wikiHow:Deletion Policy

Deletion Policy

wikiHow's goal is to offer instructions on pretty much every how-to topic imaginable. As a result, we are naturally hesitant to delete articles that might evolve into pages which serve our mission. That said, some new articles that get created on wikiHow can be deleted for a variety of reasons.

In accordance with the Staff Content Guidelines, articles written by WRM and other staff accounts are exempt from the Deletion Policy in order to create experiments and try out new ideas. If you have any concerns about a staff-written article, please contact JayneG .

Acceptable Reasons for Deletion

The table below lists all the reasons that might qualify an article for deletion. Having one of these reasons does not automatically qualify an article for deletion . It only indicates that the article can be nominated for deletion, and then reviewed by the community. Only after a consensus has been reached for deletion, is the article then deleted. As you can see from the table below, there are many articles in wikiHow that have some of these reasons, but have not been deleted after surviving NFD nominations and community discussions.

Reason	Code	Explanation	Example deletes	Example keeps
Accuracy issues	acc	Severe accuracy problems that can't be easily edited away. Use {{accuracy}} or edit to fix is always first choice.	Depends on content	Depends on content
Advertising / spam	adv	If the article cannot be edited to meet brand name guidelines, it will be deleted.	Buy Viagra For Cheap!!!!, Send Your Email Address Here to Get a Free Runescape Account	Use iTunes
Below character article standards	cha	Fails to meet the wikiHow character article standards.	Depends on content	Depends on content
Copyright violations		Use {{copyvio\|url}} instead of NFD for anything that violates the copyright policy.	Depends on content	Depends on content
Duplicate article	dup	Per merge policy, articles with almost indistinguishable titles will be merged or deleted.	Be Popular (My Way)	Be Popular
Recreational drug focused	dru		How to Make Meth	Use a Water Bong , Make Caffeine Jello Shots
Extremely dangerous and reckless	dan	Must be extremely dangerous, reckless, and irrational.	Drive Blindfolded in Heavy Traffic	Fight , Run up a Wall and Flip , Skydive for the First Time
Hate/racist based	hat		How to Hate Americans, How to Hate Arabs	Deal With Relatives You Hate
Universally illegal	ill	Must be banned in almost every country, state, and province.	Rape, Murder, Assault	Cheat On a Test , Hack a Coke Machine , Pick a Lock
Impossible tasks	imp	Impossible or impractical.	Travel to Mars in a Car, Clone a Human in Your House	Survive a Long Fall , Bend a Spoon
Incomplete and not useful	inc	While most incomplete articles are allowed to develop as stubs, some provide no help to readers at all and can be deleted.	Depends on content	Depends on content
Joke topics	jok	When the topic itself is a joke. Don't use on achievable topics that happen to be funny.	Make a Time Travel Machine, Marry Your Dog, Drink Frogs	Be Funny Without Telling Jokes , Do a Bathroom Prank, Drink Upside Down, Make Yourself Laugh
Mean-spirited	mea	Instructions promoting destructive or mean spirited behavior or activities.	Make a Snuff Film, Hit an Innocent Person in the Face	Fight , Toilet Paper a House, Play a Prank
Not a how-to	not	Articles that aren't how-to in nature.	John's Diary, Map of NY	Hide Your Diary , Make a Map
Political opinion	pol	Opinion promoting or criticizing a particular political party, candidate, or official.	How to Criticize Barack Obama	How to Criticize a Public Official, Vote in the United States
Potty humor	pot		Take a Poo	Make Fake Diarrhea
Sarcastic / reverse logic	sar	Sarcasm doesn't work in a how-to manual.	Go Bankrupt, Fall Off Your Bike	Gain Weight , File Bankruptcy in the United States
Sexually explicit or sexually charged material	sex	Articles focused on sex, whether explicitly worded or not.	Have Sex, Plan a Threesome	Kiss Passionately , French Kiss
Societal instructions	soc	Topics only a whole society or its leaders can accomplish. Not possible for one person to follow instructions and achieve the desired end.	Ban the Death Penalty	Take Action to Ban the Death Penalty
Vanity pages	van	Instructions that are only valuable to one person or to a select group of insiders.	How to Drive to My House, Be Just Like Travis Derouin	Do Marilyn Monroe Makeup

