Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion

This page documents an English Wikipedia policy. It describes a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.

Shortcuts WP:CSD WP:SPEEDY

This page in a nutshell: Under certain limited conditions, a page may be deleted by an administrator without waiting for any discussion.

The criteria for speedy deletion (CSD) specify the only cases in which administrators have broad consensus to bypass deletion discussion, at their discretion, and immediately delete Wikipedia pages or media. Because deletion is reversible only by administrators, other deletions occur only after discussion, unless they are proposed deletions. Speedy deletion is intended to reduce the time spent on deletion discussions for pages or media with no practical chance of surviving discussion.^[1] Anyone can request speedy deletion by adding one of the speedy deletion templates, but only administrators may actually delete.

Before nominating a page for speedy deletion, consider whether it could be improved, reduced to a stub, merged or redirected elsewhere, reverted to a better previous revision, or handled in some other way (see Wikipedia:Deletion policy § Alternatives to deletion). A page is eligible for speedy deletion only if all of its history is also eligible. Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criterion/criteria the page meets, and should notify the page creator and any major contributors. If a page needs to be removed from Wikipedia for privacy reasons (e.g. non-public personal information, a child disclosing their age, possible libel), request oversight instead.

For most speedy deletion criteria, the creator of a page may not remove the deletion tag from it; only an editor who is not the creator of a page may do so. A creator who disagrees with the speedy deletion should instead click on the Contest this speedy deletion button that appears inside of the speedy deletion tag. This button links to the discussion page with a pre-formatted area for the creator to explain why the page should not be deleted. If an editor other than the creator removes a speedy deletion tag in good faith, it should be taken as a sign that the deletion is controversial and another deletion process should be used. The creator of a page may remove a speedy deletion tag only if the criterion in question is G6, G7, G8, G13, G14, C1, C4 or U1.^[2]

Administrators should take care not to speedily delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases. If a page has survived its most recent deletion discussion, it should not be speedily deleted except for newly discovered copyright violations and pages that meet specific uncontroversial criteria; these criteria are noted below. Contributors sometimes create pages over several edits, so administrators should avoid deleting a page that appears incomplete too soon after its creation.

Besides speedy deletion, there are the following methods of deletion:

• Wikipedia:Deletion discussions (AfD, CfD, FfD, MfD, RfD, TfD), the normal method of carrying out deletion.
• Wikipedia:Proposed deletions, for nominating articles and files for uncontroversial deletion.
• Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people, for articles on living persons without sources.