Misplaced Pages

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This page documents an English Misplaced Pages policy.It describes a widely accepted standard that editors should normally follow, though exceptions may apply. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.

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"WP:SPEEDY" redirects to this article. If you are looking for the "Speedy keep" guidelines, see Misplaced Pages:Speedy keep.

The "Speedy deletion" policy governs limited cases where Misplaced Pages administrators may delete Misplaced Pages pages or media "on sight" without further debate, as in the cases of patent nonsense or pure vandalism. Non-admins can request deletion of such a page by adding a {{deletebecause|Reason}} template. The word "speedy" in this context refers to the rapid decision-making process, not the length of time since the article was created.

Before nominating an article for speedy deletion, please consider whether an article could be improved or reduced to a stub. Also, please note that some Wikipedians create articles in multiple saves, so try to avoid deleting a page too soon after its initial creation. Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criteria the page meets; it would also be considerate to notify the original author — remember, everyone was new once. Note that global sandboxes are exempt from deletion.

These criteria are worded narrowly, and generally so phrased that, in most cases, reasonable editors will agree what does or does not fall under a given criterion. When there is reasonable doubt whether a page does, discussion is recommended, using one of the other methods under deletion policy.

This page contains the criteria for speedy deletion and a list of helpful templates that can be used to tag a candidate for speedy deletion. Articles that do not meet the speedy criteria may be nominated for the alternative deletion processes Misplaced Pages:Proposed deletion and Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion.

The list of current candidates for speedy deletion is at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion.

Note that administrators should always verify the legitimacy of a speedy deletion candidate before taking action. Verification methods include: reading the page, the talk page (if any), the page history, the page log and checking 'What links here'. It is the administrator's responsibility to make sure that speedy deletion tags are accurate.

Criteria

People sometimes use abbreviations to refer to these criteria (e.g. "A3" meaning articles, criterion 3), but for the sake of clarity this is not recommended.

General criteria

1. Patent nonsense and gibberish, an unsalvageably incoherent page with no meaningful content. This does not include: poor writing, partisan screeds, obscene remarks, vandalism, fictional material, material not in English, badly translated material, implausible theories, or hoaxes.
2. Test pages (e.g., "Can I really create a page here?").
3. Pure vandalism, including redirects created during cleanup of page move vandalism.
4. Recreation of deleted material. A substantially identical copy, by any title, of a page that was deleted as a result of a discussion in Articles for deletion or another XfD process, unless it was undeleted per the undeletion policy or was recreated in the user space. Before deleting again, the admin should ensure that the material is substantially identical and not merely a new article on the same subject. This clause does not apply if the only prior deletions were speedy or proposed deletions, although in this case, the previous speedy criterion, or other speedy deletion criteria, may apply.
5. Banned user. Pages created by banned users while they were banned.
6. Housekeeping. Non-controversial maintenance tasks such as temporarily deleting a page in order to merge page histories, performing a non-controversial page move like reversing a redirect, or removing a disambiguation page that only points to a single article.
7. Author requests deletion. Any page for which deletion is requested by the original author, provided the page's only substantial content was added by its author and was mistakenly created. If the author blanks the page, this can be taken as a deletion request.
8. Talk pages of pages that do not exist, unless they contain deletion discussion that isn't logged elsewhere. Subpages (including archive pages) are only deletable under this rule if the corresponding top-level page does not exist. Exceptions to this are user talk pages and talk pages of images on Commons.
9. Office Actions. The Wikimedia Foundation office reserves the right to speedily delete a page temporarily in cases of exceptional controversy.
10. Attack pages. Pages that serve no purpose but to disparage their subject or some other entity (e.g., "John Q. Doe is an imbecile"). This includes a biography of a living person that is negative in tone and unsourced, where there is no NPOV version in the history to revert to.
11. Blatant advertising. Pages which exclusively promote a company, product, group or service and which would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. Note that simply having a company, product, group or service as its subject does not qualify an article for this criterion. If a page has previously gone through the process at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion or Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion, it should not be speedily deleted under this criterion, nor should an article speedily deleted under this criterion be salted.
12. An item that is a blatant copyright infringement and meets these parameters:
    • Material is unquestionably copied from a website with an obvious copyright notice that is not compatible with Misplaced Pages and;
    • The item and its entire history contains only copyright violation material, excluding tags, templates, and minor edits and;
    • Uploader makes no assertion of permission (or in the case of images no assertion aside from tags) or fair use, and none seems likely and;
    • The page was created less than 48 hours ago and is almost or totally un-wikified.
    When tagging an item for deletion under this criterion, a user should notify the page's creator using wording similar to {{Nothanks-sd}} or an equivalent message. Before deleting any page under this criterion, an admin should verify that the page creator has been notified — if not, the admin should do so. If the deleting administrator is notified of an error, and finds the claim of error plausible, they should restore the content immediately and, if a confirmation email has not been received, follow the Misplaced Pages:Copyright problems procedure, blanking the article with the {{copyvio}} template in the process. Many copyright violations that need to be dealt with are listed at Misplaced Pages:Suspected copyright violations.