Nominating an Article for Deletion

The easiest way to Nominate an Article for Deletion in wikiHow is by writing {{nfd|abc}}. Then wait a week or two for other people to comment on the merits of the deletion (replace "abc" with three letter code in the table above). It is recommended that the person nominating the article for deletion comment on the discussion page describing exactly why the NFD reason applies. For example, this comment can explain what is inaccurate or dangerous about the instructions.

If placing an NFD tag for a duplicate article, you need to indicate the duplicate article. This is best done by placing it in the NFD tag like this: {{nfd|dup|Clean Silver}}, where the words that go in the third field are the article title without the "How to" at the beginning.

Rescuing Articles and Removing NFD Tags

wikiHow encourages contributors to rescue articles that have been nominated for deletion. To rescue an NFD article contributors can perform a bold edit on the article and add information that will strengthen the article and resolve the NFD reason(s) given in the tag.

NFD tags should only be removed by Administrators or New Article Boosters. If you are not an Admin or New Article Booster please leave the NFD tag in place and notify an Admin or New Article Booster to review the article. Even New Article Boosters should request an Admin to review the NFD removal if they were a major contributor to an article before the NFD tag was put in place.

NFD Vandalism

Occasionally an editor will vandalize groups of pages by adding spurious NFD tags. In clear cases of vandalism, any RC Patroller may revert the vandalism as long as they notify the admins by placing a comment on the Admin Notice Board about the action taken.

Article Deletion

After a week, a team of Admins and New Article Boosters will review the article in the NFD Guardian tool and make a decision to delete or keep the article based on a combination of comments and votes. Sometimes, it may be required to manually review an article nominated for deletion. Generally, if there is a rough consensus among regular registered users for deletion (as measured by a vote of 60% or more for deletion if the discussion does not reach a true consensus), the page will be deleted. However, the admin may decide to not delete the page if an anonymous or registered user makes a compelling case for why the page should be included in wikiHow. Read how to Review NFD List for Final Outcome to learn about the technicalities of how this is done.

Speedy Deletions

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, highly offensive articles, or cross-posted promotional content and content farm submissions. 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}}.

Deletion vs. Stub

When deciding whether to nominate a page for deletion or mark it {{stub}}, consider the following rule of thumb: If you were a reader looking to learn how to complete the task outlined in the article, would it be generally helpful or would you wish you had never landed on the page? If the page provides some level of constructive help to the reader AND has the potential to eventually grow into a complete and useful page mark it as {{stub}}. If, on the other hand, the page is truly incomplete (to the point that it does not provide you helpful and complete steps as to how to achieve the goal) it should be marked for deletion.

Deletion vs. Merge

Duplicate articles can be merged or marked for deletion in accordance with our Merge Policy. You can mark duplicates for merge by writing {{merge|Name of Article to Merge To}} or mark for deletion by writing {{nfd|dup}} and then saying on the discussion page which article this is a duplicate of. A synopsis of the merge policy is below:

Same goal, different methods - Okay to keep as separate articles

Read the Merge Policy for full details. Two pages on a similar topic describing totally different methods should be labeled appropriate and preserved separately and linked via related wikiHows. For example How to Gut a Fish with a Knife and How to Gut a Fish with a Laser are two articles describing the same goal (gutting the fish) but using different techniques. They should both be allowed to survive. However the pages may need to be renamed so it is clear to the reader what method the page advocates. Alternatively, it is OK to have all the methods on one page. The decision to have both methods on one page or on separate pages will be up to the editors involved.

Same goal, same methods - Article should be merged If there are 2 articles about essentially the same thing using essentially the same method those articles should be merged. In some cases one of the articles can simply be redirected and deleted if it really has nothing to "add" to the other article.