BetaWiki:Deletion policy

The BetaWiki deletion policy defines the circumstances under which is a page eligible for removal and procedures for doing so. Deleting removes the page and its history from public view, however, administrators can still access it and undelete it if required.

Any page can be nominated for deletion by transcluding the Delete template on the very top of the nominated page followingly: {{Delete}}. After doing so, a message box appears on the top of the page containing a link to the Articles for deletion page, where the deletion request should be explained. The discussion only serves an advisory role for the administrators and is not an election - a page can still be deleted if more people vote to keep the page, but fail to provide any proper arguments and vice versa.

If a deletion is assumed to be uncontroversial, proposed deletion can also be used by using the Proposed deletion template followingly: {{subst:prod|<reason>}}. Other users can object to the deletion by removing the template, however, the template can't be reinstated after a user does so and the article must go through the regular nomination process if anybody insists on the proposal. If the template stays in place for 7 days, the article is eligible for deletion.

Deletion should be always used as a last resort option. If editing can improve the page, then this is the preferred course of action as opposed to deleting the page. Marking a page for deletion due to being "unneeded", "useless", or "unused" are not valid reasons to delete a page unless they meet other deletion criteria.

Criteria for speedy deletion

Speedy or quick deletion without prior discussion covers certain chosen situations where there are no doubts that a page should be deleted. This can be done by any administrator without due notice, other users can flag an article for quick deletion by transluding the QD template at the very top of the page followingly: {{QD|<reason>}}.

Any BetaWiki page can be quickly deleted if it meets at least one of the following criteria:

General

• Patent nonsense
• Test pages (this does not apply to Sandbox or user pages)
• Pages whose content is unambiguously beyond BetaWiki's scope
• Pure vandalism or blatant hoaxes (except articles about hoaxes, i.e. fake builds)
• Pages created by blocked users
• Pages that don't serve any other purpose than attacking their subject
• Recreation of a page that was deleted after prior discussion
• Reasonably justified author request, assuming that the particular user is the only editor of said page
• Pages dependent on a non-existent or deleted page
• Unambiguous advertising or promotion
• Unambiguous copyright infringement
• Uncontroversial maintenance

Articles

• Apparent non-encyclopedic content, such as proclamations, mere opinions with no source etc.
• Extremely short articles, containing only incomplete information out of context
• Non-English articles
• Articles that contain no useful content aside from external links, category tags, a rephrasing of the title, and/or images
• Obviously invented

Redirects

• Implausible typos
• Redirects pointing to a non-existent page that can't be fixed by changing the target
• Cross-namespace redirects

Files

• Duplicate files
• Corrupt, missing or empty files

Categories

• Unpopulated categories

User pages

• User request (but not for user talk pages)
• Nonexistent user
• Blatant misuse of BetaWiki as a free webhost
• Talk pages of anonymous IP users, whose content is no longer relevant

Templates

• Templates that unambiguously misrepresent established policy
• Duplicated templates