Wikipedia:Guide to deletion: Difference between revisions

This is the guide to Wikipedia's Votes for Deletion (VFD) process for deleting articles. It explains how article deletion through the VFD process operates, and explains some of the somewhat arcane things that you may encounter.

You may have come here as a consequence of a VFD deletion notice being applied to an article that you wrote. Please read this guide to see what happens now, and how you may contribute to the process. If you are a newly pseudonymous editor or are new to Wikipedia outright, please pay particular attention to the sub-section of the deletion process section that pertains to discussion.

The most important thing to remember about Votes for Deletion, especially for newcomers who are unfamiliar with it, is that it is about the article, not about you. Even if the article is a vanity page or an autobiography, please remember that Wikipedians are discussing the article, and whether it is worth inclusion in Wikipedia. They are only discussing you insofar as you may or may not be an appropriate subject for an encyclopaedia article. VFD may seem like an unfriendly place to the newcomer, who thinks that a rejection of an article that they wrote is a rejection of the author. This is not the case.

The second most important thing to remember is that VFD is a busy place, and also a repetitive one. The people who frequent VFD may seen terse, gruff, and abrupt, but that is not actually the case. Please bear in mind that for speed many experienced Wikipedians employ the several shorthands, described below, in VFD discussions, rather than typing out the same reasoning and arguments longhand again and again, so they might not be saying what they appear to be saying from the shorthand. They are simply attempting to be efficient. Also please bear in mind that many of them have been through hundreds of deletion discussions, and heard and been through many of the same arguments before. Finally, please bear in mind that sometimes people will be creative in the way that they vote or use clever phrasing echoing the article simply in order to relieve the monotony of typing "keep" and "delete" over and over again.

You are welcome to continue editing an article that has been nominated for deletion. Nominating an article for deletion does not cause it to be frozen in its current state. 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, using one of the common shorthands described below, that you have done so if your edits are significant ones).

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

• You must not blank the article, turn it into a redirect, or merge it into another article.
• You must not modify the VFD notice.
• You must not rename the article, unless you rename the associated discussion page(s) too.

Doing any of these is automatically considered to be vandalism.

These restrictions derive solely from the technical requirements that throughout the period of VFD discussion the VFD notice must remain visible on the article (so that editors happening on the article in the normal course of reading or editing know that it has been nominated and can contribute to the discussion if they so wish), that the hyperlink within the VFD notice to the discussion page must remain valid, and that the GFDL requires author attribution to be preserved.

The renaming of (kept) articles, or the turning of them into redirects, is deferred until the end of the discussion on whether the article is to be deleted. There are special shorthands (see below) that you can use in the discussion to indicate that you wish the article to be renamed or turned into a redirect at the end of the process.

The final stage of article merger is to turn the article (being merged from) into a redirect. Furthermore, deleting an article deletes its editing history, and the author attribution information, which causes the GFDL to be violated if that content is transferred to other articles. Thus you may not merge an article whilst its deletion is being discussed. Again, the merger of (kept) articles is deferred until the end of the discussion. And again, there is a special shorthand that you can use to indicate that you wish a merger to occur and where you wish the article to be merged to.

Main article: Wikipedia:deletion policy

Deletion of articles from Wikipedia occurs through one of two processes. So-called speedy deletion involves the scrutiny of only a few people before an article is deleted, and the criteria for it are thus deliberately very narrow. Normally, however, deletion of articles follows the same general procedure, laid out in the deletion policy, as for the deletions of images, templates, redirects, and categories: An article is nominated for deletion; a period of discussion then ensues; and finally an administrator makes a decision based upon the discussion. This procedure involes the inputs of a larger number of Wikipedians, and is thus expected to yield a more representative consensus, and yield fewer errors, than speedy deletion.

Nomination is a three-stage process. The nominator places the deletion notice upon the article; creates a deletion discussion page; and lists the deletion discussion on the Votes for Deletion page.

The full instructions for nominating an article are on the Votes for Deletion page itself. Please note that you must perform all three stages of the process. Incomplete nominations may be discarded or ignored.

Before nominating an article please:

• check the deletion policy to see what things are not reasons for deletion, consider whether you are actually wanting the article to be merged, expanded, or cleaned up rather than deleted, and use the appropriate mechanism instead of VFD;
• investigate the possibility of rewriting an undesirable article yourself (or at least creating a stub or a substub on the topic and requesting expansion) instead of deleting it;
• check the "what links here" link on the toolbar beside the article to see how the article is being used within Wikipedia; and
• check that it is an article that you to delete, not a template, a category, an image, or a redirect, each of which have their own separate deletion processes, elsewhere.

