Wikipedia talk:Policy on permanent deletion of pages

Table of contents 1 Old talk 2 Suggestion for non-existing pages 3 Bullet 6 4 Copyright violations 5 Skipping the "Votes for deletion" page

Old talk

I do not want to see this list of "deleters" expanded. I do not wish to see a hierarchy develop at the Wikipedia and certainly having a select group of people with this authority will create one. Additionally the decision to bestow this right on a given person could fuel dissent from those who feel "entitled" for whatever reason but have been "overlooked".

The three people with deleting authority (at present) are all Bomis Inc employees. The rule that "Bomis employee = deleting privileges" is simple and non-controversial. Three people should be more than adequate to handle the responsibilities. Anyone else can use wikipedia:Votes for deletion to direct admin people to these pages. - MMGB

I agree wholeheartedly, Manning. I would tell 'em to earn their keep, except that we're not paying them. -MichaelTinkler

I completely agree as well. Having some volunteers with deleting powers and others without would be disasterous, IMO. Leave such powers with the official administrators. --Stephen Gilbert

What you say makes a lot of sense. Right now, the deleting workload is minimal. By the time it's too much for Bomis employees, we'll be able to pay more people to work on the project, I imagine. (Right now the project doesn't even pay for me. :-) ) --LMS

Is it okay if we have Wikipedia policy/Pages which have been permanently deleted (or maybe Wikipedia/Page titles which have been permanently deleted[?])? It would be useful (and interesting) to know what's been permanently deleted; note that Magnus's software will give us this log automagically, if we want. --TheCunctator

I'd rather such a log was kept off-site, and where miscreants couldn't easily find it and simply ressurrect the deleted pages. - MMGB

I tend to agree, MMGB. I don't feel very strongly about this, but the risk of abuse by admins in deleting pages is far smaller than the risk of abuse by vandals of the information of what pages were deleted. The only reason to have the "deleted pages" list displayed is to let people know that everything is above-board, which is a really excellent reason. I don't really care if sober adults see what pages I've deleted, and indeed it might help the sense of openness the community naturally has, some small amount, if they can see what pages I've deleted. But, again, I'm not sure that is more important than removing the incentives to vandalism, which such a list might be. --LMS

Why don't we try it, and if it becomes an incentive to vandalism, we can take it down or change the situation? I'm glad you can see the merits of the proposal. --TheCunctator

I actually don't think the proposal has much merit. I really don't see what purpose the list would have. I also don't think that your personal page on Meta-Wikipedia (http://meta.wikipedia.com) is the place for such a list, Cunctator. Eh? --LMS

I do. Eh? --TheCunctator

I'm sorry you feel that way, C. I'm going to have to insist that you not use it for that purpose. --LMS

What about other Wikipedias? Who´s going to perform a "good practices code" on our pages? As we're quite "forgotten sons", who will take care of us? I mean, the Spanish one on which I´m working now, for instance, had suffered from vandalism on Basque Country pages, obviously related to the political status, and the evidence is still there. Are you going to look after our pages?.--Edgar

The problem with the other Wikipedias is that we don't speak those languages well enough to help; I think the best we can do, until we raise enough money to hire people to lead those projects, is to lead by example. I wish it could be different. --LMS

For each non-English Wikipedia, you could assign a Wikipedian or two who speaks that language fluently and who you can trust to delete pages there. -- SJK

If someone trustworthy wants to volunteer, sounds good. Could someone make appropriate changes to the non-English Wikipedias page and other relevant pages? --LMS

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My admittedly newbie opinion is that misspelt names should not be allowed in. This is, after all, a reference work. Inaccuracies should be purged. Wayne Gretszky[?] is what sent me searching for a page talking about deleting pages. ATM Gretszky redirects to Wayne Gretzky, but is it really beneficial? Eventually search engines will update and dead links will phase out. --User:Colin dellow

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I have seen that it is very desirable not to delete pages, but only do #REDIRECTs, will be keep doing that, even when a page is some mispelling (especially mistyping, like Wofgang Amadeus Mozart)?

If there is a consensus that some pages should be deleted every now and then, I'd put the previous one on the list.

