Wikipedia:Proposed deletion

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This page documents an official policy on the English Wikipedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

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Proposed deletion is a process that uses {{prod}} for deleting articles (and, under certain circumstances, user pages) that are uncontroversial deletion candidates but do not meet the criteria for speedy deletion. Even though {{prod}} is to be applied to uncontroversial deletion candidates, it may invoke strong reactions if not used correctly. If you are new to using {{prod}}, you may first wish to review the subcategories at Category:Proposed deletion to get an idea as to how others have used prod.

1 How prod works
2 Nominating a proposed deletion
3 Contesting a proposed deletion
4 Contesting after deletion
5 Conflicts
6 Procedure for administrators
7 See also

[edit] How prod works

Articles flagged with {{prod}} may be deleted without a full Articles for deletion debate after five days — if no one objects. Deletion is not automatic; an administrator will check the reason given before deleting the article, so there will often be a backlog of articles that have been marked for more than five days but have not been deleted yet.

Articles that have been previously proposed for deletion or undeleted, or discussed on AfD, are clearly contested and are not candidates for {{prod}}. Articles currently tagged {{prod}} are listed in Category:Proposed deletion (shortcuts include CAT:PROD and WP:APD/WP:APFD "articles proposed for deletion"). Alternately, WP:PRODSUM provides a table of tagged articles, and the reason given.

Items other than articles, including images, templates, Wikipedia essays and redirects are dealt with through other processes.

Pages in the User and User talk namespaces may be proposed for deletion if the user has no recent edits and has made little or no contributions to the encyclopedia.

[edit] Nominating a proposed deletion

If you think that an article is an uncontroversial candidate for deletion:
1. Review the article's history to confirm that it has not been recently vandalized. If it was recently proposed for deletion before, nominate it for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion if you think it should be deleted.
2. Add {{subst:prod|reason}} to the top of the main article page. Use an informative edit summary, and don't mark the edit as minor.
3. Consider adding the article to your watchlist and letting the article's creator know that you have tagged it. You can use {{subst:PRODWarning|Article title}} ~~~~ for this.

[edit] Contesting a proposed deletion

If you do not agree that the article should be deleted without discussion you can do the following things:
1. Remove the {{dated prod}} tag from the article, noting this in the edit summary. Editors should explain why they disagree with the proposed deletion.
2. While you're editing the article anyway, please consider improving it, especially to address the concerns given as a reason for deletion.
3. If you feel that the article should be deleted, but not without discussion, you may nominate the article for an Articles for deletion debate.

[edit] Contesting after deletion

Articles deleted under this procedure (using the {{prod}} tag) may be undeleted, without further discussion, on a reasonable request. Any administrator can be asked to do this, or a request may be made at WP:DRV#Proposed deletions, but such undeleted articles are open to be speedily deleted or nominated for WP:AFD under the usual rules.

Administrators restoring deleted articles should place {{Oldprod}} on the talk page of the article.

[edit] Conflicts

Contested deletions: If anyone, including the article's creator, removes Template:Prod from an article for any reason, do not put it back, except if the removal was clearly not an objection to deletion (such as blanking the entire article, or removing the tag along with inserting blatant nonsense); however, if the edit is not obviously vandalism, do not restore it, even if the tag was apparently removed in bad faith. If you still believe the article needs to be deleted, list it on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Note: if someone replaces a PROD tag with an AfD tag, this constitutes a contested deletion, and the PROD tag should not be restored; but if someone replaces a PROD tag with a speedy deletion tag (although they should simply add the speedy tag), the PROD tag may be restored.

The other deletion and related processes have priority over PROD:

An article flagged for both PROD and AfD should be dealt with in AfD, and the {{prod}} tag should be removed.
Appropriate alternatives such as Wikipedia:Copyright problems or Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion take precedence. However, when tagging a PRODded article as a speedy candidate, the PROD tag should be left in place in case the speedy deletion is rejected. (Note contrast with the above: a rejected speedy candidate is still eligible for PROD, but a rejected AfD candidate is not.)
Any deletion via this process which is taken to deletion review is implicitly a contested deletion, and the article may therefore be immediately restored by any administrator without discussion.
Any article deleted via this process and then re-created is not subject to speedy deletion under speedy criterion G4, as re-creation is a way for contesting (removing) the prod tag. If you feel the article should be re-deleted, list it on Articles for deletion.

[edit] Procedure for administrators

If you are an administrator deciding whether or not to delete a PRODed article:
1. Check that the tag has been in place continuously for at least 5 days and no objections have been raised on the talk page.
2. If you agree that the article should be deleted, delete it giving an informative deletion reason, such as that given by the nominator, not just expired prod.
- If you decide not to delete it, consider editing the article to deal with the concerns that were raised, or nominating the article for deletion on AfD.
- To ensure an extra pair of eyes, an article should not be deleted by the same person who placed the tag on it.