Nominations take the form of a third level section heading comprising a link to the article name (i.e. ===[[Article name]]===), followed by the reason for nominating the article for deletion.

Please sign the nominations that you make, by adding ~~~~ after them. The implicit vote of an unsigned nomination may be discounted.

Anyone can make a nomination, anonymous users as well as pseudonymous users. (However, if you are the author and sole editor of the article, your nomination may be treated as grounds for speedy deletion.) What is important is not your name, but whether your nomination is in good faith. Nominations that are clearly vandalism may be discarded.

Nominations imply a Delete vote unless the nominator specifically says otherwise. (Some nominations are performed by experienced users on behalf of others, perhaps because they are inexperienced with the VFD process, or perhaps because they have requested the deletion of the article in another discussion. Usually in such cases the nominator explicitly states that they abstain, or that they are voting to keep the article.)

Discussion of whether an article is to be deleted occurs on a special discussion page, a sub-page of Wikipedia:Votes for deletion that is named after the article. (e.g. The discussion of whether to delete High schools in Connecticut occurs on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/High schools in Connecticut.)

Discussion follows the normal Wikipedia talk page etiquette. Please be familiar with the policies of not biting the newcomers, Wikiquette, no personal attacks, and civility before contributing.

For convenience, the usual form for the discussion is that of a bulleted list below the nomination text. (You can indent discussion by using multiple bullets, of course.)

For the convenience of the person closing the discussion, please highlight your votes, and use one of the conventional votes, or voting shorthands, described below. It is not necessary to mark comments as such, although some people do explicitly mark such comments (with "Comment:") if they are at the outermost indentation level, just to make it absolutely clear that the bullet does not denote a vote.

Please sign any contribution that you make, by adding ~~~~ after them. Unsigned contributions may be discounted.

Anyone can contribute to the discussion and vote, anonymous users as well as pseudonymous users. If you are the author of the article, you are welcome to join in the discussion, make your case, and vote like everyone else. What is important is not your name, but whether your contribution and voting is in good faith. Please bear in mind that administrators will discount any obviously bad faith contributions to the discussion when closing the discussion and making a decision. In contrast, a user who makes a well-argued case based upon the deletion policy and in a civil manner may well sway the discussion despite being anonymous.

The purpose of the discussion is to achieve consensus upon a course of action. The votes are a means to gauge consensus, and not the ends in themselves (Wikipedia is not a democracy). For best results, please show your working to indicate the reasoning underpinning your vote. This allows others to suggest compromises if necessary, or to point out 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 after a rewrite of or a significant change to the article that occurred subsequently. There are several shorthands that you can use, described below, for common reasonings, to save typing them out longhand. Votes without rationales may be discounted.

Experienced VFD participants will often re-visit discussions that they have already voted in, after rewrites or major changes have been announced, and either change their votes or explicitly comment "no change of vote" to ensure that it is known that their comments still apply.

However, please vote only once. If you wish to change your vote or your rationale, do not delete your old text. Instead, strike it out with <s>...</s>. Do not strike out other people's votes, even if you believe them to be in bad faith. (But see Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks.) Multiple votes apparently from the same person may be coalesced, or simply discounted entirely.

Please do not refactor the discussion into lists or tables of votes, however much you may think that this helps the process. Again, the votes are not the ends in themselves (Wikipedia is not a democracy). 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.

One tactic employed by vandals and bad-faith contributors is to create multiple user accounts during the discussion process, and to vote using those accounts, in a (misguided) attempt to bias the final vote count. (This creation of so-called sock puppets is one of the reasons that Wikipedia is not a democracy.) Another tactic is to enlist the aid of friends and colleagues outside of Wikipedia that have a vested interest in the article to come to Wikipedia and vote (such as posting in a web discussion forum a call for other forum members to "come and help keep our discussion forum in Wikipedia"). Tell-tale signs of these tactics are that a contributor's account was created after discussion began, that a contributor has few edits (or has only ever edited the article being discussed and the discussion page itself), or that a contributor's only other edits have been vandalism. Other Wikipedians will often draw attention to such facts. However, (vandalism aside) such cases are hard to distinguish from good-faith contributors writing their first article for Wikipedia, or anonymous users who have chosen to become pseudonymous users. It is difficult to tell sock puppets from newcomers. If you are contributing your first article, or are a newly pseudonymous user, please state this clearly and up-front, and please don't become offended if another Wikipedian points out your lack of editing history.