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I think the suggestion to keep all pages came as a means of avoiding dead links in search engines. I've encountered similar mispellings (Martin Scorcese); I would like to do away with them also but I'm not sure it would be a good advertisement for Wikipedia to leave dead links. I guess whatever action is taken depends on how common the misspelling is? It seems that wikipedia does not fuzzy-match search results; is that the case?

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I think there are two things discussed here. One is deletion of data. I don't like that. The other is moving data from an unsuitable location (a misspelling) to a correct one. I don't think this is a problem.

If someone creates a new page with a misspelled name and you spot it the day after, I think it's a good idea to move the data and remove the misspelled entry. Of course you should also use search to make sure that any other links to the page are changed. If the misspelling is on an old page so that it can be suspected of being in search engines like Google, then I guess a redirect is better. --Pinkunicorn

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Hi Pink, a redirect in that case is definitely better. Since ordinary users can't delete pages but only the data they contain, you might as well make the page with the misspelled title point to the one with the correctly spelled title. We do this all the time, and search engines like it (why not give poor spellers a positive result for their trouble? So Wikipedia catches the poor speller traffic--grand!). Colin, it would have been a little better to have asked this question in the FAQ or on Wikipedia chat rather than making an entire new page for it. By this time we have thought through most of the basic issues, so it's not a matter of debate, it's a matter of us informing you what the consensus is. --User:LMS

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Ah, my mistake. For some reason I thought the proper system here would be to put freshest comments at the top of the page, hence the misleading positioning of my comment. I didn't create this page, it just appeared to be the most proper forum when I ran a search. Anyway, question answered, lessons learned, one step closer to being better informed. :) --User:Colin dellow

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Oh, I thought this page looked familiar! I think it's a really old one. Sorry, Colin. As you can see, I was indeed confused by the position of your comment. Isn't interesting how the place where your comment is put conveys semantic information... --User:LMS

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Just to add one more thought, the cost of having a misspelling with a REDIRECT is probably pretty low, and it's not like some is going to have a page on someone else name of Wayne Gretszky. The only disadvantage I see is that it makes search results somewhat noisier; ideally having a way to tag a page as not being searchable, only reachable directly might be nice to have. Though first I want search results to put the best result -- pages with the request name in them -- at the top of the search list. --User:Belltower

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I think I want to strike rule number three:

Do not delete anything that might in the future become an encyclopedia topic. Hence, just because someone has written a completely worthless article about John Doe, that doesn't mean we should permanently delete the topic, John Doe[?], from the database.

Someone (I think Jimbo, at least) has made the point that, if we do not permanently delete blank articles from the database, others, working on topics that link to the blank article, might think that an article exists. Moreover, there really isn't any particularly good reason to save many archives for presently blank articles. Perhaps we could make a rule to the effect that if, in our opinion, the archive is for some reason valuable, we won't delete the blank article; otherwise (which means in most cases), we should.

What do you all think? Shall we strike it? I think we should. --LMS

I agree Larry. If the page is blank, I say delete it. However, I'd make an exception for blank pages which can sensibly be redirected to another page which has content. -- SJK

Hm, I just posted to wikipedia-l about that asking for a clarification. Koyaanis Qatsi, Saturday, April 6, 2002

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Wouldn't Wikipedia:Policy on permanent deletion of pages be a better page title? I really don't care for the double wikipedia. This will be changed over by me if nobody objects. --maveric149

Well, I object -- this is a discussion of policy, not the policy itself... JHK 08:27 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

The main page certainly has the appearance of more or less settled policy — it's even protected. I agree with maveric149.

