 | This is anexplanatory essay aboutWikipedia:Deletion policy. This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines as it has not beenthoroughly vetted by the community. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Deletion, like most other things in Wikipedia, is aboutconsensus between editors. It isis not necessarily permanent. |
Wikipedia administrators often delete pages and media in accordance with ourdeletion policy. This page explains how to find out why a particular page or file was removed, and what you can do about a deletion you disagree with. Do not despair:none of the information on a "deleted" page has actually been lost. Continue reading for details.
When a page is deleted, this is recorded in thedeletion log along with adeletion summary supplied by the deleting administrator. To find this information, go toSpecial:Log/delete and enter the name of the page in the "Target" field. It only works if the exact name is entered, so be mindful of the original capitalization, spelling and spacing. Yourtalk page may also contain a notification with a red link to the deletion log for the page.
There are five chief processes under which pages are deleted. The deletion summary tells you which:
See the appropriate section below for more information. If you're still confused after checking the deletion log, politely ask the administrator responsible for an explanation by leaving a message on their talk page. To do so:
~~~~ or click the signature icon (
) and then click "Publish changes".Pages and media in all namespaces that satisfy certain criteria are candidates forspeedy deletion, which means that administrators can delete them immediately and without discussion. The criteria include, among others, test pages, vandalism and hoaxes,nonsense, blatantcopyright violations, empty pages or ones lacking sufficient context, articles in defined areas that do not credibly assert the importance of the topic, and pages on topics already covered under another title. Administrators often leave short codes in the deletion summary instead of typing out a full reason, such as "A7" or "CSD A7" for articles that do not assertimportance; "G1" forpatent nonsense and so on. These codes are explained atWikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion.
Mainspacearticles,lists,disambiguation pages, andfiles (but not other pages) may beproposed for deletion by any editor. If nobody objects to this within seven days, the article is deleted. If any objections are raised, the article is not properly deleted, but anyone may still start anArticles for deletion discussion (see below). Proposed deletions will often be labeled as "prod" in the deletion summary.
Articles on living people (BLPs) that contain no sources in any form (as references, external links, etc.) may be proposed for deletion under this process. Unlike standard proposed deletion (see above), the BLP deletion template may be removed only after the biography contains areliable source that supports at least one statement made about the person in the article. If the required sourcing is not added within seven days, the article is deleted. Nominated articles will often be labeled as "BLPPROD" in the deletion summary.
A page or media file may also be nominated for deletion in adeletion discussion, where editors discuss whether it should be deleted. Articles are discussed atArticles for deletion; other pages elsewhere go through different processes (seedeletion discussion for a complete list). Such discussions normally last seven days, after which an administrator will delete the page if there is aconsensus to do so. Anyone may participate in such a discussion, however they are not "votes". The weight of an argument is more important than the number of people making the argument, so encouraging mass participation in such discussion to avoid the deletion of a particular article will not work.
If a particular page has been recreated and deleted multiple times, administrators may decide toprotect it against recreation (often called "salting") so that it stays deleted. If you try to edit a protected title, a message box will inform you about it.
If you cannot find a deletion log entry then the most likely explanation is that you did not enter the title exactly as it appeared, or the page was not actually deleted in Wikipedia's sense of the word. For example, pages may beredirected to an existing title, which effectively blanks the former entry, but it is not "deletion" in the true sense. If you can see your edits to the page in yourcontribution history, or you see another page where the page formerly was, then the page may have been redirected, or the content may have been edited out but still be visible in thepage history. If you are unable to determine what happened, try asking at theWikipedia:Help desk. Always do your best to provide the exact title (or possible titles); and state what username you were logged in under when the page was created, if different from the one you use to ask your question, since administrators can find any edits of yours which have been deleted.
If a page or file that you created has been deleted, please don't take offense. See ourcontent policies and theguide to creating your first article to get an idea of what you should be aiming for. Alternatively, remember we already have 7,080,366 articles – find a subject that interests you and work on improving our existing content.