Articles

For any articles that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion or Misplaced Pages:Proposed deletion.

1. Very short articles providing little or no context (e.g., "He is a funny man that has created Factory and the Hacienda. And, by the way, his wife is great."). Limited content is not in itself a reason to delete if there is enough context for the article to qualify as a valid stub.
2. Foreign language articles that exist on another Wikimedia project. If the article in question does not exist on another project, the template {{notenglish}} should be used instead.
3. No content whatsoever. Any article consisting only of links elsewhere (including hyperlinks, category tags and "see also" sections), a rephrasing of the title, and/or attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title. This does not include disambiguation pages.
4. (This criterion has been merged into A3 and is kept for historical reasons.)
5. Transwikied articles. Any article that has been discussed at Articles for Deletion (et al), where the outcome was to transwiki, and where the transwikification has been properly performed and the author information recorded.
6. (This criterion has been superseded by G10 and is kept for historical reasons.)
7. Unremarkable people, groups, companies and websites. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or website that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AfD instead, and if the article has gone through the process at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion already, it should not be speedily deleted under this criterion. Note: Avoid the word "vanity" in deletion summaries since it may be defamatory.
8. (This criterion has been superseded by G12 and is kept for historical reasons.)

Redirects

For any redirects that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion. In any case it may be possible to make it a useful redirect to some other target.

1. Redirects to non-existent pages
2. Redirects to the User: or User_talk: space from the main article space. If this was the result of a page move, consider waiting a day or two before deleting the redirect.
3. Redirects as a result of an implausible typo that were recently created. However, redirects from common misspellings or misnomers are generally useful.

Images/Media

For any images and other media that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Misplaced Pages:Images and media for deletion.

Please remove images and media from any pages they are used in before marking them for speedy deletion. With respect to fair use disputes, if a fair use rationale is provided, use WP:IFD instead.

1. Redundant. Any image that is a redundant copy, in the same image file format and same or lower resolution, of something else on Misplaced Pages. Likewise, other media that is a redundant copy, in the same format and of the same or lower quality. This does not apply to images duplicated on Wikimedia Commons, because of licence issues; these should be tagged with {{NowCommons|Image:newname.ext}} or {{NowCommonsThis}} instead.
2. Corrupt or empty image. Before deleting this type of image, verify that the MediaWiki engine cannot read it by previewing a resized thumbnail of it. This also includes empty (i.e., no content) image description pages for Commons images.
3. Improper license. Images licensed as "for non-commercial use only", "non-derivative use" or "used with permission" that were uploaded on or after May 19, 2005, and for which no assertion of fair use is provided. This includes images licensed under a "Non-commercial Creative Commons License". Such images uploaded before May 19, 2005 may also be speedily deleted if they are not used in any articles.
4. Lack of licensing information. Images in category "Images with unknown source", "Images with unknown copyright status", or "Images with no copyright tag" that have been tagged with a template that places them in the category for more than seven days, regardless of when uploaded. Note, users sometimes specify their source in the upload summary, so be sure to check the circumstances of the image.
5. Unused unfree copyrighted images. Images and other media that are not under a free license or in the public domain that are not used in any article and that have been tagged with a template that places them in a dated subcategory of Category:Orphaned fairuse images for more than seven days. Reasonable exceptions may be made for images uploaded for an upcoming article. Use {{subst:orfud}} to tag images for forthcoming deletion.
6. Missing fair-use rationale. Any image or media tagged only with a generic fair use template, with no fair use rationale, may be deleted seven days after it was uploaded. Images and other media uploaded before May 4, 2006 should not be deleted immediately; instead, the uploader should be notified that a fair-use rationale is needed. Images or other media uploaded after May 4, 2006 can be tagged with {{subst:nrd}}, and the uploader notified with {{subst:missing rationale|Image:image name}}. Such images can be found in the dated subcategories of Category:Images with no fair use rationale.
7. Invalid fair-use claim. Any image or media with a clearly invalid fair-use tag (such as a {{logo}} tag on a photograph of a mascot) may be deleted at any time. Media that fail any part of the fair use criteria and were uploaded after 13 July 2006 may be deleted forty-eight hours after notification of the uploader. For media uploaded before 13 July 2006, the uploader will be given seven days to comply with this policy after being notified.
8. Images available as bit-for-bit identical copies on the Wikimedia Commons, provided the following conditions are met:
   • The image's license and source status is beyond reasonable doubt, and the license is undoubtedly accepted at Commons.
     • All image revisions that meet the first condition have been transferred to Commons as revisions of the Commons copy and properly marked as such.
   • All information on the image description page is present on the Commons image description page. That includes the complete upload history with links to the uploader's local user pages.
     • If there is any information not relevant to any other project on the image description page (like {{FeaturedPicture}}), the image description page must be undeleted after the file deletion.
   • The image is not protected, and the image description page does not contain a request not to move it to Commons.
   • The image has been marked with Template:NowCommons or Template:NowCommonsThis for at least one week.
   • If the image is available on Commons under a different name than locally, it must not be used on any local page whatsoever.
   • For {{c-uploaded}} images: They may be speedily deleted as soon as they are off the Main Page.

Categories

For any categories that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion.

1. Empty categories (no articles or subcategories for at least four days) whose only content has consisted of links to parent categories. This does not apply to categories being discussed on WP:CFD, or disambiguation categories. If the category isn't relatively new, it possibly contained articles earlier, and deeper investigation is needed.
2. Speedy renaming. Empty categories that have qualified for speedy renaming.
   1. Typo fixes (e.g., Brdiges -> Bridges), but not changes between British and American spelling.
   2. Capitalization fixes (e.g., characters In harry Potter -> Characters in Harry Potter)
   3. Conversions from singular to plural, or back (e.g., Steamship -> Steamships)
   4. Renaming to conform with the "by country" categorization conventions
   5. Abbreviation expanding for country names, e.g. changing "U.S." to "United States"
3. Template categories. If a category is solely populated from a template (e.g. Category:Misplaced Pages cleanup from {{cleanup}}) and the template is deleted per deletion policy, the category can also be deleted without further discussion.

User pages

For any user pages that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion.

1. User request. Personal subpages, upon request by their user. In some rare cases there may be administrative need to retain the page. Also, sometimes, main user pages may be deleted as well. See Misplaced Pages:User page for full instructions and guidelines.
2. Nonexistent user. User pages of users who do not exist. Both user existence and contributions can be verified by checking Special:Contributions/Username (for a non-existing user, the username is not linked to the userpage).
3. Fair Use Galleries. Galleries in the user space which consist of a majority of or only Fair Use images.

Templates

For any templates that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Misplaced Pages:Templates for deletion. When nominating a template for speedy deletion, surround the speedy deletion tag with <noinclude></noinclude>, so that pages that use the nominated template do not themselves get listed as candidates for speedy deletion.