— Toby 11:08 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

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Hi, may I ask why we're deleting subpages that have been around for a long time, instead of leaving them as redirects? I just teased Ed Poor for wanting to delete a bunch of subpages of Middle Earth, since these have all been archived by search engines. I guess I was wrong; they're being deleted by the truckload! I remember people being chastised on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion for voting for these pages. Now anybody that does a Google search for the words "Middle-earth" and <fill in the blank with most anything> (look at Wikipedia:Article deletion log and try it for yourself!) will quickly come to the conclusion that following Wikipedia links is a waste of time. Are we really having space issues that these redirect orphans can't continue to bring in traffic from search engines? — Toby 03:19 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Toby, at first I removed all the text from (and requested deletion of) the "subpage" articles. Then, after discussion with LDC and Maveric and Brion, I started just replacing the text of subpage articles with REDIRECTs to the new articles. This has left several dozen blank pages, I'm afraid. But soon Google and other search engines will have re-indexed Middle-earth and every part of it (even Rivendell) will be instantly available. Ed Poor 08:47 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

But why are we going out of our way to create broken links in search engines, even temporarily? As mentioned, this seems reasonable is space is an issue, but not otherwise. I've seen this come up several times before, and I never noticed a consensus that we should delete instead of redirect — OTC, popular opinion seemed to go the other way. Did I miss a (public) discussion somewhere? — Toby 11:08 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

I forgot, there's another reason not to delete these: We no longer know what their history is (unless we look in http://old.wikipedia.com/). Thanks to Julie's talk page for reminding me. — Toby 11:17 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

I should also point out that the "Move page" feature of the wiki software (is this still restricted to sysops?) automatically creates a redirect from the old title to the new title. ---Brion VIBBER

Yes, it's still resticted to sysops — see next item. — Toby 11:38 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

I just want to say that I am in 100% agreement with Brion and Toby about not deleting old page titles when their content has been moved to a new page title. My reasoning is in many other places so (See Talk:Middle-earth). I will, however, recreate any deleted page title as a redirect if it is deleted solely because it is no longer the article's title. --mav 19:32 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Good for you! Too bad that that doesn't restore the history (unless it was moved by secrect sysop superpowers). — Toby 13:27 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)

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(I'm separating the two distinct issues for clarity of presentation.)

Yes, the "Move page" feature's still resticted to sysops. — Toby 11:38 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Should it be? Some of these massive renaming projects would go a lot smoother using it; for one thing, edit histories wouldn't be divided over two pages. --Brion VIBBER 11:59 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

I think the main reason it was originally restricted is that it was buggy and dangerous. If it proves to be more safe and reliable, I think unrestricting it would be fine. I'll ask the list, though. --Lee Daniel Crocker

It's certainly had some exciting bugs in the past, but seems to be safe now. Any additional bugs are only going to turn up if it gets used, so... --Brion VIBBER

Well, I just reported a bug with it. Not one that would have caused much harm if even an anonymous user had been involved, but we may want to gamma test (if that's the correct word) more first. In theory, however, I see no objection to Brion's implicit suggestion to open things up. — Toby 12:28 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Noted; I've submitted a fix for the bug (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=586102&group_id=34373&atid=411192), as yet untested. I dunno about anonymous users, but we might 'gamma test' it by opening it up to all logged-in users (just like image uploads). Keep banging on it and yell when it breaks... --Brion VIBBER

Suggestion for non-existing pages

I have a suggestion for deleted pages. After all, most other sites feel free to rearrange their content and have Googlers occasionally land on 404 pages. However, other sites usually give helpful links, whereas Wikipedia gives a cryptic "Describe the new page here".

With that in mind, I suggest that we alter the behaviour of the software when pages that don't exist are browsed. This would be just for pages accessed with a regular URL, "ghost" links and "edit new" pages are not affected. This would allow us to keep our database clean of redirects from old page names.

Text of requested page would read:

The page you have requested from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia does not appear to exist on the system.

It may have been moved to:

< insert results of a page title search on the URL text here, if the load on the server allows it >

You can try a search :

< insert search box here >

If the page does not exist, you can write it yourself ( suitable quick intro to the wiki concept & link to "welcome newcomers" )

Tarquin, please submit this to the Feature Requests tracker (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=411195&group_id=34373&func=browse); it's a good idea and less likely to get forgotten there. --Brion VIBBER

Will do. -- Tarquin 09:10 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)

Bullet 6

This policy is vague, especially bullet 6. I think the policy should be the inverse: "Do not delete pages that can become an encyclopedia article in the future." Jeronimo

Second that opinion. There has been some movement to delete stubs, but I tend to expand more stubs than I create new articles, so it'll be hard to convince me of their redundance... -Ato

