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On http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Deletion-Policy , wikiHow’s deletion policy, the speedy deletion has but a single paragraph: “While putting an article through the formal deletion process is the preferred outcome, some newly created articles qualify for a speedy (i.e. immediate) deletion. This should typically be reserved for patent nonsense, personal attacks, profanity, or highly offensive articles. Note that speedy deletes should never be done to an old, established article. Non-admins can mark pages for a speedy delete by writing {{speedy}}.” Unfortunately, there is some confusion as to what actually constitutes a speedy in several cases, so I would suggest the speedy criteria be expanded upon. Here’s a basic list I can think of for the criteria: 1. Test pages usually created by anons or users trying to figure out how wikiHow works 2. Patent nonsense - present in above paragraph, no meaningful content. 3. Vandalism, personal attacks/hate speech, and highly offensive articles. 4. User requests to delete pages/templates in their ownuserspace 5. Spam pages/promotional articles immediately recognizable by lack of meaningful content/instructions Please provide feedback on this suggestion :slight_smile:

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I personally only reserve {{speedy}} for articles containing sexual or offensive content. Anything else, I just use the NFD tags. I find that this criteria would be extremely helpful in terms of letting others know how to use the {{speedy}} tag correctly. I support:slight_smile:

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I’m not too good at making them sound very specific either, so any help on the wording would be appreciated.

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I would also support mentioning articles with entirely no content - articles that have even a few words generally can be NFD’d for incomplete, but if the page has absolutely no content on it at all then I generally delete it…that’s my own personal belief/standard though, and might not be what others do. I also give the author some time too; I don’t delete the page if they just created it 10 or 15 minutes ago…that way I can ensure that they didn’t make the page initially with the intent to add content piece by piece, and simply didn’t add an in use template.

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The {{speedy}} deletion policy is one of the most commonly misunderstood for new editors. For me the “profanity” bit is vague, and gives the impression that we should immediately delete any article with profanity in it, which is not the case. First, there are different perceptions of what is “profane” or “vulgar” and second, if there is profanity, you can just edit the article to remove it. In general though, maybe instead of expanding upon the wording, we can offer examples. I think examples are much easier to understand sometimes than detailed descriptions. What about linking to an example from each criteria, so that the reader knows what we mean?

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test pages – articles created in the main namespace for the purpose of testing wikihow/mediawiki features Example: Title: Asdfjkl Content: how does this work??? == Headline text == [[Link title]] Reason: test edits should be done in the [[Sandbox]]

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I also sometimes speedy articles who are ads , and especially if the person written multiple articles like that and doesn’t do anything to write it in wikiHow format.