Linguifex:Deletion policy

Deletion Policy Any suggestions or additions to this page's content shall be discussed on the page's discussion page.

See also: Linguifex:Policy

The Linguifex Wiki deletion policy describes how pages that do not meet the criteria for content of the wiki are identified and removed.

Deletion of a Linguifex Wiki 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. If in doubt as to whether there is consensus to delete a page, administrators will normally not delete it.

Discussion

If a page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion. Vandalism to a page's content can be reverted by any user.

Disputes over page content are usually not dealt with by deleting the page, except in severe cases. The content issues should be discussed at the relevant talk page, and other methods of dispute resolution should be used first, such as listing on discussion pages for comments for further input. Deletion discussions that are really unresolved content disputes may be closed by an uninvolved editor, and referred to the talk page or other appropriate forum.

Disagreement over a policy or guideline is not dealt with by deleting it. Similarly, issues with an inappropriate user page can often be resolved through discussion with the user.

Synopsis

This is a synopsis of this policy's guidelines, with appropriate prefixes for referencing. Reasons for deletion include, but are not limited to, the following (subject to the condition that improvement or deletion of an offending section, if practical, is preferable to deletion of an entire page):

G:12; F:6. Copyright violations not in accordance with the Linguifex:Copyrights.

G:3. Vandalism, including inflammatory redirects, pages that exist only to disparage their subject, patent nonsense, or gibberish.

G:11. Advertising or other spam without relevant content (but not an article about an advertising-related subject).

G:8. Inactivity of a personal constructed language. Reversion of deletions shall be petitioned to the administrators.

T:1. Redundant or otherwise useless templates.

C:1. Categories representing overcategorisation.

F:1;2;6. Files or images that are unused, obsolete, or violate the Non-free policy.

• 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 a wiki.

B. Blocking

See also: Linguifex:Policy

Blocking of users is the last resort of all administrator to solve a conflict. Users may be blocked if repeatedly or severely disobeying or violating any of the guidelines presented in the conduct policy or deletion policy. If you disagree with the blocking of a user, an unblocking request shall be presented to the administration. The main reasons for blocking are:

G:3. Vandalism, including inflammatory redirects, pages that exist only to disparage their subject, patent nonsense, or gibberish.

G:11. Advertising or other spam without relevant content (but not an article about an advertising-related subject).

G:13. Making use of another user account to circumvent banning or blocking or to promote vandalism is heavily forbidden and may in certain circumastances lead to deletion of the account. The most common response however, is blocking.

1. Not logged in
A more rare cause is when repeatedly editing without signing in to an account, which reveals the user's IP-address. This is a source of danger for the user, and leads to difficulties with identifying the authors of pages for the administrators.
2. Sockpuppeting
Making use of another user account to circumvent banning or blocking or to promote vandalism is heavily forbidden and is bound to result in blocking of the accounts.

G. General

These apply to all namespaces (and so apply to articles, redirects, user pages, talk pages, files, etc.):

