Wikibooks:Deletion policy/Unstable

Not all content is suitable for Wikibooks, and occasionally some content (including books and individual book pages) need to be deleted. Wikibookians are expected to follow this policy when performing deletion-related activities (including undeletion requests).

Deletion

Wikibooks is for the creation of free open-context textbooks. If a book or page does not aid the development of textbooks, violate policy or no longer have a functioning of the project (including, user pages, help pages, policy pages, discussion pages, uploaded files, and any other meta-content pages), can be tagged for deletion, speedily or by way of a Request for Deletion (community discussion). During the evaluation discussion toward a local deletion, the content can also be proposed for tranwiki to a more appropriate wiki or a merge merge with another local page.

New books and pages should be treated with tolerance and understanding. Since they cannot be expected to immediately adhere to every minute detail of Wikibooks policy and inclusion criteria. Meaningful content should not be nominated for transwiki, delete or speedy deletion until at least a month after it has been created and some effort made to improve the content or helping new contributors to understand what needs to be done.

Deletion is not the same as removing all content from a page, which adds an entry to the page's history and anyone can undo. Deletion removes both the content of the page and the entire page history from public view and only Administrators can undo it. Keeping track of deletions can be hard if done too casually. Deletion decisions are not to be taken lightly.

Page blanking might be vandalism, an attempt to deal with vandalism, or an attempt to delete a page for whatever reasons. The first two can be fixed by restoring a revision free of vandalism. The last may qualify for speedy deletion depending on the situation; if you want a second opinion, you may make a request for deletion.

What to keep or delete

What is considered meaningful content is open to some interpretation and differs depending on the namespace. Use your best judgment when deciding to nominate books or pages for transwiki or deletion. Content is generally not considered meaningful if it does not contribute to the project or add value to readers. This includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Keep works that could become acceptable if improved. Even stubs and works that are biased, inaccurate, disorganized or abandoned can be improved. You can either improve works yourself or identify the problems so someone else can.
• Keep books of any size that are within scope. Books don't need to be a certain size to be useful to readers or educators.
• Keep material that can be reused as part of another work or could be used to start a new book or page.
• Keep pages that are within the scope of the book there in, unless nominated for deletion due to a general consensus decision by the book contributors. In this situation, please note the location of the relevant discussion that occurred regarding the deletion.
• Delete works that are clearly outside Wikibooks' scope and has no reasonable chance of even being constructive. This includes works that consist of nonsense (Example: Teaching 140 bugs to speak English), spam (Example: "JohnJohnJohnJohnJohnJohnJohn" Punch!), personal attacks, praises (Example: I am awesome), pages with only personal information (Example: 7734 Dumb Street, Bengal, India.), test edits or vandalism.
• Delete contents and media confirmed to be copyright violations. See Copyright infringements for reporting copyright violations or suspected copyright violations (Read Wikipedia and copyright issues and Avoid Copyright Paranoia for perspective).
• Delete materials and media that violate any of Wikibooks' official policies or guidelines, unless there is a good reason not to.
• Delete reposts of works previously deleted where deletion was due to consensus and no consensus to undelete was established on requests for undeletion.
• Delete imported works not adopted after 30 days which duplicates work found at another Wikimedia project.

Use common sense and assume good faith. Always check the page's history to make sure bad material didn't replace good material. If this is the case, revert the bad material instead of nominating for deletion.

Transwiki

To nominate a page or book for transwiki to another wiki, add {{transwiki|<suggested wiki>}} to the top of the page or the main page of the book. The page or book will then appear in Category:Pages for transwiki. Any user can transwiki a page or book out of Wikibooks, so long as they follow the rules and policies of the destination wiki. After being transwikied, if the contents is outside Wikibooks' scope, the page or book can be speedily deleted, and the page or main page of the book replaced with a temporary link to the new location. Otherwise simply remove the transwiki notice once the transwiki is finished.

Keep in mind that work from Wikibooks cannot legally be transwikied to a place that uses a license different from CC-BY-SA.

Speedy deletions

To nominate a book or page for speedy deletion, add {{delete|<your personal justification for a speedy deletion>}} to the top of the page or the main page of the book. The book or page will then appear in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion for administrators to address when time is available. Any book or page may not be renominated for speedy deletion if its nomination is removed in good faith. Books or pages may instead be nominated for deletion using requests for deletion as described below.

