Misplaced Pages

:Guide to deletion - Misplaced Pages

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This is the guide to Misplaced Pages's articles for deletion (AFD) process, one of several mechanisms by which objects are considered for removal from Wikimedia. The AFD process is an implementation mechanism of the Deletion policy for articles (as opposed to images, redirects, etc.). It is supported by the companion speedy deletion process.

You may have come here because an AFD deletion notice was applied to an article that you wrote. Please read this guide to see what happens now and how you can contribute to the process.

Overview

All text created in the Misplaced Pages main namespace is subject to several important rules. These are, principally, the three cardinal content policies—Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view, Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, and Misplaced Pages:No original research—and the copyright policy, Misplaced Pages:Copyrights. Together, these four policies govern the admissibility of text in the main body of the encyclopedia; only text conforming to all four policies is allowed in the main namespace.

Contraventions of policy are dealt with in several different ways. Text which does not conform to the neutral point of view is usually remedied through editing; Users edit the article or passage to improve it, so that it reads neutrally.

Text that does not conform to any one of the remaining three policies, however, is usually removed from Misplaced Pages. If the text in question is a passage or section within an article that is otherwise satisfactory, it is usually removed by simply editing it out of the article. If, however, all or most of the article is problematic, the page itself may be removed.

Articles that contravene Misplaced Pages:Copyrights are listed on the project page for copyright problems for further action. Articles that contravene Misplaced Pages:Verifiability and Misplaced Pages:No original research are usually listed (or "nominated") for further consideration on Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion. This guide deals with the latter process.

Once an article is nominated for deletion, the Misplaced Pages community may discuss the merits of the article for a period usually no less than 5 days. The intent is to come to a consensus on whether the article under discussion really is unsuited to Misplaced Pages. The view of the community is held sacrosanct on Misplaced Pages; by tradition, the consensus opinion of the community about an article's disposition is always respected. At the end of 5 days of discussion, an experienced Wikipedian will determine if a consensus was reached on the fate of the article and will "close" the discussion accordingly.

General advice

Please do not take it personally

Please remember that the deletion process is about the appropriateness of the article for inclusion in Misplaced Pages. A deletion nomination is not a rejection of the author or an attack on his/her value as a member of the Misplaced Pages community. Therefore, please do not take personally a nomination of an article you've worked on.

Over time, the Wikipedians have invested a great deal of thought in the question of what may and may not be included in the encyclopedia. The cardinal article policies mentioned above form the core requirements for textual contributions to the mainspace. However, some wikipedians have also written a number of standards and guidelines that are intended to provide guidance in specific areas; note that such guidelines cannot supersede the requirements of the above policies. Please take the time to review the standards Wikipedians abide by in evaluating content.

Please be tolerant of others

Please remember that AFD is a busy and repetitive place. The people who volunteer to work the AFD process may seem terse, gruff and abrupt. They are not (usually) being intentionally rude. We value civility and always try to assume good faith. However, over a hundred articles are nominated for deletion each day. Experienced Wikipedians have been through thousands of deletion discussions and have read and thought through many of the same arguments many times before. For speed, some employ shorthands (described below) rather than typing out the same reasoning and arguments again and again. They are trying to be efficient, not rude.

Deletion discussions follow the normal Misplaced Pages talk page etiquette. Please be familiar with the policies of not biting the newcomers, Wikiquette, no personal attacks, and civility before contributing.

Sockpuppets are bad

One exception to the principle of assume good faith concerns the use of sockpuppets. This tactic is commonly employed by vandals and bad-faith contributors who create multiple user accounts in an attempt to bias the decision process. A close variation is to enlist "meatpuppets", people from outside Misplaced Pages to "run in" (for example, if my vanity article about a web forum is up for deletion and I post a call for other forum members to "help keep our website in Misplaced Pages".). Signs of these tactics are that a contributor's account was created after discussion began, that a contributor has few edits or that a contributor's other edits have been vandalism. Other Wikipedians will draw attention to such facts.

Unfortunately, (vandalism aside) such cases are notoriously hard to distinguish from good-faith contributors writing their first article or from anonymous users who finally decide to log in. If someone does point out your light contribution history, please take it in the spirit it was intended - a fact to be weighed by the closing admin, not an attack on the person.