1. Patent nonsense
Pages consisting entirely of incoherent text or gibberish with no meaningful content or history. This excludes poor writing, partisan screeds, obscene remarks, implausible theories, vandalism and hoaxes, fictional material, coherent non-English material, and poorly translated material.
2. Test pages
A page created to test editing or other Linguifex Wiki functions. All testing should occur within the user sphere.
3. Pure vandalism
This includes blatant and obvious misinformation, and redirects created by cleanup from page-move vandalism, as well as harassing users' languages.
4. Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion
If a deletion is agreed upon amongst the community, only a petition and discussion with the administration can recreate it.
5. Creations by non-logged in users
These pages will not be immediatly deleted, but will have the administrators attention.
6. Creations by banned or blocked users
Pages created by banned or blocked users in violation of their ban or block, and which have no substantial edits by others.
7. Author requests deletion
If requested in good faith and provided that the only substantial content to the page and to the associated talk page was added by its author. (For redirects created as a result of a pagemove, the mover must also have been the only substantive contributor to the pages prior to the move.) Note that this does not apply to user talk pages, which are not deleted, but rather archived. If the page or article in question is of substantial importance to the wiki profile or of exceptional writing, the deletion request must be discussed.
8. Inactivity
A personal language with a non-sufficient content and a long inactivity, may be deleted. The definition of "non-sufficient" and "long inactivity" is arbitrary, and it is up to the administrators to assess whether articles ought to be deleted or not. However, a user has approximately one or two months upon creation of a language to add substantial content. If a language is risking deletion, a watch notice should be left on the author's talk page. In case of deletion, a deletion notice should be left on the author's talk page. If a user wants a language recreated, petition should be left with the administration. Special template: Watched/G:8
9. Page blanking
Blanking a page of all its content is a normally prohibited action. Page blanking may only occur at the behest of the administration and only applies to main space articles. Users may apply to get their language articles blanked or deleted at the administration, which is normally approved of. Talk pages and administrative pages cannot be blanked. This is a clear violation of the policy. Talk pages can however be archived, granted there are not several active discussions, and the content surpasses 32 kilobytes. See Help:Archiving, for more information.
10. Pages dependent on a non-existent or deleted page
Examples include talk pages with no corresponding subject page; subpages with no parent page; image pages without a corresponding image; redirects to invalid targets, such as nonexistent targets, redirect loops, and bad titles; and categories populated by deleted or retargeted templates.
11. Pages that disparage, threaten, intimidate or harass their subject or some other entity, and serve no other purpose
These "attack pages" may include libel, legal threats, material intended purely to harass or intimidate a person or biographical material about a living person that is entirely negative in tone and unsourced. These pages should be speedily deleted when there is no neutral version in the page history to revert to.
12. Unambiguous advertising or promotion
Pages that are exclusively promotional, and contain no linguistic information or information concerning conlangs. This applies to conlangs which mainly redirect ot another website.
13. Unambiguous copyright infringement
Text pages that contain copyrighted material with no credible assertion of public domain, fair use, or a compatible free license, where there is no non-infringing content on the page worth saving. Only if the history is unsalvageably corrupted should it be deleted in its entirety; earlier versions without infringement should be retained.
14. Technical or severe layout error
If a page unintentionally interferes with Linguifex layout, design, code or technology this should be corrected immediately. If the error does not apply to the three main browsers of Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, it is of secondary prioritation. If possible, depending on situation and circumstances, the edit believed to have caused the error should be reverted. If preferable, it may corrected on the spot. If all efforts prove futile, deletion to prevent cascading errors is recommended. Templates with technical errors can cause cascading troubles throughout both the template and main namespaces. Please note that intentional errors caused by users, are considered a form of vandalism, see G:3.

A. Articles

1. No context
Articles lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article. Example: "He is a funny man with a red car. He makes people laugh." This applies only to very short articles. Caution is needed when using this tag on newly created articles.
2. No content
Any article (other than disambiguation pages, redirects, or soft redirects) consisting only of external links, category tags and "see also" sections, a rephrasing of the title, attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title, a question that should have been asked at the help or reference desks, chat-like comments, template tags, and/or images. This also applies to articles consisting entirely of the framework of the Article wizard with no additional content beyond the above. However, a very short article may be a valid stub if it has context, in which case it is not eligible for deletion under this criterion. Similarly, this criterion does not cover a page having only an infobox, unless its contents also meet the above criteria. Caution is needed when using this tag on newly created articles. It is implied in most cases articles should not be tagged for deletion under this criterion moments after creation as the creator may be actively working on the content; though there is no set time requirement.
3. Recently created article that duplicates an existing topic
A recently created article with no relevant page history that duplicates an existing language or article, and that does not expand upon, detail or improve information within any existing article(s) on the subject, and where the title is not a plausible redirect. This does not include split pages or any article that expands or reorganizes an existing one or that contains referenced, mergeable material.

R. Redirects

1. Simple redirects
Redirects, apart from shortcuts, from the main namespace to any other namespace except the Category:, Template:, Conlang:, Help: and Portal: namespaces.

