Wikipedia:Deletion of vanity articles
 |
- Note: Avoid the use of the word "vanity" in deletion debates or deletion logs — Wikipedia has had significant problems with people who feel they have been accused of being "vanity authors" or similar in a deletion discussion. Such an accusation would in the normal course of events appear defamatory; avoid the term on Wikipedia.
As of July 19, 2005, a vote was held that approved, with roughly 74% support, this proposed addition to Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion:
- "An article about a real person that does not assert that person's importance or significance - people such as college professors or actors may be individually important in society; people such as students and bakers are not, or at least not for the reason of being a student or baker. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AFD instead."
However, the voting made it clear that the Wikipedia community, though approving the policy in general, was dissatisfied with the wording and the choice of examples; also, there were reservations about overuse of the policy. Therefore, while the policy is approved, please consider these matters before deleting an article under this criterion:
- Only those articles where there is no plausible assertion of importance should be considered for Wikipedia:Speedy deletion.
- Consider using Articles for Deletion instead for articles written by an Established Wikipedian, articles that have been edited by multiple editors, and articles that are linked from other articles.
- Though it is written fairly broadly, this criterion is mainly intended to deal with vanity articles created by their subjects or by people personally known to them.
- If it appears that a vanity article has been created in a mistaken effort to create a user page (or the material in the vanity article would be particularly appropriate for a user page), consider userfying the article instead. When a vanity article is moved to user space, be sure to delete the resulting redirect. Using the template {{nn-userfy}} on the creator's Talk page is friendly and may avoid subsequent reposting of the same content. However, userfying such vanity pieces should probably be avoided when the editor in question has no other contributions to Wikipedia and might be using the project as a free webhost or for the purpose of self-promotion.
The original proposal listed these examples:
- For instance, "John Doe is good at chess" does not assert significance. "John Doe won the UK National Chess Trophy in 1994" does. If people argue that winning that trophy is not significant enough, they should take the matter to AfD, as the assertion prohibits speedy deletion.
- For a definition of importance and significance, please see the relevant entries in Wiktionary. Administrators are expected to follow common sense. For instance, if the person's profession is cited, a reasonable guideline would be how many people have the same profession: there are tens of thousands of porn models, but very few senators.
- An email sent by Jimbo Wales regarding this policy can be found here.