I think there must be some useful content to even consider a page an stub. If i go to the most wanted list, follow the first 100 titles and create pages that say "This is a most wanted article" i will eliminate them from the most wanted list, and create hundreds of links with no information. Those should be permanently deleted immediately, without even listing them in the votes for deletion page. However we should make sure that in the whole history of the page there is no information either. Newly created nonsensical pages would qualify to summary deletion. If this is discussed somewhere else,please point me there. AstroNomer

I agree. Delete no content entries on sight. --mav

Copyright violations

How long should we wait after someone has noticed a copyright violation before deleting it? -phma

You should try to rewrite it so it no longer is in violation. Lir 10:24 Oct 23, 2002 (UTC)

I say a week so long as the content is replaced by our copyright violation boilerplate. --mav

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Mimos Berhard was deleted. It is not listed as being deleted on the deletion log but it is gone. (?)

I believe you mean Mimos Berhad, which is alive and well. --Brion 10:31 Oct 23, 2002 (UTC)

QUOTE: Do not delete anything that might be a common misspelling of a title. Redirect those pages to the correct spelling. (This can actually result in higher traffic to the website. E.g., if philisophy is created, we might as well just redirect it to philosophy, since "philisophy" is one of the common misspellings of "philosophy.")

No wonder this sight has problems. With this golly, gosh, fellas, if we keep misspellings we will get more hits, I would bet that not one single person who was involved in coming to this brillant conclusion has ever run a SUCCESSFUL business. You don't gain viewers (clients) by offering garbage, you get them by quality and that is particularly true of something purporting to be an Encyclopedia. Note GOOGLE says: Did you mean???? - If the powers that be think this nonsense should continue then at least insert the words: MISSPELLED - REDIRECTED TO: XYZ ....DW

There's certainly a case for an alternate redirect syntax. I've been pondering for a while the idea of having #MISSPELLING foo for these. -- Tarquin 23:59 Dec 18, 2002 (UTC)

Delete the page - PERIOD! This is a learning site, not one to confuse and delay people in their searches. The redirect setup now causes confusion. It is time to get professional. I have no objection to crappy, incomplete articles, (although the laziness tees me off) but they can and will be fixed eventually as part of the building process. Get rid of the redirects: It turns people away when three variations, of which 2 are misspelled, show up as your Encyclopedia's choice? PREPOSTEROUS & AMATEURISH.....DW

Surely deleting these redirects will "confuse and delay people". Somebody searches for "philisophy" now, they find the article they want, and because "philosophy" is spelled correctly within that article, they learn how to spell the word to boot. Delete the redirect and the searcher finds nothing. I don't see how that would be an improvement. --Camembert

I agree. There is no reason to delete common mispellings. BTW DW, it is "site" not "sight". --mav

I agree as well. BTW mav, it is "misspellings", not "mispelling". :) Chas zzz brown 00:48 Dec 19, 2002 (UTC)

BTW, Mav misspelled the plural, not the singular :-) At least correct the correct tense, if you are going to correct it... -- RTC 00:53 Dec 19, 2002 (UTC)

Insert foot here -> O: Exactly why we should support common misspellings. --mav

What a bunch of nonsense! Stop with the little "club" patting each other's back (I've seen it before from you guys), and use your brains, limited though they obviously are. This site (and I always call it "SITE" unless my limited little brain is running faster than my fingers), has not been successful because of its lack of direction from someone with SUCCESSFUL business experience. Morons want to maintain the status quo because of their lack of business acumen combined with tunnel vision and the need to control. Get real! Encyclopedias, none, nowhere, no how, zip, rien, offer spelling variations. It's this lunacy that is sinking Wikipedia and one day soon all the hard work of people with a PROFESSIONAL attitude who make REAL contributions, will evaporate. Rarely does one encounter such blatant stupidity. It is obvious that you have no business training or experience so GROW UP....DW

Very drôle. --Camembert

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I notice a lot of redirects listed on wikipedia:votes for deletion. But this page says "Do not delete a page which could logically be made into a REDIRECT to an article". Is the policy out of date? Martin

No I don't think so. I think it's just people not bothering to read or understand that a misspelled page may be a useful redirect. Mintguy

