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Frequently asked questions

Q1: I don't like this page's name. I want to rename it to Articles for discussion or something else.

A1: Please see Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Rename AFD. Note that all of the "for discussion" pages handle not only deletion, but also proposed mergers, proposed moves, and other similar processes. AFD is "for deletion" because the volume of discussion has made it necessary to sub-divide the work by the type of change.

Q2: You mean I'm not supposed to use AFD to propose a merger or a page move?

A2: Correct. Please use Wikipedia:Proposed mergers or Wikipedia:Requested moves for those kinds of proposals.

Q3: How many articles get nominated at AfD?

A3: Per the Oracle of Deletion, there were about 470,000 AfDs between 2005 (when the process was first created) and 2022. This comes out to about 26,000 per year (2,176 per month / 72 per day). In 2022, there were 20,008 AfDs (1,667 per month / 55 per day).

Q4: How many articles get deleted?

A4: Between 2005 and 2020, around 60% of AfDs were closed as "delete" or "speedy delete". This is about 270,000. More detailed statistics (including year-by-year graphs) can be found at Wikipedia:Oracle/All and Wikipedia:Wikipedia records#Deletion.

Q5: Is the timeline strict, with exactly 168 hours and zero minutes allowed? Should I remove late comments?

A5: No. We're trying to get the right outcome, not follow some ceremonial process. If the discussion hasn't been closed, it's okay for people to keep discussing it.

Q6: How many people participate in AFD?

A6: As of October 2023, of the 13.9 million registered editors who have ever made 1+ edit anywhere, about 162,000 of them (1 in 85 editors) have also made 1+ edit to an AFD page. Most of the participants are experienced editors, but newcomers and unregistered editors also participate. Most individual AFD pages get comments from just a few editors, but the numbers add up over time.

This project page has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Noam Cohen (8 October 2006). "Wikipedia Wars: Giving the Heave-Ho in an Online Who's Who". New York Times.
David Segal (3 December 2006). "Look Me Up Under 'Missing Link': On Wikipedia, Oblivion Looms for the Non-Notable". Washington Post.
Daniel Terdiman (11 January 2007). "To delete Wikipedia entry or not to delete?". CNET News.
Matthew Moore (1 October 2009). "Wikipedia: 20 articles earmarked for deletion". Daily Telegraph.

Archives

Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30
31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40
41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50
51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60
61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70
71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77

For discussions that have not been well-archived (before 2004), the page history of the Articles for deletion page has to be used as a contingency archive. One can look in the Deletion log to obtain date and time of a deletion, then look in the page history of VfD near that time to see which edit regards the unlisting of the page, then view the previous version.

Wikipedia utilities/Page titles to be deleted – edit history before 13:45, 19 May 2002 (UTC) – also see its talk page), histories go back to November 2001
Votes for Deletion – edit history (22:22, 15 May 2002 (UTC) to 06:24, 28 May 2004 (UTC))
Votes for Deletion – edit history (04:53, 28 May 2004 (UTC) to 22:58, 20 September 2004 UTC))
Votes/Articles for Deletion – edit history (00:03, 21 September 2004 (UTC) to Current)
Old VfD archive index (now AfD archives 1–31)
Wikipedia talk:Archived deletion discussions (Archive)

This page has archives. Sections older than 25 days may be automatically archived by when more than 4 sections are present.

About Deleted Articles

There are three processes under which mainspace articles are deleted: 1) speedy deletion; 2) proposed deletion (prod) and 3) Articles for deletion (AfD). For more information, see WP:Why was my page deleted? To find out why the particular article you posted was deleted, go to the deletion log and type into the search field marked "title," the exact name of the article, mindful of the original capitalization, spelling and spacing. The deletion log entry will show when the article was deleted, by which administrator, and typically contain a deletion summary listing the reason for deletion. If you wish to contest this deletion, please contact the administrator first on their talk page and, depending on the circumstances, politely explain why you think the article should be restored, or why a copy should be provided to you so you can address the reason for deletion before reposting the article. If this is not fruitful, you have the option of listing the article at WP:Deletion review, but it will probably only be restored if the deletion was clearly improper.

List Discussions

WP:Articles for deletion
WP:Categories for discussion
WP:Copyright problems
WP:Deletion review
WP:Miscellany for deletion
WP:Redirects for discussion
WP:Stub types for deletion
WP:Templates for discussion
WP:WikiProject Deletion sorting
WT:Articles for deletion
WT:Categories for discussion
WT:Copyright problems
WT:Deletion review
WT:Miscellany for deletion
WT:Redirects for discussion
WT:Stub types for deletion
WT:Templates for discussion
WT:WikiProject Deletion sorting

Missing logs

Does anyone know why the logs for 2 and 3 November are not showing up under the Old discussions? They still have AfDs that have not been closed. Sarahj2107 (talk) 08:31, 11 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Sarahj2107: Because Mathbot (talk · contribs) - which updates Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old - hasn't run since 9 November. Notifying Oleg Alexandrov (talk · contribs), the bot-op. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:07, 11 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:54, 12 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: AfD with no participants should be relisted indefinitely, not closed, until there is at least one other participant

See here. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:40, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfc on upgrading the NAC essay to a guideline

Interested editors can comment on the Deletion process talk page. Thanks. Lourdes 05:52, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yamie Chess

