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.

General criteria what to keep or delete

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.

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 or use {{Delete|spam}}!
2. Violations of people's privacy / data protection rights
3. You created the page by accident.
4. 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.
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. You were the only editor of the page and consider the content outdated (for instance, you wrote about a software that is not available any more and this has never had a major implication to OpenStreetMap).
7. 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.
8. 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!)
9. This page is an exact copy of a different wiki page.
10. 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. Page may be fixed by reverting it to an old version
2. You do not know what it is about. Discuss it on the talk page!
3. The article has some issues. Improve the article instead!
4. The content is outdated. Update it if it would be relevant or mark as obsolete. If there are up to date pages on the same subject link them prominently.
5. The content is about an outdated concept, use {{Historic artifact start}}. You might merge and condense content from other pages.
6. 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 must be kept forever, as even with all traces of imports gone from current data it still present in history that is also distributed under ODBL license. Therefore documentation of copyright status of imported data should never be deleted.

Wiki cleanups and deleting more than a few pages pages

1. Create a wiki page documenting your cleanup effort, mention your motives, themes, criteria and a list of pages you intend to delete
2. Anounce the cleanup in talk mailing list

Additional criteria for proposals

The deletion criteria for proposals are stricter as they serve as a documentation of historic tagging and related discussions (including voting) and serve as a source for the rest of the wiki and Data items.

Many users think that all, or nearly all old proposals should be kept, consider also that proposal process does not even mention deletion of proposals.

General considerations

1. What can be improved should be improved instead of deleted.
2. Problematic mapping styles should be highlighted on the proposal page but are not a reason to delete a proposal.
3. Abandoned and outdated proposals that were superseded by newer proposals should be improved to link prominently to current documentation.
4. 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")

To delete

1. 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.
2. (still controversial) Hoaxes and jokes that are not a sub page of a user (= in the user's space) and not clearly marked as such.
3. Proposals that only mention a tag that is not in use without describing/explaining its meaning or purpose.

To keep

1. Proposals with a vote
2. Proposals for tags that are in use, 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 space - this is in itself not a sufficient reason for deletion
6. Proposal pages linked from other pages which document tagging or compare multiple approaches

How to delete

For accidentally created pages, spam and violations use a delete request. For all other cases the method of choice is to propose a deletion, await a discussion and if there is agreement to delete the page request a deletion.

In more detail

1. place the template {{Delete proposal}} on the page, create a section to discuss the deletion on the talk page.
2. wait a long time, ask the mailing list for opinions, consider contacting the author or editors known to be editing related content.
3. if there is consensus request deletion.
4. if you don't get any opinions you can either try again in a few months or if you think there is some urgent reason to delete the page try a delete request anyway.

Deletion requests should be placed only on pages that are easy to decide and where you expect universal agreement - or which went through the delete proposal stage without contradiction. Improper and controversial delete requests cost valuable admin time to decide what should have been decided in a community discussion and are prone to cause significant controversy.

To request a deletion replace the page content with a {{Delete}} and remove all links leading to the page to be deleted. It has been suggested that in case a deletion request 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. However, if a request for deletion has been opposed it should never be reinstated without consensus.