Chapter 19. Deleting Existing Articles
One of Wikipediaâs strengths is how easily editors create new Wikipedia articlesâquick, efficient, no bureaucracy to get permission from. But some editors abuse the privilege, creating nonsense articles, attack articles, or promotional articles, for instance. Others just make mistakes because they donât understand Wikipediaâs rules and purpose: They create an article about a non-notable topic, or a subject already covered by an article of a different name, or containing a definitionânot an encyclopedic topic, for example.
In order to keep Wikipedia the useful encyclopedia that it is, articles with all these problems need to be removed. For Wikipedia, the challenge is to have processes that delete inappropriate articles (more than a thousand a day) while keeping potentially good articles and avoiding offending well-intentioned editors. In this chapter, youâll learn the different ways to deal with problem articles, often without resorting to one of the three deletion processes. Youâll also learn what recourse you and other editors have if you feel that an article was deleted inappropriately.
Responding to Problem Articles
You can stumble across a problem article in a number of waysâdoing a search, reviewing the User Contributions page of an editor, or just clicking âRandom articleâ to see what you see. When your first reaction is, âYouâre kidding!â or âI canât believe this is a Wikipedia article,â your second reaction ...
Get Wikipedia: The Missing Manual now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.