Because of our past problems, opinions offered by new or anonymous users are often met with suspicion and may be discounted during the closing process. This decision is made at the discretion of the closing admin after considering the contribution history and pattern of comments. In practice, civil comments and logical arguments are often given the benefit of doubt while hostile comments are presumed to be bad-faith. Please note that verifiable facts and evidence are welcome from anybody and will be considered during the closing process.

You may edit the article during the discussion

You and others are welcome to continue editing the article during the discussion period. Indeed, if you can address the points raised during the discussion by improving the article, you are encouraged to edit a nominated article (noting in the discussion that you have done so if your edits are significant ones).

There are, however, a few restrictions upon how you may edit an article:

  • You must not blank the article (unless it is a copyvio).
  • You must not modify or remove the AFD notice.
  • You must not rename the article unless you make sure the page still links to the discussion page. This is most easily done by creating a redirect from "Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/New page name" to "Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Old page name". It's usually best to do so immediately before moving the article page, since this ensures no links are broken, even if somebody visits a page in the middle of the changes.
  • You should not turn the article into a redirect. A functioning redirect will overwrite the AFD notice. It may also be interpreted as an attempt to "hide" the old content from scrutiny by the community.
  • You should exercise extreme caution before merging any part of the article. If you are bold but the community ultimately decides to delete the content, all your mergers must be undone. (This is necessary in order to remain compliant with the requirements of GFDL. Although Mediawiki now displays author information for deleted articles, it has not yet been settled whether this fulfils the GFDL requirements for the case of merging deleted articles into other articles.) It is far better to wait until the discussion period is complete unless there is a strong case for merge under the deletion policy.

Deletion process

Main article: Misplaced Pages:deletion policy

Deletion of articles from Misplaced Pages occurs through one of two processes. So-called speedy deletion involves the scrutiny of only a few people before an article is deleted. The allowable criteria for speedy-deletion are deliberately very narrow. Articles which do not meet those narrow criteria or which might be controversial are discussed by the community through the AFD process.

Nomination

Before nominating an article please:

  • check the deletion policy to see what things are not reasons for deletion. Consider whether you actually want the article to be merged, expanded, or cleaned up rather than deleted, and use the appropriate mechanism instead of AFD.
  • investigate the possibility of rewriting the article yourself (or at least creating a stub on the topic and requesting expansion) instead of deleting it.
  • check the "what links here" link to see how the article is being used within Misplaced Pages.
  • check that what you wish to delete is an article. Templates, categories, images, redirects and pages not in the main article space (including user and Misplaced Pages namespace pages) have their own deletion processes separate from AFD.

If you still think the article should be deleted, you must nominate it and open the AFD discussion. Nomination is a three-stage process. Please carefully follow the instructions at the bottom of the Articles for deletion page. You must perform all three stages of the process. Nominations follow a very specific format because we transclude the discussion page onto a consolidated list of deletion discussions. This makes it more efficient for other participants to find the discussion and to determine if they have anything relevant to add. Incomplete nominations may be discarded or ignored. If you need help, ask.

Anyone can make a nomination including anonymous users. The nomination, however, must be in good faith. Nominations that are clearly vandalism may be discarded.

Nominations imply a recommendation to delete the article unless the nominator specifically says otherwise. (Some nominations are performed by experienced users on behalf of others, either because they are inexperienced with the AFD process or because the deletion recommendation was the result of a separate discussion.) However, many nominators explicitly indicate their recommendation, to make things clearer and easier for the closer.

Discussion

Discussion occurs on a dedicated discussion page, a sub-page of Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion named after the article.

For consistency, the form for the discussion is a bulleted list below the nomination text. You may indent the discussion by using multiple bullets. Mixing of bullets and other forms of indentation is discouraged because it makes the discussion much harder for subsequent readers to follow.

Sign any contribution that you make by adding ~~~~ to the comment. Unsigned contributions may be discounted at the discretion of the volunteer who closes the discussion.

Anyone acting in good faith can contribute to the discussion. The author of the article can make his/her case like everyone else. As discussed above, relevant facts and evidence are welcome from anyone but the opinions of anonymous and/or suspiciously new users may be discounted by the closing admin. Please bear in mind that administrators will discount any obviously bad faith contributions to the discussion when closing the discussion. On the other hand, a user who makes a well-argued, fact-based case based upon Misplaced Pages policy and does so in a civil manner may well sway the discussion despite being anonymous.