Some redirect pages can become candidates for speedy deletion as well. Redirects can be considered for deletion if they:

1. Are the result of page moves to a better naming convention
2. Where created in error or as the result of vandalism
3. Are so obscure or poorly named that they are likely never to be found in a search

Requests for deletion

Books and pages that fit the criteria for deletion listed above, and are not necessarily speedy deletion candidates, can be listed for discussion at Wikibooks:Requests for deletion, using the book or page's name as a title, so that other Wikibookians can have a chance to argue for or against its removal. RfDs are not intended to determine exceptions to policy but to establish a project failure to comply with them, including cases where the policy text may not be clear by intention or omission. Please include a justification for deletion, and sign/date your justification with four tildes, ~~~~, or similar. In addition, add {{rfd}} to the top of the page or the main page of the book. The book or page will then appear in Category:Requests for deletion. At this time, the discussion process begins using the high impact decision making rules. During a RfD, the community should evaluate the work on it's conformance to our inclusion criteria, and our other content-related policies. Other metrics may be used as well, but it is important that works not be kept if they are in violation of one or more policies.

Once community consensus has been reached on the matter, the work will either be kept or delete, depending on the outcome of the discussion. The outcome of a RfD decision may be used to update the inclusion criteria. Works that are kept may have {{rfd-survived}} added to the top of their discussion page. Works that are to be deleted may have {{Impending Doom}} added to the top of their page, to alert contributors of the community's decision and to give contributors time to find a more suitable home for the works contents.

Administrators are able to delete pages from Wikibooks that manifestly do not belong here, regardless of the outcome of a discussion on RfD. In practice, such actions should be extremely rare, and should never be performed without strong justifications and significant forethought.

Books and pages which have survived a deletion using this process should not be nominated again unless new information comes to light that was not brought up in the previous discussion, or the situation for keeping the work has changed.

Nominations as Vandalism

One thing to keep in mind with a deletion and undeletion nominations is that it may be added as an act of vandalism, or as a part of an edit war between two contributors who may not like each other. In situations like this it would be considered appropriate to remove {{delete}}, {{Impending Doom}} and/or {{rfd}} from the book or page in question, as well as any discussion on the matter from Wikibooks:Requests for deletion or Wikibooks:Requests for undeletion, with perhaps a note that the discussion was terminated because it was started as a means of vandalism, even if legitimate arguments for or against keeping were subsequently posted. If afterwards a serious objection is still being raised, the discussion can resume.

Guidelines for administrators

In addition to What to keep or delete, administrators are expected to follow some guidelines when making the decision to delete or not:

1. If another solution has been found rather than deletion, leave them listed on Wikibooks:Requests for deletion for a short while, so the original poster can see why it wasn't deleted, and what did happen to it. This will prevent reposting of the same item. Alternately, leave a message on their user page explaining the verdict of the deletion process.
2. As a general rule, don't delete pages you nominate for deletion, let someone else do it.
3. When in doubt, don't delete. Don't hesitate to seek a second opinion or to turn a speedy delete into a RfD discussion. It is better to get community input than indiscriminate deleting on the part of administrators.
4. Give contributors time to move meaningful contents outside Wikibooks' scope before deleting or email them a copy of the work. Once it becomes known that consensus has been reached to delete or that the page meets the criteria for speedy deletion, place {{Impending Doom}} on the page to warn them.
5. Simply deleting a page does not automatically delete its talk page, any subpages or redirects. Please delete these pages too.
6. Books may also have templates and categories that may also need to be deleted. Please delete these too.
7. Use common sense, and respect the judgment and feelings of other Wikibookians.

Administrators necessarily must use their best judgment to determine when rough consensus has been reached. Consensus is not defined as being a simple voting majority, nor does it require 100% agreement of all parties. Comments from all parties must be weighed and considered in light of Wikibooks' scope and policies. If no consensus is reached, the page will be kept by default, unless deletion is imposed by policy. Wikibookians are obligated to act primarily in accordance with previously community approved policies (for example, on copyright).

When an administrator 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, pointing them to the sandbox in cases of tests. Be friendly! Everyone was new once. In the case of anon IP users this is not as important as they have likely moved on or their IPs changed since that edit.