Wikiquote:Speedy deletions/Draft

This policy revision draft has been successfully adopted. The Wikiquote community has adopted the proposed revision of this page. Please see Wikiquote:WikiProject Policy Revision for further information on the ongoing effort to revise Wikiquote policy.

Speedy deletions

There are a few, limited, cases where Administrators can delete Wikiquote pages "on sight". Non-administrators can alert administrators to such pages by adding a speedy deletion tag to the page. To tag such an article, edit the page and add one of the following tags to the top of the page:

{{delete}}

{{db|REASON}}

The basic {{delete}} tag will cause the following message to appear:

Using the {{db|REASON}} template allows you to add your reasoning about why the page is a candidate for speedy deletion and may help administrators working on the page. Example: {{db|Page has only advertising spam.}} would create:

Please do not blank the page content, as this would make it difficult to evaluate the page. (In rare cases, like clearly libelous material, blanking may be permitted, requiring editors to examine the page history for evaluation.)

If an article is listed on Wikiquote:Votes for deletion, but falls into the speedy-deletion criteria, it may be deleted before the usual "lag time" (see Wikiquote:Deletion policy).

The cases

NOTE ON DRAFT: This entire section has been replaced with a new set of cases, based on a streamlined version of the original and updated by selected current Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion cases. (See talk page for more details.)

General

These cases apply to all Wikiquote pages, including the specific types listed separately.

• Nonsense. Pages with meaningless content created in obvious contradiction to Wikiquote policy, including patent nonsense (e.g, "sdhgdf"), test pages (e.g., "Can I really create a page here?"), and vandalism. (Admins: please review specific policies to verify case before deleting.)

• Already deleted. Reposted content that was deleted according to Wikiquote deletion policy. This does not apply to undeleted content that was undeleted according to undeletion policy.

• Housekeeping. Non-controversial maintenance tasks such as temporarily deleting a page in order to merge page histories, performing a non-controversial page move like reversing a redirect, or removing a disambiguation page that only points to a single article.

• Author request. Any page for which deletion is requested by the original author, provided the page was edited only by its author and was mistakenly created. If the author blanks the page, this can be taken as a deletion request.

• Orphaned talk page. Talk pages of pages which do not exist, unless they contain deletion discussion which isn't logged elsewhere.

Articles

• No content. Articles which contain neither an introduction to the topic nor any quote. This includes very short articles with insufficient information to identify the subject (e.g., "John Doe is a funny man that has created Factory and the Hacienda. And, by the way, his wife is great."), as well as a variety of non-article text (complete or partial copies of boilerplate templates with no subject-specific changes, pages with nothing but hyperlinks, simple rephrasing of the title, and/or attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title).

• Transwiki. Articles which have already been moved via the transwiki system. (It's a good idea to verify before deleting that the article's edit history has been properly posted to the talk page of the transwikied article on the destination project.)

• Attack page. Articles which serve no purpose but to disparage their subject (e.g., "John Citizen is a moron").

• Unremarkable subject. An article about a real person, group of people, band, or club that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to VFD instead.

• Copyright violation. (NOTE ON DRAFT: Wikiquote does not have a formal copyright verification process as Wikipedia does, so this clause for blatant copyvios is a placeholder for now and should be removed before approval of the draft. All Wikiquote copyvios must currently undergo VfD.)

Redirects

• Redirect to non-existent page. However, consider that it may be possible to make it a useful redirect to some other target.

• Redirect to User space. Redirects with no history which have been created by moving user pages out of the article space. (Sometimes new Wikiquotians accidentally create user pages in the main article space. Move them into the user space using the "Move this page" tool to preserve their history, and consider waiting a day or two before deleting the resultant redirect.)

• Redirect of implausible typo. However, redirects from common misspellings or misnomers are generally useful.

Categories

• Empty category (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 WQ:VFD. If the category isn't relatively new, it possibly contained articles earlier, and deeper investigation is needed.

• Speedy category renaming. Old categories (whose articles should first be transferred to the new ones) that have qualified for speedy renaming under the following guidelines:
  • Typo fixes (e.g., Plyas -> Plays, (Authors) -> Authors), but not changes between British and American spelling.
  • Capitalization fixes (e.g., One-Eyed Optimists -> One-eyed optimists).
  • Conversions from singular to plural, or back (e.g., Science fiction film -> Science fiction films).
  • Renaming to conform with the "by country" categorization conventions.
  • Abbreviation expanding for country names, e.g. changing "U.S." to "United States".

• Template categories. If a category is solely populated from a template (e.g. Category:Wikiquote cleanup from a {{cleanup}} tag), and the template is deleted per deletion policy, the category can also be deleted without further discussion.

User pages

• Owner request. Users requesting the deletion of their own personal subpages. This does not include deletion of the main user or user talk page, which should be nominated through the standard VFD process. (Wikiquote does not yet have a speedy-deletion process for these as described at w:Wikipedia:User page#How do I delete my user and user talk pages?.)

Templates

• Attack template. Templates which attack or disparage individuals or groups of people.

Citing cases

In talk page discussions, one may cite a specific speedy-deletion case with a link to its description using the following syntax:

[[WQ:SD#Case name|discussion text]]

For example, to cite the no-content clause for articles, one might use the following:

[[WQ:SD#No content|lack of meaningful content]]

which would look like the following in the actual discussion:

… was nominated for speedy deletion because of lack of meaningful content.

The link label for each clause is the exact bolded wording introducing the clause (without the trailing punctuation).

Notes

Opinions differ as to the correct approach to pages with only external links, and also to pages that are perceived as purely trolling.

Note that possible copyright infringements are not candidates for speedy deletion.

Ideally, when a sysop deletes a test page or other page with no useful content, it is a good idea to put a note on the author's talk page explaining things, and preserving the deleted content, pointing them to the sandbox in cases of tests. Be friendly! Most everyone was new once.

See also

• Deletion policy
• Deletion guidelines for administrators