F. Files

• These apply to files, images, and other media

1. Redundant
Unused duplicates or lower-quality/resolution copies of another file having the same file format. This includes duplicates of files.
2. Corrupt or empty image
Files that are corrupt, empty, or that contain superfluous and blatant non-metadata information.
3. Improper license
Media licensed as "for non-commercial use only" (including non-commercial Creative Commons licenses), "no derivative use" or "used with permission" may be deleted, unless they comply with the limited standards for the use of non-free content. Files licensed under versions of the GFDL prior to 1.3, without allowing for later versions, may be deleted.
4. Lack of licensing information
Media files that lack the necessary licensing information to verify copyright status may be deleted after being identified as such. Be aware that editors sometimes specify their source in the upload summary.
5. Orphaned non-free use images
Images and other media that are not under a free license or in the public domain, that are not used in any article, may be deleted after being identified as such. Reasonable exceptions may be made for images uploaded for an upcoming article.
6. Unambiguous copyright infringement
Obviously non-free images (or other media files) that are not claimed by the uploader to be fair use. A URL or other indication of where the image originated should be mentioned.

C. Categories

1. Redundant categories or overcategorisation
If there is an established category in usage and several redundant, these ought to be deleted, to prevent overcategorisation.
2. Unpopulated categories
Categories that have been unpopulated for a considerable time. This does not apply to disambiguation categories, category redirects, featured topics categories, categories under discussion at the talk page.
3. Renaming or merging
• Typographic and spelling fixes.
Correction of spelling errors and capitalization fixes. Differences between British and American spelling are not considered errors. If both spellings exist as otherwise-identical category names, they should be merged. Please note that all pages within a namespace (e.g. Category:) must not have a space between the colon and title (e.g. Category:Templates).

U. User

1. Editing user comment
Editing other users' comments on talk pages and the forum is strictly forbidden and an extremely bannable offence. Editing a user comment because of profane language or harassment is equally forbidden, but removing inserted provocational illustrations and/or media is allowed. Removing offensive language or profanities is not allowed. Page blanking, §G:9, ties in with §U:1 should the page blanking aim to remove the comments on a discussion page of previous users. See also conduct in the general policy.
2. User request
Personal user pages and subpages (but not user talk pages) may be deleted upon request by their user. In some rare cases there may be administrative need to retain the page.
• Normal procedure is not to delete user pages, but rather to block the user if any violations of the policy has occurred.
3. Nonexistent user
User pages of users that do not exist (check Special:Listusers), except userpages for anonymous users who have edited, redirects from misspellings of an established user's userpage, and for the previous name of a recently renamed user (which should normally be left as a redirect to the new name for a reasonable time).
4. Account spamming external links
Users spamming external links are most often recognisable by their unrealistically long or complex user names and their lack of edits. Their names most inconsistent and aesthetically displeasing. Bear in mind, that these users are bots, which implies that no reasoning is possible and all edits and the user pages can be deleted without any second thoughts, should they vandalise the wiki. Special template: Watched/U:4
5. Unacceptable username
Users with unrealistically long or complex user names and lack of edits may with caution be deleted upon sight. These accounts are more often than not robots, "bots", spamming external links and commercial content. To avoid suspicion of violation of this paragraph when creating an account, users ought to bear the following points in mind when choosing a username; that certain combinations are more suspect than others. With decreasing degree of suspicion:
• A username of complete gibberish. For example: Dfjjslkkdllkseaneilp
• A username consisting of presumably two composed lexemes and a few numbers. For example: Aaschenbrenner68, Tayvesquoto1971
• A username of presumably gibberish with inserted numbers. For example: Qadk33jchk
• A username of a proper name followed by random letters. For example: MonicaPkq
Administrators ought to bear in mind that invoking §U:4 requires a degree of certainty. It is preemptive and thus not easily enforced. See also §U:4.

T. Templates

• Non-functional templates ought to be discussed and improved, not deleted.

1. Redundant templates or lacking use
If a template is decidedly without use on the wiki, it may be deleted, or if the use is obsolete
2. Duplication and hardcoded instances
Templates that are not employed in any useful fashion, i.e., orphaned, deprecated, substantial duplications of another template, or hardcoded instances of another template where the same functionality could be provided by that other template, may be deleted after being tagged for seven days.