MicroWiki:Deletion policy

This page documents an English MicroWiki policy.

It describes a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.

Shortcuts

Admins generally love to delete articles. However, sending them flowers may change their mind.

Here at MicroWiki, we like to ~~delete articles for no reason~~ keep a clean, accurate and correct environment. Throughout the years no official deletion policy was adopted, and articles were generally discussed with the users and/or simply deleted because they weren't acceptable for the wiki. This mainly included extremely non-serious micronations (such as the nation of Pooplodia, fl. 2009), articles that weren't aesthetically acceptable (i.e. really bad articles, with no organisation at all), redlink saviours (short articles made just to prevent an article name to appear in "red"), and obvious articles (which just repeat the same information all over again).

The MicroWiki deletion policy describes therefore how, and especially which, articles and files that do not meet the content criteria for the wiki are identified and removed.

This is because all content here is governed by a standard of quality. Some of the standards include encyclopædic quality, editorial approach, and content copyright (as we do not endorse the so-called copypasta both from other micronational wikis and Wikipedia). Content that is capable of abiding by these standards can usually be improved upon by editing. However, when content is incapable of meeting inclusion criteria or is in breach of site policy, it is unfortunately deleted.

One must remember, however, that when an article is deleted, the article and its revision history are only removed from view, which means that it can be restored at any time. Unlike page blanking, which can be done by any user (and is not permitted due to often being mistaken for vandalism), deletion can only be done by administrators.

Reasons for deletion

Deletion of a full page usually occurs when it is impractical to revise or remove an offending section. Reasons for deletion include, but are not limited to, the following:

Content that meets at least one of the criteria for speedy deletion
Copyright violations and other material violating MicroWiki's non-free content criteria (MW:G12)
Vandalism, including inflammatory redirects, pages that exist only to disparage their subject, patent nonsense, or gibberish (MW:G3, MW:G10, and MW:G1)
Advertising or other spam without any relevant or encyclopedic content (MW:G6)
Articles that cannot possibly be attributed to reliable sources, including neologisms, original theories and conclusions, and hoaxes (MW:G3)
Articles irrelevant to micronationalism as a whole (MW:A7)
Redundant or otherwise useless templates
Categories representing overcategorization
Files that are redundant, unused, obsolete, or violate the non-free policy (MW:F1, MW:F5, and MW:F9, respectively)
Any other use of the article, template, project, or user namespace that is contrary to the established separate policy for that namespace
Any other content not suitable for an encyclopedia

Alternatives to deletion

Editing and discussion

Deletion is often a last resort if a page cannot be improved through editing. Vandalism, with the exception of malicious page creation, can be reverted by any user. Issues with a page's content rarely warrant an instant deletion, and should first be discussed on the relevant talk page. This also applies to disputes regarding pages detailing policies or guidelines, as well and inappropriate user pages, which can often be resolved through discussion with the user.

Process

There are two main processes for deletion that are described below. After one decides which process is right for the article involved, they place the appropriate template on the top of the page with the reason why they feel that the page should be deleted. People may comment on the request during the lag time before deletion either on the talk page of the page being deleted or on the message board where the deletion was proposed.

Process	Required lag	Template used	Description
Speedy deletion	None	{{SpeedyDeletion}}	For pure vandalism, patent nonsense, or other pages that can be instantly deleted.
Proposed deletion	Seven Days	{{Deletion}}	For pages that can uncontroversially be deleted, but do not fall under one of the criteria for speedy deletion

Proposals that do not fit into one of the above processes, such as batch deletions, can be proposed to the Administrators on their talk pages.

Proposed deletion

Proposed deletion is a deletion process for the deletion of uncontroversial pages that do not meet the criteria for speedy deletion. The purpose of this process is to provide a chance for other editors to look over the proposal and ensure that reasons to keep the page have not been overlooked.

To propose an article for the proposed deletion process, add the {{Deletion}} tag onto the top of the article, together with an explanation. These pages can be deleted after seven days without a full debate — as long as no one objects. If anyone has an objection to the deletion, the page can "survive" until an agreement is reached, so long as it is not breaking the deletion policy. A non-admin deleting the "proposed deletion" tag without explanation is not permitted.

The candidates for proposed deletion can be found at Category:Articles for deletion.

Criteria

These are some examples of when a page may be deleted.

Problem with page	Solution
The article has very little information on a special topic of a micronation.	Generally in these cases, the information contained is inserted into the 'main article', which is the article that explains everything about a micronation (e.g. 'Armed forces of Cheslovia' is a normal article, while "Cheslovian Federation" is the 'main article'). Basically, the two articles are merged together.
The article is a redlink savior	Always check the main article in this case, as it may contain a few items of information that are not included in the latter. However, if things are repeated all over again, speedy deletion.
The page is a useless redirect.	Deleting redirects, especially old ones, can risk breaking external and internal links. Because of this, you may want to only consider the deletion of very newly created redirects or ones that cause problems. The following are examples of when it would be a good idea to list a redirect for proposed deletion: The redirect is offensive or makes no sense, such as redirecting [[Conservative hater]] to James Puchowski. The redirect is broken, meaning that the page redirects to a page that no longer exists or never existed. The redirect contains typos or, if it's the name of a micronation, has "The" in the front. On the other hand, you should avoid deleting redirect if: The redirect has a potentially useful page history. For example, if the page started out as an article and later was transformed into a redirect because the content was merged into another page. Someone finds the redirect to be useful. You may not necessarily find it useful, but it may be because people browse in different ways. The deletion of the redirect risks breaking internal or external links. The redirect would prevent the (re)creation of duplicate and redundant articles, whether by redirecting the plural form of an article to the singular form, by redirecting a frequent misspelling of a subject to its correct spelling, by redirecting to a synonym, etc. In other words, redirects with no incoming internal links are not grounds for deletion on those terms alone, because they could be of benefit to the reader.
The page is non-serious	Several times in the past, users have criticised the decision of various admins to delete "non-serious articles" due to disputes over which micronations are "serious" and which are not. However, MicroWiki needs to keep a standard of encyclopaedic quality, and extremely non-serious articles have to be deleted. Micronations which fall into this category are those who practice trolling, have articles that aren't following the guidelines, and which basically are just a nuisance. Proposed deletion is the appropriate thing to do, as users will be able to discuss the matter.

Procedure for admins

The deleting Administrator has the final authority to determine whether or not an article should be deleted. Because of this, the Admins also have the responsibility to verify the legitimacy of a request and the support of the request before deleting the article.

If you are the deciding Administrator in determining whether or not a page should be deleted:

Check the history to see if the article has been marked for an appropriate length of time.
Review the article's discussion page/deletion review entry and ensure that all votes are legitimate and check for contests.
If you agree that the article should be deleted, delete the article giving an informative reason for deletion and noting the deletion process used.
If you disagree that the article should be deleted, remove the tag and consider proposing the article for improvement or merge with another article.

Administrators who intend to delete articles that they proposed for deletion can delete them, as long as they provide a proper explanation to their actions, and always if we're talking of articles that cannot improve in any single way.

Restoring a deleted article

When an administrator deletes an article, it does not become lost forever – it simply becomes archived so only admins can see them. If you would like a page restored or userfied, see MicroWiki:Requests for undeletion.