Main articles: Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators and Wikipedia:Deletion process

At the end of a period from when the nomination of an article was listed, known as the lag time, an administrator in the VFD cleaning department reviews an article's VFD discussion, determines what the rough consensus is, and closes it. Wikipedia is not a democracy, and although this mechanism is named "votes for deletion", the votes are a guideline only to administrators. The decision to keep or to delete the article is made according to the administrator's judgement of what consensus is. A good administrator will, like a good voter, transparently explain how the decision was reached.

Closure involves sealing the discussion record, for future reference (both for consultation as non-binding precedent and for determining when a previously deleted article has been re-created), and performing any deferred actions that a consensus has been reached upon, such as redirection, renaming, or merger. If the consensus is to merge the article and the merger would be a non-trivial one, many administrators, hard-pressed for time, will only begin the article merger process, by tagging the article.

When an administrator in the cleaning department closes the VFD process, there are two basic outcomes: to delete the article or to keep it. There are thus just two basic votes:

• Keep, indicating that you wish the article and its edit history to be kept
• Delete, indicating that you wish the article and its edit history to be deleted

All other votes are simply shorthands for one of those two actions, in combination with other, further, actions (usually actions that are deferred by dint of the technical restrictions upon editing).

It is perfectly acceptable to spell out a more complex vote, or a vote that is conditional upon further research or discussion, as long as it is within reason. (Complex mathematical formulae are unreasonable, and administrators will routinely ignore such votes as being unintelligible or an abuse of the process.) Here are some examples:

• "Delete and then re-create as Redirect to Example" — A voter who votes in this manner thinks that it is undesirable to preserve any of the content or edit history of the current article (perhaps because it is libellous, for example), but rather than preventing any article from being created by this title, as would normally happen with deletion, wishes a redirect to be created in the original article's place, to redirect readers who use that article title to a more complete, more general, or simply pre-existing article.
• "Merge if problem X can be satisfactorily resolved, otherwise Delete" — A voter who votes in this manner is giving information to the administrator as to what their vote would be pending any subsequent developments that might occur.
• "Delete but let the redlinks stand" — A voter who votes in this manner thinks that it is undesirable to preserve any of the content or edit history of the current article, but does not wish to prevent any article from being created by this title in the future or any hyperlinks to this article in other articles to be removed, as would normally happen with deletion.

The following are the most common shorthands for augmented votes:

• "Speedy delete" or "Speedy" or "CSD" are shorthands for "Delete this article under the speedy deletion criteria". A voter who votes "Speedy Delete" thinks that the article qualifies under the speedy deletion criteria, and need not proceed further through the VFD process.
• "Copyvio" is a shorthand for "Delete this article through the copyright violation deletion process rather than through VFD". A voter who votes "Copyvio" has listed the article at Wikipedia:Copyright problems and applied the copyright violation notice to the article. Copyright violation supercedes VFD for article content, and usually VFD discussion ceases at this point. However, in rare cases the discussion may continue as to whether an article by this title is merited, which will affect the status of any rewrite article resulting from the copyright problems process.
• "Userfy" is a shorthand for "Keep but rename to the author's user page and delete the resultant redirect". A voter who votes "Userfy" thinks that the article's content is appropriate for a user page, and should be moved there. This can also apply to vanity articles created by anonymous authors, the implication being that the anonymous author should create a user account to hold the user page.
• "Redirect to Example" is a shorthand for "Keep and change into a redirect article pointing to Example". A voter who votes "Redirect" usually does so in the belief that whilst the article's content is discardable, a redirect should exist to redirect readers who use that article title to a more complete, more general, or simply pre-existing article.
• "Merge to Example" is a shorthand for "Keep and merge the content into Example, leaving a redirect afterwards". A voter who votes "Merge" usually does so in the belief that the article content is valuable, and that the article should be merged into a more complete, more general, or simply pre-existing article. This is a common solution to things which are non-notable on their own or are otherwise redundant with an existing article.
• "Merge to Example and disambig" is a shorthand for "Keep and merge the content into Example, then turn the article into a disambiguation page". A voter who votes "Merge and disambig" usually does so in the belief that the article content is valuable and should be merged into a more complete or general article, but that the title may refer to several different topics, and therefore a disambiguation page is preferred over a simple redirect.
• "Rename to Example" is a shorthand for "Keep and rename the page to Example". A voter who votes "Rename" usually does so in the belief that the article content is valuable, but that the article is mis-named, for whatever reason. (The name may be misleading, or may not conform to a neutral point of view, for examples.)
• "Transwiki to sibling project" is a shorthand for "Keep and submit to the m:transwiki scheme for moving to sibling project". A voter who votes "Transwiki" usually does so in the belief that whilst the article is inappropriate for Wikipedia it is appropriate for one of its sibling projects. (Note that articles that are copies of articles from other language Wikipedia projects meet the criteria for speedy deletion.)
• "Wiktionary" is a shorthand for "Keep and submit to the m:transwiki scheme for moving to Wiktionary". A voter who votes "Wiktionary" usually does so in the belief that whilst the article is inappropriate for Wikipedia it is appropriate for Wiktionary. This is by far the most common Transwiki candidate.
• "Cleanup" is a shorthand for "Keep and send to cleanup". A voter who votes "Cleanup" usually does so in the belief that whilst the article is appropriate for Wikipedia as it stands it is in need of cleaning up. Note that it is perfectly permissible for an article to be listed for cleanup (by applying one or more of the appropriate cleanup tags) whilst it is still being discussed. It is not necessary to wait until the end of the discussion.
• "BJAODN" is a shorthand for "Keep but move to Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense, deleting the resultant redirect". BJAODN is a page where Wikipedians archive pages that they deem to be worthy of saving for humour value. People do not necessarily consider the article a bad joke or nonsensical; indeed, a number of amusing and coherent articles that simply do not meet Wikipedia's standards for inclusion have been partially preserved in this form.
• "Speedy keep" is a (rarely used) shorthand for "Keep this article and close the discussion now". A voter who votes "Speedy Keep" thinks that the nomination was an improper one that was made purely as vandalism. (Please bear in mind the Wikipedia policy of assuming good faith before making this vote.)

