Wiki:Rejected deletion policy

This page contains a draft of a community approved set of rules about deleting wiki pages. The discussion is mostly located at the forum [1], but some of it is located at Wiki talk:Rejected deletion policy.

Definitions

Proposing a deletion

Proposing a deletion refers to a page edit which places template {{Delete proposal}} on a page and initiates a discussion about deleting or redirecting the page.

Requesting a deletion

Requesting deletion refers to a page edit which replaces the whole page content with the template {{Delete}} and removing the links to this page. The term refers to the user requesting the admins to delete the page (thereby hiding it from non-admin users and excluding it from the backups).

General content pages

Criteria for deciding whether to delete pages other than proposal pages.

General advice

1. Content may be deleted to focus the documentation of the wiki to currently relevant concepts and avoid duplication and contradiction. Where pages can be improved this should be done instead of deleting them.
2. Antiquated content may be kept to record OSM's tagging history, past controversies, and tag documentation backing up the wiki's documentation pages.
3. If in doubt, keeping a page is preferred to deleting.
4. You should only use request deletion where you expect universal agreement and discuss a deletion otherwise.
5. In case that a deletion is opposed, deletion request should not simply be reverted, but changed to deletion proposals using a clear edit comment. A discussion should be initiated by the opposing person on the proposal's discussion page.

To delete

(ordered from strongest to weakest reason)

1. The page contains spam only and has never contained non-spam content. Please continue with the linked article!
2. You created the page by accident.
3. You were the only editor of the page and consider the content outdated (for instance, you wrote about a software that is not available any more and this has never had a mayor implication to OpenStreetMap).
4. In case of files and media: This media is already stored in Wikimedia Commons and the licence allows the use in this wiki as well.
5. In case of files: The file is a duplicate of another one, so there are two identical files. (There are sometimes reasons for duplicates, always check them individually!)
6. This page is an exact copy of a different wiki page.
7. You merged the content of two multiple pages. In this case a discussion on multiple channels is necessary beforehand.

To keep

(ordered from strongest to weakest reason)

1. You do not know what it is about. Discuss it on the talk page!
2. The article has some issues. Improve the article instead!
3. The content is outdated. Update it if it would be relevant or mark as obsolete!
4. The content is about an outdated concept, use {{Historic artifact start}}. You might merge and condense content from other pages.
5. The page is a redirect to an article. Redirects to not hurt as long as they are not misleading or wrong!

Other considerations

1. Documentation of old software: consider that new software is frequently designed to be compatible or similar with older software and old documentation may help transition to new software and as template for writing new documentation.
2. Pages with translations: translated pages can be very helpful as templates for translation of similar pages, there are even tools to help with this. Hence pages with translations (especially good ones!) should be kept whenever possible.
3. Documentation of ancient imports should be kept until all traces of the imports vanished.

Additional factors for proposals

The deletion process for proposals needs to be defined separately as they serve as a documentation of historic tagging and related discussions (including voting). Additionally, they serve as a source for the rest of the wiki and Data items.

General advice

1. Inconsistent mapping styles should be highlighted on the proposal page.
2. The age of a proposal is not a criterion for deletion by itself, it is only relevant in conjunction with other factors (see section "To delete", point 4)

To delete

1. Typo pages, e.g. a page was started with a misspelling in the title, the page has been moved to the correct one. The remaining redirect stub can be deleted, although it is not recommended as it takes administrators' time.
2. Spam unrelated to OSM (using {{Delete|spam}})
3. Violations of people's privacy / data protection rights
4. Draft pages on request of the original author, that have not attracted discussion from other users except for relevance and deletion discussions. After a period of one year passing without significant content changes, other users might suggest deletion (using {{Delete proposal}}) and finally request deletion in case of no objections.
5. Pages that are contrary to basic principles in OSM (e.g. proposing to severely violating copyright, or Good practice). However, if this violation of principles is more subtle and therefore being discussed or disputed, that is a discussion to preserve. In these cases, deletions should always be proposed before they are requested to avoid reverts.
6. Hoaxes and jokes that are not a sub page of a user (= in the user's space) and not clearly marked as such.
7. Proposals that only mention a tag, that is not being used, without describing/explaining its meaning

To keep

1. Proposals with a vote
2. Proposals for tags that are being used, even without a voting process except for the case that the proposed use is unrelated to the actual use
3. Proposals that serve as a documentation for a tag, even if it is not widely used. This should prevent that a tag is being used for a different purpose later.
4. Proposals that attracted other users who contributed to the page or its discussion comparing the proposal with existing schemas or other proposals, so that the proposal is not a simple duplication of others, but it contains a definition of relevant concepts and a comparison with other means of mapping.
5. Proposals copied to user spaces - this is in itself not a sufficient reason for deletion
6. Proposal pages linked from other pages which document tagging or compare multiple approaches