Always explain your reasoning. This allows others to challenge or support facts, suggest compromises or identify alternative courses of action that might not yet have been considered. It also allows administrators to determine at the end of the discussion, whether your concerns have been addressed and whether your comments still apply if the article was significantly rewritten during the discussion period. "Votes" without rationales may be discounted at the discretion of the closing admin.

The purpose of the discussion is to achieve consensus upon a course of action. Individuals will express strong opinions and may even "vote". To the extent that voting occurs (see meta:Polls are evil), the votes are merely a means to gauge the degree of consensus reached so far. Misplaced Pages is not a democracy and majority voting is not the determining factor in whether a nomination succeeds or not.

Please do not "spam" the discussion with the same comment multiple times. Make your case clearly and let other users decide for themselves.

Experienced AFD participants re-visit discussions that they have already participated in. They are looking for new facts, evidence or changes to the article which might change their initial conclusion. In this situation, strike through your previous comment using <s>...</s> (if you are changing your mind) or to explicitly comment "no change" to confirm that you have considered the new evidence but remain unconvinced.

Do not remove or modify other people's comments even if you believe them to be in bad faith (unless the user has been banned from editing the relevant pages or is making a patently offensive personal attack). It is acceptable to correct the formatting in order to retain consistency with the bulleted indentation. It is also acceptable to note the contribution history of a new user or suspected sockpuppet as an aid to the closing admin.

Please do not refactor the discussion into lists or tables of votes, however much you may think that this helps the process. Both the context and the order of the comments are essential to understanding the intents of contributors, both at the discussion closure and during the discussion. Refactoring actually makes the job of making the decision at the closure of discussion much harder, not easier.

Closure

Main articles: Misplaced Pages:Deletion guidelines for administrators and Misplaced Pages:Deletion process

After 5 days of discussion, a volunteer will move the day's list of deletion discussions from the active page to the /Old page. Depending on the backlog, it may sit there for several more days, during which it is still acceptable to add comments to the discussion. Another volunteer (the "closing admin") will review the article, carefully read the AFD discussion, weigh all the facts, evidence and arguments presented and determine if consensus was reached on the fate of the article.

The desired standard is rough consensus, not perfect consensus. Please also note that closing admins are expected and required to exercise their judgment in order to make sure that the decision complies with the spirit of all Misplaced Pages policy and with the project goal. A good admin will transparently explain how the decision was reached.

An AFD decision is either to "keep" or "delete" the article. AFD discussions which fail to reach rough consensus default to "keep". The AFD decision may also include a strong recommendation for an additional action such as a "merger" or "redirect". In many cases, the decision to "keep" or "delete" may be conditional on the community's acceptance of the additional action. These recommendations do represent the community consensus and also should not be overturned lightly. However, these are actions which can be taken by any editor and do not require "admin powers". If they are challenged, the decision should be discussed and decided on the respective article Talk pages. A second AFD discussion is unnecessary.

The discussion is preserved for future reference in accordance with the deletion process (both for consultation as non-binding precedent and for determining when a previously deleted article has been re-created). The closing admin will also perform any necessary actions to carry out the decision. If the consensus is to merge the article and the merger would be non-trivial, it is acceptable for the admin to only begin the article merger process by tagging the article.

If you disagree with the consensus

By long tradition, the consensus opinion of the community about an article's disposition is held virtually sacrosanct, and may not be overturned or disregarded lightly. Sometimes, however, Users disagree with the consensus opinion arrived at in the AFD quite strongly. What can you do if you disagree with the consensus opinion? First, it is a good idea to try to understand why the community made its decision. You may find that its reasoning was not unreasonable. However, if you remain unsatisfied with the consensus decision, there are a few options open to you.

If you think that an article was wrongly kept after the AFD, you could wait to see if the article is improved to overcome your objections; if it isn't, you can renominate it for deletion. If and when you do renominate, be careful to say why you think the reasons proffered for keeping the article are poor, and why you think the article must be deleted.

If you think that an article was wrongly deleted, you can recreate the article. If you do decide to recreate it, pay careful attention to the reasons that were proffered for deletion. Overcome the objections, and show that your new, improved work meets Misplaced Pages article policies. It can help to write down the reasons you think the article belongs on Misplaced Pages on the article's discussion page. If you manage to improve on the earlier version of the article and overcome its (perceived) shortcomings, the new article cannot be speedily deleted, and any attempt to remove it again must be settled before the community, on AFD.