Modifiers can be applied to some voting shorthands:

• "Strong" implies a firm conviction in a vote, and that the voter will be unlikely to change it in the face of future developments. Usually this is because the voter is convinced that fundamental Wikipedia policy is clear on whether the article should be kept or deleted. However, sometimes it reflects a voter's own strong personal conviction, irrespective of policy. A strong vote has no greater weight, when the discussion is closed, than any others. It reflects upon the voter and upon the rationale, not upon the vote.
• "Weak" implies a lack of conviction in a vote, and that the voter might change it in the face of future developments. Usually this is because the voter is unsure, without further information or discussion, of the correct action. A weak vote has no lesser weight, when the discussion is closed, than any others. It reflects upon the voter and upon the rationale, not upon the vote.

Some newcomers to the VFD process tend to combine shorthands in ways that are self-contradictory or contrary to fundamental Wikipedia policy. The following votes incorporate mutually incompatible things or are contrary to fundamental Wikipedia policy, and should be avoided:

• "Merge to Example and Delete". Article merger requires that editing history of the source article be kept, for attribution purposes as required by the GFDL. It is not allowed to delete the editing history whilst retaining this content. When closing discussion, administrators will usually consider this to be one of the following instead:
  • "Keep and merge to Example"
  • "Delete all article content and edit history and then re-create as a redirect to Example"
• "Merge to Example without redirect". An article merger without the final step of creating a redirect is not actually a merger at all. In fact, it actually exacerbates the duplication. Whilst the voter's intent may well be to vote for deletion, when closing discussion administrators will usually err on the side of caution (as per deletion policy) and consider this vote to be "Keep and merge to Example", which might not be what the voter wanted at all.

The rationale behind a nomination or a vote is perhaps more important than the vote itself. For many of the most commonly applied rationales, shorthands have arisen, simply for reasons of speed and efficiency. Note that not all Wikipedians agree on the precise meanings and applications of these rationales, or their validity as grounds for deletion. They do not necessarily represent any official policy. These rationales express what the nominator or voter thinks.

For reference, see also:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/Notability and Music Guidelines
• Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies
• Wikipedia:Web comics

The following are the most common shorthands for rationales:

