Wikibooks:Deletion

This page is a hard rule on the Simple English Wikibooks. Many people agree with it. They see it as a standard that all users should follow. When changing the page, please check that the other people agree with your changes. Use the talk page when you are not sure or when you want to propose a change.

Shortcut: WB:DELETE

There are a few reasons pages might need to be deleted off of the Simple English Wikibooks. To ask for a page to be deleted, go to Wikibooks:Requests for deletion

Reasons for deletion

Here are some of the main rules:

A page with advertising or spam
Fake books like hoaxes
Bad user pages
Books about things that someone made up (original research)
Pages that are all vandalism

Quick deletion

Shortcut: WB:QD WB:CSD

Before deleting a page which meets one of the quick deletion criteria, Administrators must always check the page's edit history to see if the page can be reverted to an earlier version.

Quick deletion criteria

Abbreviations are sometimes used when talking about these rules. For example, when someone says "A4", they are referring to rule 4 under the Articles section. You can also use the abbreviation inside your deletion request; for example, if you think an article meets the 3rd criteria under General rules section, you may add {{QD|G3}} to the top of the article.

General rules – All pages

A page can be quickly deleted in the following situations:

All of the text is nonsense. Nonsense includes content that does not make sense or is not meaningful. However, this does not include bad writing, bad words, vandalism, things that are fake or impossible, or parts which are not in English.
- You can use {{non}} tag for such articles.
It is a test page, such as "Can I really create a page here?".
The content is completely vandalism. It includes redirects that were made when cleaning up "page move vandalism".
Creation of content that is already deleted. It includes an identical or similar copy, with any title, of a page that was deleted, after being discussed in Requests for deletion, unless it was undeleted due to another discussion or was recreated in the user space. Before deleting again, the Administrator should be sure that the content is similar and not just a new article on the same subject. This rule cannot be used if the content had already been quickly deleted before.
(This criterion is not applicable on Wikibooks, and has been kept to keep the same numbering as Wikipedia.)
Housekeeping. Pages deleted that don't need to be discussed because the Administrator deleting the page was trying to fix an accidental mistake or trying to clean up something.
Author wants deletion. Any page whose original author wants deletion, can be quickly deleted, but only if most of the page was written by that author and was created as a mistake. If the author blanks the page, this can mean that he or she wants it deleted.
Talk pages of pages that do not exist can be deleted, unless they contain discussion on deletion that can't be found anywhere else. Subpages of a talk page can only be deleted under this rule if their top-level page does not exist. However, this cannot be used on user talk pages or talk pages of images on Commons.
Office Actions. The Wikimedia Foundation office can delete any page fast if there is any controversy over it.
Attack pages: Pages that were only created to insult a person or thing (such as "John Q. Doe is dumb"). This includes articles on a living person that is insult and without sources, where there is no NPOV version in the edit history to revert to.
Obvious advertising: Pages which were created only to say good things about a company, item, group or service and which would need to be written again so that they can sound like a textbook. However, simply having a company, item, group or service as its subject does not mean that an article can be deleted because of this rule: an article that is obvious advertising should have content that shouldn't be in a textbook. If a page has already gone through RfD or QD and was not deleted, it should not be quickly deleted using this rule.
Obviously breaking copyright law like a page which is:
- Copied from another website which does not have a license that can be used with Wikibooks;
- Containing no content in the page history that is worth being saved.
- Made by one person instead of being created on wiki and then copied by another website such as one of the many Wikibooks mirror websites.
- Added by someone who doesn't tell if he got permission to do so or not, or if his claim has a large chance of not being true;
When tagging a page for deletion using this rule, a user should tell the page's creator first. If the Administrator who deleted the page is told that he may have made a mistake, he should add the content back; if a confirmation e-mail has not been received from the original author of the information, the Administrator should blank the article and add the {{copyvio}} template.

Articles

For deleting any articles that should not be deleted quickly, use Wikibooks:Requests for deletion. Any article can be quickly deleted if it:

Is very short and providing little or no meaning (e.g., "He is a funny man that has created Factory and the Hacienda. And, by the way, his wife is great."). Having a small amount of content is not a reason to delete if it has useful information.
Has no content. This includes any article consisting only of links (including hyperlinks, category tags and "see also" sections), a rephrasing of the title, and/or attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title. This does not include disambiguation pages.
Has been copied and pasted from another Wikibooks: Any article or section from an article that has been copied and pasted with little or no change.
Is about people, groups, companies or websites that are not notable. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not say why it is important. If not everyone agrees that the subject is not notable or there has been a previous RfD, the article may not be quickly deleted, and should be discussed at RfD instead.
You can use {{notable}} tag for such articles.

Note: Try not to use the word "vanity" as some people think it is an insult.
is not written in English. An article that is written in any other languages but English.

Redirects

For any articles that should not be deleted quickly, use Wikibooks:Requests for deletion. Sometimes it is possible to make them useful redirects to other pages. All redirects can be quickly deleted if they are:

Redirects to pages that do not exist
Redirects to the User: or User_talk: space from the main article space and vise versa. If this was because of a page move, please wait a day or two before deleting the redirect.
Redirects with an uncommon typo, or a word that is spelled wrong, that was recently created. However, redirects from common accidental spellings are usually useful; redirects in other languages are not deletable using this rule.

User pages

For any user pages that should not be deleted quickly, use Wikibooks:Requests for deletion. All user pages can be quickly deleted in following situations:

User request. User pages can be deleted if its user wants to, but there are some exceptions.
- You can use {{UserQD}} tag for such things.
Non-existent user. User pages of users that do not exist. Administrators should check Special:Contributions and Special:DeletedContributions.

Templates

For any template that should not be deleted quickly, use Wikibooks:Requests for deletion. When nominating a template for quick deletion, add <noinclude> before the deletion template, and </noinclude> after it so pages that use the template do not get listed for quick deletion as well. Templates can be quickly deleted when:

They are insulting or hateful.