MEpedia:Deletion policy

Occasionally, a page may need to be deleted. This page describes when and how to propose an article for deletion.

When to propose an article for deletion

• Sometimes a page may be created temporarily for temporary purposes. When the purpose is completed, the page can be proposed for deletion.
• Often, a page is no longer needed due to a change in the page name. If the page name has been corrected to a new page, you can propose that the old page is deleted.
• If you see a page that might be spam, first acquaint yourself with the concepts in MEpedia:Vandalism before deciding that the page needs deletion.
• If you see a page that is not relevant to ME/CFS, first ask the page author to explain the relevance on the page in a section titled "ME/CFS". Although you may not see the relevance, other editors may see the relevance to ME/CFS.

How to propose an article for deletion

1) First, please check "What links here" on the left hand side of the page. For instance, if you are proposing to delete a page following a move to correct spelling or capitalization (e.g. when Chronic Epstein-Barr Virus was moved to Chronic Epstein-Barr virus), please correct all pages that contained wikilinks to the old title so that they point the new, correct title and are not left as deadlinks after the old page is deleted.

Note: If you find there are many more links than you have time or energy to fix, don't worry! Instead of proposing the leftover page for deletion now, leave it for another time or someone else to take care of. Leaving the redirect in place will make sure readers clicking on the old links still get to the right page, even if it's not formatted perfectly.

2) Once there are no more entries in "What links here", add the category "Articles for deletion" to the page. Adding the page to this category marks it for deletion.
3) Write an edit summary with a brief explanation of why you're proposing the article for deletion and save the page. (If a more involved explanation is necessary, you can leave it on the Discussion page and note that in your edit summary instead.)

Administrative review

An administrator will periodically review articles in the Category:Articles for deletion, and perform the final page deletions. Only administrators can delete articles, categories, templates, modules or other pages. Some of the reasons that administrators will use for deletion are listed here and here.

If the page could be improved

For pages that need improvement, rather than deletion, see MEpedia:Cleanup.