What about AbductioN[?] and other camel case redirects? Martin

Lisewise, there's no need to delete them. There's always a possibility that somebody made a link to one of these pages from their own website (or in a newsgroup posting, email, or whatever) back when CamelCase was used, so it's better to keep them to avoid breaking those links. --Camembert

The link likelihood is near zero, as the CamelCase period was very brief. I say they should be deleted, they just clutter up the search. --Eloquence 19:53 Feb 17, 2003 (UTC)

Well, I admit I don't feel strongly about it. But all redirects, not just these ones, clutter up the search, so a better solution to my mind would be to somehow improve the way search results are presented. Of course, that's a damn site harder to implement than simply deleting these redirects, but I don't think they add that much clutter, and if even one link is broken by deleting them, then it's a loss. Incidentally, how long was the CamelCase period? --Camembert

I suggested something to that effect under Searches and Redirects at Wikipedia:Feature requests Martin

Yes, redirects will be handled differently in the search, but this still doesn't solve the problem. Most redirects should show up in a search (we will probably eventually want a redirect qualifier to distinguish incorrect spelling from alternative names), it's just the CamelCase redirs that are completely useless. Aside from that, dozens of them have already been deleted because there were no objections on VfD. I challenge you to show me a single website that links to a CamelCase based Wikipedia article. Unless you can do this, I think we should just go ahead and delete them all. --Eloquence 08:55 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

But many of these CamelCase redirects were the original homes of current articles and were primitively moved using the cut, redirect and paste method. Therefore the original edit history is at the CamelCase redirect and if we delete that article and its history we violate the GNU FDL by destroying the author attribution. Which reminds me that I have been meaning to bug the developers about possibly creating an interface that would allow Admins to easily move the history of an article without having to do the delete, move, restore routine. --mav

"dozens of them have already been deleted because there were no objections on VfD" -- do we really have to specifically object every time someone votes to delete a valid redirect? :-( Martin

Yes. There is obviously no consensus on the matter, so people need to express their opinions. --Eloquence 23:23 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

OK, my opinion is: Use #DEPRECATED for a redirect that shouldn't show up on a search. (There was some brief discussion about this on Wikipedia-L recently.) One of the great things about Wikipedia is that we almost never create broken links, and there's no need to change that if #DEPRECATED and #REDIRECT distinguishe the 2 kinds of redirects. -- Toby 03:55 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

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In December, Stephen Gilbert switched the order of rules #1 and #2. Since I remember often referring to "rule #2" and the like, I switched them back to preserve the integrity of such references. But if people have been using the new numbering (for rules #1 and #2) a lot since then, then they should be kept in the new form -- so please restore them to Stephen's version if you know that. -- Toby 04:03 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

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I'd like to suggest an additional guideline - consider orphaning articles (and images) before deleting them. IE, if you're planning to delete Fred and that article is linked to from Flintstone, then remove the link from Flintstone to Fred. This means that people working on Flintstone are less likely to be surprised when that article dissappears. Not universally applicable, but I think it often makes sense. Martin

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Sorry to spam recent changes, I had "minor" edit clicked and that wasn't minor, so I wanted to make sure the change & summary was seen. Koyaanis Qatsi Skipping the "Votes for deletion" page A while ago STG added

If the page contains 'dfdgsfgdgf' and no useful history, this step may be skipped.

which morphed over time to

If the page contains no useful content (all gibberish for example) and no useful history, this step may be skipped.

I strongly believe the second form is vague enough to be misinterpreted (or at least debatably interpreted, which is nearly as bad), and we don't need policies that generate conflict. "Useful content", like beauty, is too much in the eyes of the beholder.

