| Revision as of 14:11, 29 March 2002 view sourceBrooke Vibber (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users10,086 editsm Usemod -> PHP← Previous edit | Revision as of 18:55, 11 April 2002 view source Stephen Gilbert (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users3,700 edits removed out-dated sentenceNext edit → | ||
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| ] have the ability to permanently delete pages within the system. Administrators necessarily must use their best judgment in making this decision |
] have the ability to permanently delete pages within the system. Administrators necessarily must use their best judgment in making this decision. | ||
| The PHP software permanent deletion command deletes not just the present content of a page (which is something that anyone can do--but also something that anyone can restore) but also the page's history, which makes the page impossible to restore from within the system. Hence, the decision to permanently delete an article is not to be taken lightly. | The PHP software permanent deletion command deletes not just the present content of a page (which is something that anyone can do--but also something that anyone can restore) but also the page's history, which makes the page impossible to restore from within the system. Hence, the decision to permanently delete an article is not to be taken lightly. | ||
Revision as of 18:55, 11 April 2002
Misplaced Pages administrators have the ability to permanently delete pages within the system. Administrators necessarily must use their best judgment in making this decision.
The PHP software permanent deletion command deletes not just the present content of a page (which is something that anyone can do--but also something that anyone can restore) but also the page's history, which makes the page impossible to restore from within the system. Hence, the decision to permanently delete an article is not to be taken lightly.
Here are some rules that those tasked with permanently deleting pages can generally be expected to follow in making the decision to delete or not:
- Use common sense and respect the judgment and feelings of Misplaced Pages participants.
- When in doubt, don't delete.
- Do not delete anything that might in the future become an encyclopedia topic. Hence, just because someone has written a completely worthless article about John Doe, that doesn't mean we should permanently delete the topic, John Doe, from the database.
- Do not delete anything that might possibly be a common misspelling of a title. Redirect those pages to the correct spelling. (This can actually result in higher traffic to the website. E.g., if philisophy is created, we might as well just redirect it to philosophy, since "philisophy" is one of the common misspellings of "philosophy.")
- Do not delete a personal essay or other content from the main article namespace without first posting a copy elsewhere (e.g., in a different namespace), unless the content is simply vandalism. We reject the notion that Misplaced Pages must become a repository for all manner of nonsense that happens to be posted on Misplaced Pages. 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.
- Generally speaking, delete pages that simply will never become encyclopedia articles, e.g., with titles that will never be misspellings, that represent completely idiosyncratic non-topics, etc. Bear the above rules in mind.
- For examples of pages both deleted and not deleted by admins, please see Misplaced Pages utilities/Deleted page titles.