 | This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus. |
 | This page in a nutshell: To request a speedy deletion of a page: if it is not a page you created yourself, put {{delete | [your reason] }} at the top of it; if it is a page you created yourself, add {{db-author}} at the top. |
While anyone can edit articles, to keep things manageable, only administrators can delete them. Note that removing all text from a page does not delete it; it just leaves a blank page, which is discouraged as it is confusing to readers. Removed text is not permanently lost, and can easily be restored from the page history.
This page explains how to ask for an article to be deleted from Wikipedia. For all the gritty details, see the deletion policy.
Bear the following things in mind:
- It is better to improve an article than to delete it for not being good enough.
- An article that looks inappropriate may simply have been tampered with; you can fix this by reverting it to the better, previous version.
- If the article duplicates another, you can redirect it to the other one; there's no need for it to be deleted first.
- It's polite to let the article's author know that you are asking for it to be deleted; you can find them in the page history.