I also don't really agree with the first, in line with the same argument, but at the same time, we shouldn't have policies that allow for zero judgment on the part of Wikipedians unless it becomes an obvious problem. --The Cunctator 03:40 18 May 2003 (UTC)

All well and good. Talk to Jimmy about it. I hardly think changing the policy summary here, without explanation, will convince anyone of anything except that you have an agenda. You're all for keeping things "aboveboard," so why don't we keep the policy changes aboveboard also? Discuss it at wikien or on the talk pages before changing it. Koyaanis Qatsi

You're right. That's why I gave an explanation. Editing the page is certainly aboveboard. It's just not "talk before change". And I've never been all for that. --The Cunctator

There are too many requirements which, if allowed to continue, will, for all practical purposes, make it impossible to get a page deleted:

1. Every page which should be deleted needs to be listed on the Votes for deletion page, where it will be discussed ad nauseum. Look at how many things sit there forever with nobody bothering to delete them.
2. Nothing can be deleted for at least a week after being put on Votes for deletion. This is too long a time. What are we to do about nuisance articles being created by banned users who come into the Wikipedia to cause trouble, or those like Michael who keeps coming in and creating articles even though they know that they've been banned? Do we just let those articles sit around forever? There are users such as MyRedDice who will vote to keep any and all entries from banned users because he doesn't believe in banning anybody for anything.
3. The person who takes the initiative to put an article on Votes for deletion isn't allowed to do the actual deleting. Again, this is a disincentive to even put anything on the list. -- Zoe

1. No entry sits there forever. Forever is a long, long time.
2. A week is not a long time. There's no restriction on editing articles immediately. If banned users create useful articles (not saying that that's what happening) then there's no need to delete the articles.
3. You're right, it is a disincentive. It's also a simple and neutral check on individual bias. Deleting a page is a big decision, usually with many alternatives, and should not be taken lightly. --The Cunctator

1. I supported the "dsfsdfs", and I assumed that "no useful content" was meant to be a clarification of that. If people are interpreting it more widely, then I support revertion to the previous policy.
2. I strongly oppose deleting suspected copyright infringements without using votes for deletion and waiting a week.
3. The current policy of not deleting stuff until they've been for VfD on a week could be made more flexible, I think.
4. The arguments about dealing with "banned" users are interesting, but a seperate subject. Readers may care to note that I recently "soft banned" user:No-Fx, demonstrating that I do not believe that no user should ever be "banned".
5. I continue to strongly believe that wherever it is possible to redirect rather than delete, then we should do so. If/when we get a better deletion system (as discussed on meta:deletion management redesign) then this will change, but until then deletion is a sysop-restricted change that is hard to reverse and should be used sparingly.
6. Please don't take the approach that because I, or someone else, would oppose deleting something, therefore you will not use the votes for deletion page. That's not a very consensus-driven approach, and since, unlike The Cunctator, I regularly review the deletion log, it's not likely to be very successful either.

numbered comments. Very nice. :) Martin 12:44 18 May 2003 (UTC)

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I feel like doing something non-controversial for a change, so I plan to create wikipedia:delete test and welcome. It's been talked about on the list, but AFAIK it's not been implemented yet, so here goes! :) Martin 20:08 31 May 2003 (UTC)

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Just checking - if a page is deleted, is it policy to delete their talk pages without further discussion, or do they need to be listed on VfD too? I just deleted Talk:Keshavianistic oligarchy[?] and Talk:Keshavianistic Oligarchy[?], the latter being a redirect to the former. -- Oliver P. 14:21 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I think there's a list somewhere of orphan talk pages that gives suggestions... but I can't remember where... Martin

Ah... I've just found Wikipedia:Orphan talk pages - is that what you meant? It lists things that can be done with orphan talk pages, but doesn't give a policy on what should be done with them. I suppose I should have just put them on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. The ones I deleted had no useful information as far as I can recall, but I've just undeleted them so you can check to see if you think I was doing anything underhand... :) -- Oliver P. 01:38 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

As the initiator of Wikipedia:Orphan talk pages, I don't think it would be meaningful to have a policy for this because they don't really fall into a single category (other than in the broad sense that they are pages in a talk namespace who share titles with non-talk pages which have been deleted). Some are worth saving because they have interesting, thought-provoking discussion. Some are not worth saving because they consist only of "somebody wrote JGFFUSIDNHUISF in this page can an admin delete it please?" or "this page should be deleted to make room for a rename." Some can and should be refactored into general discussion pages or into other related talk pages. It's a call that should be based on the individual page -- just like any other page on the wiki. Nothing special. --Brion 04:31 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)