 | This page is part of the Military history WikiProject's online Academy, and contains instructions, recommendations, or suggestions for editors working on military history articles. While it is not one of the project's formal guidelines, editors are encouraged to consider the advice presented here in the course of their editing work. |
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. This means that content should have encyclopedic value. It is also a crowd-sourced resource, which can be edited by anyone. This means that sometimes inappropriate content will be uploaded. When this happens, the community may move to delete a page. Deleting a page involves terminating a page, its history, its information, and anything else that has ever been added to or subtracted from the page, effectively returning an article, list, or in some cases image to the red link that it was before its creation. In most cases, though, deletion requires that consensus be obtained through a discussion of the article and the reasons why one or more editors feel that article should no longer be on Wikipedia.
All deletions on Wikipedia are carried out by administrators acting either on established consensus to delete a page or on their own authority and understanding of which articles should and should not be on Wikipedia as set forth by Wikipedia's deletion policy, which describes how pages that do not meet the relevant criteria for content of the encyclopedia are identified and removed from Wikipedia. In the normal operations of Wikipedia, approximately 5,000 pages are deleted each day through the processes outlined below.
Deletion of a Wikipedia article removes the current version and all previous versions from public view. Unlike page blanking, which can be performed (or reverted) by any user, deletion can be performed only by administrators. Administrators can also view deleted pages and reverse ("undelete") any deletion. All such actions are logged. Because deletion is a big deal, many users (particularly new users or those who are going through a first-time deletion) tend to take the matter personally. This essay will serve as a guide to understanding deletion and offer options on how to respond when a page is nominated for deletion.