Finally, if you are unsatisfied with the outcome of an AFD because you believe that a procedural issue interfered with the AFD or with the execution of its decision, you can appeal the decision at Misplaced Pages:Deletion Review. Deletion Review is a forum where deletion decisions may be reviewed by the community usually over 10 days; the Review has the authority to overturn AFD decisions. Note, however, that by long tradition and consensus, Deletion Review only addresses procedural problems that may have hampered an AFD. For example, if the participants of an AFD arrived at one decision but the closing administrator wrongly executed another, Deletion Review can opt to overturn the administrator's action. It must be emphasized that the Review exists to address procedural (or "process") problems in AFDs that either made it difficult for the community to achieve a consensus, or prevented a consensus that was achieved from being correctly applied. It does not exist to overide a lawful decision by the community. If an AFD decision was arrived at fairly and applied adequately, it is unlikely that the decision will be overturned at the Review. For more information, please see Misplaced Pages:Undeletion policy.

Shorthands

As discussed above, experienced Wikipedians use specialized jargon in an effort to communicate efficiently. Examples include:

  • BJAODN means that the user is recommending deletion but thinks that the content is funny enough to cut-and-paste a copy to Bad Jokes And Other Deleted Nonsense.
  • Copyvio means that the user thinks the article is a copyright violation. In general, the copyvio deletion process takes precedence over the AFD process.
  • -cruft (for example, "fancruft", "gamecruft" or "forumcruft") is shorthand for "This article is trivia of interest only to hardcore fans of a specific film, television series, book, game, pop singer, web forum, etc."
  • Dicdef is shorthand for "This is a dictionary definition and Misplaced Pages is not a dictionary".
  • Essay and original research are opinions that "This article contravenes the no original research policy or is an essay that promotes a particular point of view, contravening the neutral point of view policy". Both policies are fundamental Misplaced Pages policies.
  • Merge is a recommendation to keep the article's content but to move it into some more appropriate article. It is either inappropriate or insufficient for a stand-alone article. After the merger, the article will be replaced with a redirect to the target article (in order to preserve the attribution history).
  • Neologism means that the user considers this article to be about a word or phrase that is not well-established enough to merit a Misplaced Pages article. May be either a literal neologism (a very new word) or a vanity neologism (a word coined in a small community but not used outside it).
  • Non-notable, nn or vanity mean that the user thinks the subject fails to meet Misplaced Pages's inclusion guidelines either due to its obscurity or lack of differentiation from others of its type.
  • Patent nonsense refers to Misplaced Pages:patent nonsense.
  • Per nomination, per nominator, or simply per nom means the user agrees with and wishes to express the same viewpoint as the user who nominated the article for deletion.
  • POV means that the user considers the article's title and/or the article's mere existence to be inherently biased and to violate Misplaced Pages's neutral-point-of-view policy.
  • POV fork is shorthand for "This article is on the same topic as an existing article and was created in an attempt to evade the spirit of WP:NPOV."
  • Redirect is a recommendation to keep the article's history but to blank the content and replace it with a redirect. Users who want to see the article's history destroyed should explicitly recommend Delete then Redirect.
  • Smerge is a portmanteau of "slight" and "merge," and is used when a user thinks the article's topic deserves mention in another article, but doesn't think that all of the information is needed (or wanted). This is a vote for merging the essentials of an article, but not the whole thing. It was coined by R. fiend.
  • Speedy delete, Speedy or CSD mean that the user thinks the article qualifies for one of the narrow speedy deletion criteria. If there are no objections, the deletion discussion may be closed early. If the decision is contested, the AFD discussion continues.
  • Speedy keep is rarely used. It implies that the user thinks the nomination was based on an obvious misunderstanding and that the deletion discussion can be closed early.
  • Transwiki is a recommendation to move the article to a sister project in Wikimedia (such as Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikibooks, or one of the foreign language projects) and remove it from Misplaced Pages.
  • Userfy is a recommendation to move the article to the author's user page. Misplaced Pages allows somewhat greater leniency in the userspace than the main article space. The resultant redirect is always deleted.
  • WP:POINT refers to the rule that one should not disrupt Misplaced Pages to make a point.

See also

Category: