Wikipedia:Guide to deletion

Deletion of a Wikipedia article removes the current version and all previous versions from view. The Articles for deletion (AFD) process, supported by two companion processes, CSD and PROD, is one of several mechanisms by which objects are considered for removal from Wikimedia, and implements Wikipedia's Deletion policy for articles (as opposed to images, redirects, etc.).

You may have come here because an AFD 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.

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Overview

All text created in the Wikipedia main Namespace is subject to several important rules, including three cardinal content policies (Neutral point of view, Verifiability, and No original research) and the copyright policy (Copyrights). Together, these policies govern the admissibility of text in the main body of the encyclopedia, and only text conforming to all four policies is allowed in the main namespace.

A failure to conform to a Neutral point of view is usually remedied through editing for neutrality, but text that does not conform to any of the remaining three policies is usually removed from Wikipedia, either by removing a passage or section of an otherwise satisfactory article or by removing an entire article if nothing can be salvaged.

This guide deals with the process of addressing articles that contravene Verifiability and No original research, which are often listed or "nominated" on Articles for deletion. Articles that violate Copyrights are listed on the project page for CP for further action.

When an article is nominated for deletion, the Wikipedia community may discuss its merits for a period usually no less than 5 days, in order to come to a public Deletion guidelines for administrators#Rough consensus about whether the article is unsuited to Wikipedia. Following five days of discussion, an experienced Wikipedian will determine if a consensus was reached and will "Guide_to_deletion#Closure" 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 Wikipedia. A deletion nomination is not a rejection of the author or an attack on his/her value as a member of the Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia talk page etiquette. Please be familiar with the policies of Please do not bite the newcomers, Wikiquette, no personal attacks, and civility before contributing.

Sockpuppeting is not to be tolerated

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 "Sock_puppet#.22Meatpuppets.22", people from outside Wikipedia to "run in" (for example, if my vanity page about a web forum is up for deletion and I post a call for other forum members to "help keep our website in Wikipedia"). 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 and may even recommend deletion simply because apparent sock- or meat-puppets piled in with "do not delete" or other similar comments.

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 Be bold in updating pages 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 "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/New page name" to "Wikipedia: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 Be bold in updating pages 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). It is far better to wait until the discussion period is complete unless there is a strong case for merge under the deletion policy. This is not an issue, however, if the merged content is not merely copied and pasted, but instead completely rewritten so that only uncopyrightable facts are transferred, not copyrightable expression.

Deletion process

Main article: Deletion policy

Deletion of articles from Wikipedia occurs through one of three processes.

So-called Criteria for 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. The list of candidates for speedy deletion can be viewed at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion.
Another quick method is the use of Proposed deletion: simply add to the top of the article. This is meant for articles where the deletion is believed to be uncontroversial, yet does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion. A proposed deletion can be contested by any user by removing the tag within five days, and if anyone still wants the article deleted the full AFD process is required.
Articles which do not meet the narrow criteria for speedy deletion and whose deletion is (or might be) contested are discussed by the community through the AFD process.

Nomination

Before nominating an article for AFD, please:

check the deletion policy to see what things are not reasons for deletion. Consider whether you actually want the article to be Duplicate articles, Requests for expansion, or Cleanup 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 Wikipedia.
check that what you wish to delete is an article. TFD, CFD, IFD, RFD and MfD (including user and Wikipedia 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#How_to_list_pages_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. Anonymous users cannot complete the process, as they are technically prohibited from creating new pages.

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 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 your posts on talk pages 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 Wikipedia 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 Polls are evil), the votes are merely a means to gauge the degree of consensus reached so far. What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_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 Remove personal attacks). 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 recommendations, 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: Deletion guidelines for administrators and Deletion process

After 5 days of discussion, a volunteer will move the day's list of deletion discussions from the active page to the Articles for deletion/Old. 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 Deletion guidelines for administrators#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 Wikipedia 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 "merge" 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 Duplicate articles 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 sensible. 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 Wikipedia article policies. It can help to write down the reasons you think the article belongs on Wikipedia 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 CSD, 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 Votes for Undeletion. 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 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 problems. 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."
Deprodded means the article was Proposed deletion (or "prodded", see below), but someone contested this by removing the message from the article.
Dicdef is shorthand for "This is a dictionary definition and What Wikipedia is not".
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". Both policies are fundamental Wikipedia 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).
Avoid neologisms means that the user considers this article to be about a word or phrase that is not well-established enough to merit a Wikipedia 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-Importance, nn or vanity page mean that the user thinks the subject fails to meet Wikipedia's inclusion guidelines either due to its obscurity or lack of differentiation from others of its type.
Patent nonsense refers to 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 Wikipedia's Neutral point of view.
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 NPOV."
Prodded means the article was previously Proposed deletion, a half-way house between Speedy deletion and Articles for deletion for uncontroversial proposals. The name comes from the template the process uses.
Protect, or salt the Earth means that the user thinks that the article, if deleted should be PP. This is for cases where the article may be persistently re-created.
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 recommendation 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. See also: Criteria for speedy deletion.
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. See also Speedy keep.
Transwiki is a recommendation to Transwiki the article to a sister project in Wikimedia (such as Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikibooks, or one of the foreign language projects) and remove it from Wikipedia. It has also been used to recommend a transfer to a wiki aimed at a more specific audience (for example, Wookieepedia for Star Wars topics, WikiFur for furry fandom topics).
Userfication is a recommendation to Renaming (moving) a page the article to the author's user page. Wikipedia allows somewhat greater leniency in the userspace than the main article space. The resultant redirect is always deleted.
POINT refers to the rule that one should not disrupt Wikipedia to make a point.

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