Hi, can someone please fix the AFD for Yamie Chess, thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 17:11, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done Hut 8.5 17:15, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 17:28, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Patrolling kept articles

An issue came up at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions#When will a wiki page appear in google search? As Wikipedia:New pages patrol says: "pages that are still not patrolled are not indexed and cached by Google or other search engines". Kudpung closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bill Hillmann as keep but Bill Hillmann was not patrolled so it still had noindex (I checked the html source). The oldest unpatrolled pages at [1] are 30 days. Many new articles are AfD'ed and kept within that time frame. Should we ask closers to check whether kept pages need patrolling? Or just accept that it may take weeks until somebody else does it? Or could a tool flag AfD keeps which haven't been patrolled? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:24, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter: An interesting question to which there is a simple answer: All noinexed pages whether tagged for anything or not are automatically released for indexing after 90 days.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:28, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bear in mind that NPP patrollers are supposed to check a number of things besides whether the article should be deleted. The fact that something survived an AfD doesn't necessarily mean it's in a fit state to be patrolled. Hut 8.5 10:35, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

nomination failure

I just tried to Nominate Caffeinated Concert Tickets with Twinkle and received the error: Creating article deletion discussion page: Failed to save edit: The article you tried to create has been created already. In todays Log it placed a prior closed discussion. Can someone straighten this out? MB 20:29, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@MB: Twinkle is a pain, I always do it manually. You need to follow the instructions at WP:AFDHOWTO, step I, first bullet, small print. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:54, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't asking how to do a nomination, I have done nearly 50 with Twinkle and couldn't imagine doing it manually. I was asking how to clean up after this failure. The article has the banner at the top that says it has been nominated, but there is actually no open discussion. MB 00:23, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Probably just revert your last couple edits that are related to the nomination, since it didn't create a page. Looks to me like Twinkle is confused because a prior nomination was moved and a redirect is in its place now. You'll probably have to do this one manually. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 00:28, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@MB: never mind, this was going to be confusing anyway because of the redirected discussion. I went ahead and created Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caffeinated Concert Tickets (3rd nomination) and fixed the links to point to that page instead. Should be good to go now but you'll have to edit the AfD page to add your deletion rationale. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 00:39, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Ivanvector: Thanks for straightening this out. I've put my deletion rationale in. MB 00:48, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please explain how to

I'm sorry but your explanations aren't understandable, 38,512 bytes. Xx236 (talk) 14:07, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The procedure isn't exactly simple, but the instructions at WP:AFDHOWTO seem quite adequate for the task. I've completed the nomination at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Panchayat Cricket Ground‎ on your behalf. --Finngall ^talk 15:34, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've posted a notice on the page creator's talk page, so that they are aware of the nomination. --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:05, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rangoon Point

Could someone please complete this nomination, which I, as a non-logged-in user cannot? 86.17.222.157 (talk) 21:56, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

On it. --Finngall ^talk 22:15, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rangoon Point. --Finngall ^talk 22:24, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/2016_Aliah_University_Protest

I closed this discussion some time ago, but it keeps popping up on the list of old, unclosed AfDs. I don't know enough about the technical end of things to diagnose the problem. Joyous! | Talk 16:03, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Could it be because it was moved from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2016 Aliah University Protest SAVE ALIAH, which now redirects to it? I changed the entry on the November 15 log which might fix it. There is something else weird on that day's log. There are two delete !votes that don't seem to be part of any AfD and they are signed by a link to the talk dab page. I can't figure out where they are coming from. Sarahj2107 (talk) 16:27, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That seems to have done the trick. Thank you. Joyous! | Talk 20:12, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Complete deletion proposal for unregistered user

I have submitted a deletion proposal at 100 Women (BBC) and the associated talk page. Please may a registered user finish it off: I am unable to do so? 2A00:23C4:A683:6A00:C414:D65C:FA3:A059 (talk) 16:01, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done TimothyJosephWood 16:07, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! 2A00:23C4:A683:6A00:C414:D65C:FA3:A059 (talk) 16:25, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Revision as of 16:07, 6 December 2016 edit GreenMeansGo (talk \| contribs) Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Page movers, File movers, New page reviewers, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers 63,980 edits →‎Complete deletion proposal for unregistered user: :{{done}} ~~~~ ← Previous edit		Revision as of 16:25, 6 December 2016 edit undo 2a00:23c4:a683:6a00:c414:d65c:fa3:a059 (talk) →‎Complete deletion proposal for unregistered user Next edit →
Line 86:		Line 86:

	:{{done}} [[User:Timothyjosephwood\|<span style="color:#a56d3f;font-family:Impact;">Timothy</span><span style="color:#6f3800;font-family:Impact;">Joseph</span><span style="color:#422501;font-family:Impact;">Wood</span>]] 16:07, 6 December 2016 (UTC)		:{{done}} [[User:Timothyjosephwood\|<span style="color:#a56d3f;font-family:Impact;">Timothy</span><span style="color:#6f3800;font-family:Impact;">Joseph</span><span style="color:#422501;font-family:Impact;">Wood</span>]] 16:07, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
			::Thank you! [[Special:Contributions/2A00:23C4:A683:6A00:C414:D65C:FA3:A059\|2A00:23C4:A683:6A00:C414:D65C:FA3:A059]] ([[User talk:2A00:23C4:A683:6A00:C414:D65C:FA3:A059\|talk]]) 16:25, 6 December 2016 (UTC)