• "as per User:Example" is a shorthand for "The same reasoning as given by User:Example".
• "dicdef"/"dictdef" are shorthands for "This is a dictionary definition and Wikipedia is not a dictionary". Usually this accompanies a Wiktionary or a Delete (because Wiktionary already has an article) vote.
• "essay" is a shorthand for "This article is original research that contravenes the no original research policy, or a long essay that promotes a particular point of view, contravening the neutral point of view policy". Both policies are fundamental Wikipedia policies. Such articles should be published via other outlets, instead of in Wikipedia.
• "-cruft" (for example, "gamecruft", "fancruft", or "forumcruft") is a shorthand for "This article is fancruft, trivia of interest only to hardcore fans of a specific film, television series, book, game, pop singer, web forum, &c". Where the line is drawn is highly subjective and can be controversial. Many Wikipedians are more tolerant of trivia when it relates to factual content, rather than to popular culture, however.
• "how-to" is a shorthand for "The article is a set of instructions on doing something rather an article than on the thing itself". Although articles should discuss how a particular activity is accomplished, they should generally not provide step-by-step guides directing the reader on how to do so; that is the province of Wikipedia's sibling project Wikibooks.
• "neologism" is a shorthand for "The word or phrase used is not well-established enough to merit a Wikipedia article." This may be either a literal neologism (a new word which is simply not well-established) or a vanity neologism (a word coined in a small community but not used outside it). The article may need to be renamed or simply deleted.
• "original research" is a shorthand for "The article is someone's private theory, critique, rant, or essay".
• "patent nonsense" is shorthand for "A nonsensical article". Nonsensical articles are usually either labelled such for their writing style or for containing fabricated, nonsensical material; in the case of the former, rewriting is a possibility.
• "non-encyclopaedic" is shorthand for "Something that traditionally does not belong in an encyclopaedia, and doesn't fit the traditional definition of things that do". This in itself may not be enough to justify a reason for deletion, unless the article is clearly a case of what Wikipedia is not. Note that some users use this term and "non-notable" interchangeably.
• "non-notable" or "NN" are shorthands for "Something that that (the voter thinks) is unimportant due to its obscurity or lack of differentiation from others of its type". See above for several guidelines to notability that some Wikipedians agree upon and apply. If the article is related to something more common or well-known, consider merging it with that.
• "personal attack" is shorthand for "The article specifically attacks some person, group, idea or thing, which is a violation of both Wikipedia's no personal attacks policy and basic manners, and may well be libellous to boot". Criticism, however, is welcome on Wikipedia, provided that it is factual, non-biased, and civil.
• "POV" is shorthand for "The article's title, or its mere existence, make it inherently biased, thus violating Wikipedia's neutral-point-of-view policy, and that it should therefore be deleted". People using this shorthand don't mean you are not entitled to a point of view, simply that the article must not support one point of view exclusively or over contrary points of view.
• "POV fork" is a shorthand for "This article was created primarily to present the subject of an existing article from a different point of view". Note however that creating a temporary "sandbox" version of an article where parties in a POV dispute can propose changes is allowed.
• "promotional", "advertisement", "'ad", "advertorial", "spam", and "Wikispam" are shorthands for "The article's central intent is to promote a website, product, or business". See what Wikipedia is not.
• "recipe" is a shorthand for "The article is a recipe, giving preparation instructions rather than discussing the foodstuff in question". Although articles on foods should discuss how the food is made and what is used to make it, they should not provide step-by-step guides directing the reader on how to do so; that is the province of our sister project Wikibooks.
• "too secret" is a shorthand for "Secret societies are unverifiable and often non-notable". Wikipedia articles must be verifiable. Almost by definition, the world cannot verify things about secret societies.
• "vanity" is a shorthand for "This page is about a person, institution, or organization who Wikipedia's guidelines suggest does not merit an article". Many Wikipedians will willingly admit that they themselves do not merit articles. Use of this term as reasoning is supposed to suggest that the voter believes that the article was created or edited by the subject of the article or by a close associate, but sometimes the term is used simply to express the opinion that the article lacks usefulness.
• "wrong namespace" is a shorthand for "The article is an article about Wikipedia, its workings, and/or its participants". Such articles should be moved into either the "Wikipedia:" namespace (in other words, ArticleAboutWikipedia becomes Wikipedia:ArticleAboutWikipedia) or into a user subpage (in which case the article would become User:Article'sCreator/ArticleAboutWikipedia). Some articles may instead be moved to the Wikimedia meta pages. Note that articles may be moved by any logged-in user, so these typically should not be listed for this reason.

There are a few shorthands that are neither votes nor rationales, but that represent common contributions to discussions:

• "Rewritten article" and "Modified article" is a shorthand for "I have rewritten the article, or modified it to such a significant extent, that the preceding voters may wish to re-read the article as it now stands and consider changing their votes". Some editors opine that part of the fun of VFD is rewriting an article and then seeing all of the prior "Delete" votes struck through and replaced by "Keep after rewrite by X".
• "Comment" is a shorthand for "This is not to be taken as a vote". It is not necessary to mark comments as comments, as the highlighting of votes makes them stand out, and in many ways the comments are just as informative to the administrator trying to determine consensus as the votes are. However, some contributors explicitly mark comments as comments if they are at the outermost level of indentation.

• Alternative outlets for deleted articles
• Undeletion policy for when the deletion process goes wrong
• Archived delete debates
• Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense
• Candidates for speedy deletion
• Votes for Deletion Precedents
• Category:Pages on votes for deletion