Draft:Deletion

While some cases for page deletion are clear-cut, there are a lot of grey areas. When in doubt, everyone is encouraged to solicit input from the community before making a deletion decision.

How pages are deleted

Administrators

Only administrators are able to delete pages. They also have the ability to restore pages that were deleted in error. Only pages that are candidates for speedy deletion should be deleted outright. Any pages whose deletion may be contentious should be flagged with the {{deletion}} template instead. Pages flagged with the {tl|deletion}} template should only be deleted after a minimum of a week has elapsed since the template was added, or longer if there is ongoing discussion.

Before deleting a page, check its history to ensure that reverting to an earlier version is not a more appropriate action, and the 'what links here' page to fix any links that will be broken by the deletion. Also, for pages with the {tl|deletion}} tag, make sure you check the talk page to ensure that there are no valid objections to the deletion, or ongoing discussion about it.

Other users

Other users cannot delete pages directly. To mark a page for deletion, add either {{deletion|reason}} or {{speedy|reason}} to the top of the page. {{speedy}} should be used when the deletion is uncontentious (see below), and {tl|deletion}} when you think there may be some disagreement about it. In both cases replace 'reason' with the reason you think the page should be deleted.

If you think a page has been deleted in error, please check the deletion log and contact the admin who deleted it directly. They may restore the deleted page if you can give a sufficiently persuasive argument to do so.

Article pages

What to immediately delete

• Cleanup related things that have no need for discussion, such as:
  • Redirect pages that sit in the place where a page needs to be moved to
  • Page title spelling errors
  • Pages made by mistake
• Spam, vandalism, off-topic pages.
• Copyright infringements.

What not to delete

• If the page is reason to exist, but are interlinked to many different pages where deletion would cause issues with those other pages. Consider that following:
  • Using the {{Merge}} or {{Split}}, in order to move content that can be used in other pages,
  • Making the page a redirect instead, if the content seems to be dupicatied,
  • Moving it to a different Namespace.
  • If the page has nothing notable and/or useful then feel free to tag the page with a normal {{deletion}} tag)

Other Pages

No policy has yet been made about the following types of pages, and so for the moment they should not be deleted. However, there are arguments for and against the deletion of these types of pages. Please discuss these issues on the talk page.

What to immediately delete

• Same as above
• Pages nominated for deletion (normally by project members or users who created the pages)
• Relating to User pages or user talk pages:
  • User pages that are just advertising (grey area here - some advertising may be relevant. If in doubt use a normal {{deletion}} tag)
  • User pages or user talk pages for non-logged-in users (e.g. User:127.0.0.1). However, if the page contains comments directed at the anonymous user you should leave it for at least a few days before deleting it.
• Test pages, that are not sandboxes or said to be sandboxes

What not to delete

• Blanked user pages (may have been created to stop red links in user name)
• Placeholders (normally they say if they are placeholders, or at least give you an idea what they are for)
• Sandboxes
• Pages about old functionally of BattleTechWiki, or pages that are "historical" in nature. There are possibly still people using this information and it may still be valuable. These pages should be marked with {{historical}} tag instead.

Images

If an image appears useful, but is not currently used on any page, add the following tag to the image page: {{Unused file}}. This will add a tag to the page indicating that it is not used, and put it in Category:Unused files. For the time being these will be kept, unless a consensus is reached that they should be deleted. Aside from that, the above rules tend to apply.

See also

• {{deletion}}
• Category:Considered for deletion (15)
• {{speedy}}
• Category:Considered for speedy deletion (0)