1. Templates that are divisive and inflammatory.

Portals

For any Portals that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion.

1. Any topic that would be subject to speedy deletion as an Article.
2. Underpopulated Portal. Any Portal based on a topic for which there is not a non-stub header article, and at least three non-stub articles detailing subject matter that would be appropriate to discuss under the title of that Portal.

Non-criteria

Sometimes speedy deletion criteria are applied to articles that they do not and were not intended to apply to; also, rules that are not speedy deletion rules are often mistakenly used to justify speedy deletion. This section aims to clarify some of the frequently used "non-criteria" that are commonly cited but are not sufficient, by themselves, to justify speedy deletion. These are not rules and intended only to be commonly-understood interpretations of the criteria above.

• Reasons derived from Misplaced Pages:What Misplaced Pages is not: "Misplaced Pages is not a dictionary", "Misplaced Pages is not an indiscriminate collection of information" and "Misplaced Pages is not a crystal ball" are not part of the speedy deletion criteria. However, these reasons can be given at AfD nominations.
• Hoaxes: Articles that present unverifiable and probably false ideas, theories, or subjects. Occasionally these can be deleted as vandalism if the article is obviously ridiculous, but remotely plausible articles should be subjected to further scrutiny in a wider forum.
• Original research: Although we have a policy against material that offers novel theories or interpretations on Misplaced Pages, this is not a basis for speedy deletion. The reason for this is that it's not always easy to tell whether an article is original research.
• Neologisms: As with hoaxes, unless the article is obviously ridiculous, a wider forum is necessary to evaluate the currency of specialized terminology.
• Non-notable subjects with their importance asserted: Articles that have obviously non-notable subjects are still not eligible for speedy deletion unless the article "does not assert the importance or significance of its subject". If the article gives a claim that might be construed as making the subject notable, it should be taken to a wider forum. However, articles with only a statement like "This guy was like so friggin' notable!" can be deleted per CSD A1 because it gives no context about the subject.
• Author deletion requests made in bad faith: Sometimes an author will ask to have content removed because they feel frustrated with the project and resent it profiting from their work. However, they licensed their work to be used in this way and they have no legal basis for asking for its removal. The article must be "mistakenly created", for example if the author created it unwittingly by misspelling a name. Of course, anyone may request deletion of pages in their userspace.
• Very short articles: As explained above, some very short articles can be speedily deleted, but if they have content and offer sufficient context to qualify as stubs, they cannot be.
• "Copyright violations" whose sources copied Misplaced Pages: Our content is extensively used without credit, sometimes with modifications. To invoke A8, you must be reasonably sure that the content belonged to the source site first.
• PNGs/GIFs replaced by JPEGs: Even if an image is a photograph or other continuous-tone image, JPEG encoding discards a variety of information that could be important for further editing. Do not delete the original PNG/GIF files.
• Finally, good faith edits are never vandalism. If you cannot be reasonably sure an article was written in bad faith, G3 does not apply.

Deletion templates

Procedure for administrators

Before deleting a page, an admin should check the page history to assess whether it would instead be possible to restore and salvage a previous version. The initial edit summary may also have important information about the origin of the article. Further information may be present on the talk page of the page concerned (such as records of previous deletion discussions) and in the article log (may show previous deletions and recreations which need to be considered). Finally, using 'What links here' is an important part of the deletion process. An article with lots of incoming links from other articles may possibly not be suitable for speedy deletion. Equally, checking incoming links may reveal other articles suitable for speedy deletion. If it is certain that the article will not be contested and will not or should not be recreated, then existing red links should be undone to discourage later recreation.

Admins should specify the deletion criteria in their edit summary and should notify the article's creator about the deletion, where applicable. Unless there is evidence to the contrary, please assume good faith on the part of the article's creator.

See also

• Misplaced Pages:Deletion policy
• Misplaced Pages:Template messages/User talk namespace (Grid of warning messages)

• Misplaced Pages policies
• Speedy deletion