Depending on the reason the page was deleted, there are also several ways you can try to have it undeleted by administrators. In every case, you should first make sure that the page isappropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia and, if it is an article, that its content isbased on reliable sources. If it is not, your request will likely be unsuccessful.
If you feel a page has been deleted involved a procedural error (or if you think you have good reasons for wanting to edit aprotected title),first contact the administrator involved in closing the deletion. If you are still not satisfiedafter discussing it with the deleting admin, you may then start adeletion review.
Do not use deletion review merely because you disagree with the deletion, but only if there was a procedural error in deleting the page – for example, if there was no consensus to delete the page, or if it was deleted without discussion for a reason that did not apply to the page in question. Remember that deletion discussions are not votes, and opinions are weighed according to Wikipedia policies and guidelines. For this reason, arguing that there was not a majority in favor of deletion will normally not be successful in a deletion review.
If an article was deleted as a result of aproposed deletion ("prod"), meant only for uncontroversial deletion, any administrator should normally restore it on your request. In such cases, you can make your request at theRequests for undeletion noticeboard.
If the page was deleted for any other reason, and you would like to be able to access the text (for example, to resubmit it in a form that meets our content policies), the same noticeboard may be used. In that case, the content would be restored only in your user space or in draft space, not in mainspace. There are alsosome administrators who may provide you with the content of the deleted page on your request.
Please do not bother to ask for the text of pages that were copyright violations as it will not be provided.
If anything about these processes remains unclear, you may ask for help at theWikipedia:Help desk. A substantial number of new articles by new users are deleted. If you are one of those new users, you may feel confused right now, and need to ask for help at theWikipedia:Help desk.
If it looks like the page you created isdefinitely about to be deleted, copy-and-paste thesource code to atext file, for example by using atext editor (which preserves yourwikitext markup), or aword processor. However, after the page is deleted from Wikipedia,do not immediately put the page back up! Otherwise, it will probably just be deleted again, and the page name may even beprotected against re-creation. Either find more evidence to demonstrate thenotability of the topic, or wait for more evidence to be published elsewhere inreliable sources. If you intend to recreate the page straight away, consider asking at theHelp Desk orTeahouse how you can improve the article the next time around. Please note that not all topics are suitable for inclusion – if no reliablethird-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.
As a result ofWikipedia's rapid growth, by 2007 it had become one of theworld's largest andmost-visited wikis. Wikipedia articles tend torank high in the search results for many popularsearch engines. Prior to Wikipedia,wiki technology was not very well-known; as a result, Wikipedia may be the first wiki many people see, and the first wiki they attempt to edit on. Some people may be under the mistaken impression that Wikipedia is theonly wiki, or issynonymous with "wiki". In many cases, this is unfortunate, because Wikipedia is actually a very specialized kind of wiki (anencyclopedia), and newcomers may need some time to understand what constitutes encyclopedic writing. There is much content that Wikipediais not appropriate for, but which may be appropriate somewhere else.
There aremany other wikis, many with content policies very different from Wikipedia's, catering to a wide range of interests. Some of these wikis were founded by groups of former or continuing Wikipedia editors, who had more to say about their topic of interest than belongs in an encyclopedia. Examples includeWookieepedia (forStar Wars enthusiasts);StrategyWiki (for video-game walkthroughs); andConservapedia (for people with Republican and Conservative views).
For almost every sort of article that would be interesting to someone, there is probably a wiki somewhere that would welcome it.
To find a happy home for the deleted article, check theList of wikis,Wikipedia:Alternative outlets, andWikiIndex. If you cannot find a suitable wiki on your own, ask for some "wiki outplacement" assistance at theWikipedia:Help desk. If the deleted article is in a subject area overseen by aWikiProject, members of that WikiProject may know of alternative wikis to publish subject area content not meeting Wikipedia's requirements. Once you find a home, you can immediately place the article there if you copied and saved the article'swikitext (though it may need modifications to fit into the new website.) If you did not save such a copy, you will have toask an administrator to retrieve a copy for you.