redirects.
8. If a given title should never have an article, such as an article on someone very obscure, then remove all links to it, making it an orphan.
9. If a given title should have an article, but the current content is useless, then consider listing it on wikipedia:requested articles
10. If an article title needs to be deleted but some of the content could be used in a different, existing article, copy the content to the new article with a comment like (moved content from really silly article title - see talk page for attribution) and copy the list of contributors from the history to the talk page, with a note asking people not to delete this history as it may be required for the GFDL.

See also:

• Wikipedia:Deletion policy