Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion

Current list: Category:Candidates for speedy deletion

There are a few limited cases where admins can delete Wikipedia pages or media "on sight" and without requiring further debate. Even if listed on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion or a related page, such pages may be deleted and the discussion ended. Before deleting, an admin should always check the page history to see if any previous version can be restored, such that deletion is not necessary. Of course, the Sandbox is exempt from deletion.

Non-admins can ask for an admin to delete such a page, either by listing it on speedy deletions, or by adding a {{deletebecause|Reason}} template. It would be friendly to notify the author of the article as well; everyone was new once. Note that some Wikipedians create articles in multiple saves. Try to avoid deleting a page too soon after its initial creation, as the author may be working on it.

People sometimes use abbreviations to refer to these criteria (e.g. "A3" meaning section A, criterion 3) but for the sake of clarity this is not preferred.

General

• Patent nonsense, i.e. no meaningful content, unsalvageably incoherent page. This does not include: poor writing, partisan screeds, obscene remarks, vandalism, badly translated material, implausible theories or hoaxes.
• Test pages (e.g., "Can I really create a page here?").
• Pure vandalism. This includes redirects created during cleanup of page move vandalism.
• Recreation of deleted material. A substantially identical copy, by any title, of a page that was deleted according to the deletion policy, except if it is in userspace, or undeleted per the undeletion policy.
  • Before deleting again, the admin should ensure that the material is identical, and not merely an article on the same subject.
• Banned user. Contributions made by a banned user while they were banned. This is controversial.
• History merging. Temporarily deleting a page in order to merge page histories.
• Author requests deletion. Any page which is requested for deletion by the original author, provided the page was edited only by its author.
• Talk pages of already deleted pages, unless they contain the deletion discussion and it isn't logged elsewhere.

Articles

For any articles that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Wikipedia:Articles for deletion.

• Very short articles providing little or no context (e.g., "He is a funny man that has created Factory and the Hacienda. And, by the way, his wife is great."). Limited content is not in itself a reason to delete if there is enough context to allow expansion. Google may help in determining context, though, and allow for the article's expansion.
• Foreign language articles that exist on another Wikimedia project, although translating them may be an alternative.
• No content whatsoever. Any article whose contents consist only of an external link, "See also" section, book reference, category tag, template tag, interwiki link, or rephrasing of the title.
• Only contact information. Any article which consists only of attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title.
• Transwikied articles. Any article that has been discussed at Articles for Deletion (or Miscellany for deletion), where the outcome was to transwiki, and where the transwikification has been properly performed and the author information recorded.
• Attack pages. Articles which serve no purpose but to disparage their subject ("insult pages", e.g., "OMFG! Joe Random is a l0ser n00bface lolol!!!11").
• Unremarkable people. An article about a real person that does not assert that person's importance or significance. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AFD instead. For details, see Wikipedia:Deletion of vanity articles.
• An article that is a blatant copyright infringement and meets these parameters:
  1. Material is unquestionably copied from the website of a commercial content provider (e.g. encyclopedia, news service) and;
  2. The article and its entire history contains only copyright violation material, excluding tags, templates, and minor edits and;
  3. Uploader makes no assertion of permission or fair use, and none seems likely and;
  4. The material is identified within 48 hours of upload and is almost or totally un-wikified (to diminish mirror problem).
  • Notification: When tagging a page for deletion under this criterion, a user should notify the page's creator using wording similar to {{Nothanks-sd}} or an equivalent message. Before deleting any page under this criterion, an admin should verify that the page creator has been notified — if not, the admin should do so. If the creator was not logged in and did not use a consistent IP address, such notification is unneeded.

Redirects

For any redirects that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion.

• Redirects to non-existent pages (although it may be a possible to make it a useful redirect to some other target)
• Redirects to the User: space from the main article space. If this was the result of a page move, consider waiting a day or two before deleting the redirect.
• Making room for a page move that is non-controversial or consensual, for instance reversing a redirect.
• Redirects as a result of an implausible typo that were recently created. However, redirects from common misspellings or misnomers are generally useful.

Images/Media

For any images that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Wikipedia:Images for deletion. Please remove images from any pages they are used in before marking them for speedy deletion.

• Redundant .An image which is a redundant copy, in the same image file format and a lower resolution, of something else on Wikipedia. This does not apply to duplicates of Wikimedia Commons, because of licence issues; these should be tagged with {{NowCommons|Image:newname.ext}} instead.
• A corrupt or empty image.
• Improper "fair-use". Images licensed as "for non-commercial use only" or "used with permission" which were uploaded on or after May 19, 2005. [1]
• Lack of licensing. Images in category "Images with unknown source" or "Images with unknown copyright status" which have been tagged with a template that places them in the category for more than 7 days, regardless of when uploaded.
• Unused copyrighted images. Copyrighted images uploaded without permission of the copyright holder, or under a license which does not permit commercial use, which are not used in any article, and which has been tagged with a template which places them in Category:Orphaned fairuse images for more than seven days (so-called "orphaned fair use images"). Reasonable exceptions may be made for images uploaded for an upcoming article. The templates {{or-fu-nr}} and {{or-fu-re}} place an image in this category.

Categories

For any categories that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Wikipedia:Categories for deletion.

• Empty categories (no articles or subcategories for at least four days) whose only content has consisted of links to parent categories. This does NOT apply to categories being discussed on WP:CFD. If the category isn't relatively new, it possibly contained articles earlier, and deeper investigation is needed.
• Template categories. If a category is solely populated from a template (e.g. Category:Wikipedia cleanup from {{cleanup}}) and the template is deleted per deletion policy, the category can also be deleted without further discussion.
• Speedy renaming. Empty categories that have qualified for speedy renaming.
  1. Typo fixes (e.g., Brdiges -> Bridges), but not changes between British and American spelling.
  2. Capitalization fixes (e.g., characters In harry Potter -> Characters in Harry Potter)
  3. Conversions from singular to plural, or back (e.g., Steamship -> Steamships)
  4. Renaming to conform with the "by country" categorization conventions
  5. Abbreviation expanding for country names, e.g. changing "U.S." to "United States"

User pages

For any user pages that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion.

• Owner request. Personal subpages, upon request by their owner. In some rare cases there may be administrative need to retain the page.
• Recycling IP pages. User talk pages of non-logged in users where the message is no longer relevant. This is to avoid confusing new users who happen to edit with that same IP address.

See also

• Wikipedia:Deletion policy
• Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators
• Wikipedia:Guide to deletion
• Wikipedia:Lost images