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ere at Simcountry Wiki we like to keep a clean, accurate and correct environment. Throughout the years no official deletion policy was adopted, and articles were generally discussed with the users and/or simply deleted because they weren't acceptable for the wiki. This mainly included extremely non-serious articles, articles that weren't aesthetically acceptable (I mean really bad articles, with no organisation at all), redlink saviors (short articles made just to prevent an article name to appear in "red"), and obvious articles (which just repeat the same information all over again).

The Simcountry deletion policy describes therefore how, and especially which articles and files that do not meet the content criteria for the wiki are identified and removed.

This because all content here is governed by a standard of quality. Some of the standards include encyclopedic quality, editorial approach, and content copyright (as we do not endorse the so-called copypasta both from other simcountry wikis and Wikipedia). Content that is capable of abiding by these standards can usually be improved upon by editing. However, when content is incapable of meeting inclusion criteria or is in breach of site policy, it is unfortunately deleted.

You have to remember, however, that when an article is deleted, the article and its revision history are removed from view, which means that it can be restored at any time. Unlike page blanking, which can be done by any user (and which is generally followed by an automatic deletion, if the "blanker" is the creator of the page), deletion can only be done by the administrators.

Process[]

There are two main processes for deletion that are described below. After you decide which process is right for the article involved, you place the appropriate template on the top of the page with the reason why you feel the page should be deleted if required. People may comment on the request during the lag time before deletion either on the talk page of the page being deleted, or on the message board where the deletion was proposed.

Speedy Deletion[]

Speedy deletion is a deletion process that governs the deletion of articles and media that the admins can delete "on-sight" without further debate. Non-admins can request a page be speedy deleted by adding the tag {{Delete}} and an explanation onto the top of an article, which will place the page in the category for speedy deletion candidates.

Criteria for Speedy Deletion[]

An article can be speedily deleted only if it falls under one of the criteria listed below. If there is any possible doubt whether or not a page should be speedily deleted, then the page should be listed under one of the other deletion processes.

  1. Pure vandalism that was created in attempt to harm the site, including redirected created from page moves.
  2. Patent nonsense and gibberish pages that contain no meaningful content.
  3. Test pages created by new users experimenting with the wiki. (Yes, those too)
  4. Redlink saviors, pages that contain only a few words and are made just to "cover" a "red link".
  5. Author request, but only if it can harm the privacy of someone, generally this happens with articles about people.
  6. Attack pages that serve no useful purpose but to assault their subject.
  7. Blatant copyright infringements should be speedily deleted only if
    1. The article was unquestionably copied from the website of a well-known content provider,
    2. The article was taken completely and entirely from Wikipedia,
    3. The article and its entire history, excluding tag inclusions and minor edits, contains only copyright violation material, and
    4. The editor of the content does not assert that the content was copied with permission nor claims fair use.
  8. Redirects should be speedily deleted if they are orphaned and meet at least one of the following criteria:
    1. The redirect is broken, meaning that it links to an article that does not exist or was deleted.
    2. The redirect is in the main namespace, was recently created, and contains no significant history (i.e., no history other than redirect creation and deletion proposals).
  9. Emergency actions. Administrators can speedily delete pages temporarily in response to potential legal problems or exceptional controversy.
Images
  1. Corrupted or empty images.
  2. Redundant images that have another copy that is of the same or better copy and of the same image file format.
  3. Unused images; Simcountry Wiki is not a hosting provider.
User Pages
  1. User request. User sub pages can be speedily deleted upon request from user whose user space the page lies under.
  2. Non-existent users, when there is a user page or user talk page and no user to match these pages.

Proposed Deletion[]

Proposed deletion is a deletion process for the deletion of uncontroversial pages that do not meet the criteria for Speedy Deletion. The purpose of this process is to provide a chance for other editors to look over the proposal and ensure that reasons to keep the page have not been overlooked.

To propose an article for the proposed deletion process, add the {{[[Template:Delete|Delete]}} tag onto the top of the article, together with an explanation. These pages can be deleted after two days without a full debate — as long as no one objects. If anyone has an objection to the deletion, the page can "survive" until an agreement is reached, always if it's not breaking the deletion policy. Someone deleting the "proposed deletion" tag without explanation should be taken as an implicit indication that there is an objection to the deletion, but as it's not polite to do it, the user in question will be beaten up by the Admins.

The candidates for proposed deletion can be found at Category:Delete.

Criteria[]

These are some examples of when a page may be deleted.

Problem with page Solution
The page is of poor quality - numerous spelling and grammar mistakes, full of red links, badly formatted, etc. In these cases, the author will usually be contacted and asked to improve the article. If the author is not active or has been permanently banned, the article will probably be deleted, or may be merged with another.
The article is a redlink savior Always check the main article in this case, as it may contain a few information that are not included in it. However, if things are repeated all over again, speedy deletion.
The page is a useless redirect. Deleting redirects, especially old ones, can risk breaking external and internal links. Because of this, you may want to only consider the deletion of very newly created redirects or ones that cause problems. The following are examples of when it would be a good idea to list a redirect for proposed deletion:
  1. The redirect is broken, meaning that the page redirects to a page that no longer exists or never existed.


On the other hand, you should avoid deleting redirect if:

  1. The redirect has a potentially useful page history. For example, if the page started out as an article and later was transformed into a redirect because the content was merged into another page.
  2. Someone finds the redirect to be useful. You may not necessarily find it useful, but it may be because people browse in different ways.
  3. The deletion of the redirect risks breaking internal or external links.
  4. The redirect would prevent the (re)creation of duplicate and redundant articles, whether by redirecting the plural form of an article to the singular form, by redirecting a frequent misspelling of a subject to its correct spelling, by redirecting to a synonym, etc. In other words, redirects with no incoming internal links are not grounds for deletion on those terms alone, because they could be of benefit to the reader.
The page is non-serious Simcountry is a database (or we try to be), and as such it should not be the only way of getting information of a certain country entity. For a lot of times in the past users have criticized the decision of various admins to delete "non-useful articles" because indeed administrators cannot judge which article is useful and which one isn't.

However, Simcountry needs also to keep a standard of encyclopedic quality, and extremely non-serious or useless articles have to be deleted. Simcountry Wiki which fall into this category are those who practice trolling, have articles that aren't following the guidelines; which basically are just a nuisance. Proposed deletion is the appropriate thing to do, as users will be able to discuss the matter.

Procedure for Admins[]

The deleting Administrator has the final authority to determine whether or not an article should be deleted. Because of this, the Admins also have the responsibility to verify the legitimacy of a request and the support of the request before deleting the article.

If you are the deciding Administrator in determining whether or not a page should be deleted:

  1. Check the history to see if the article has been marked for an appropriate length of time.
  2. Review the article's discussion page/deletion review entry and ensure that all votes are legitimate and check for contests.
  3. If you agree that the article should be deleted, delete the article giving an informative reason for deletion and noting the deletion process used.
  4. If you disagree that the article should be deleted, remove the tag and consider proposing the article for improvement or merge with another article.

Administrators who intend to delete articles that they proposed for deletion can delete them, as long as they provide a proper explanation to their actions, and always if we're talking of articles that cannot improve in any single way.

Restoring a deleted article[]

When an administrator deletes an article, it does not become lost forever – it simply becomes archived so only admins can see them. Because undeletion requests are uncommon, there is no official process for requesting undeletion. For this reason, undeletion requests should be made on the administrator noticeboard. An administrator can either undelete an entire article or partially undelete an article.

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