User:Captain-tucker/Adoption Center/4

This is an optional task in your adoption process that is all about deleting inappropriate articles.

There are three ways to get an article deleted on Wikipedia. As mentioned in your previous task, there is AfD - debates over the legitimacy of the article. But there is also proposed deletion and speedy deletion. Your task is to find suitable candidates for all three criteria, and go through the full nomination procedure.

Proposed deletion - I’m starting with prod because in my opinion it’s the most simple, and is the most “newbie friendly.” Prod works as follows; you find an article that’s deemed inappropriate, and you put the prod tag on it. You also warn its creator and significant contributors using the prod warning. Five days later, if the prod template hasn’t been removed from the article, it is deemed to be “deletion worthy” and an administrator will delete it some time soon (it’s not deleted instantly because deletion is always a manual job, and because there will generally be a backlog of prods that must be dealt with).

Prods can be found anywhere, and they aren’t usually something you search for (“prod hunting” etc.). But, for the purposes of this task, we will do that. What I’ve found is that the random article link will generally deliver a deletion worthy article after a few attempts. So let’s try this.

Click the random page link, and check the article that appears. Things to look for are short articles and articles that appear to be about totally trivial, non notable subjects.

This may sound a bit odd, but if you take a look through Category:Proposed deletion, you’ll find a lot of examples of prod-able articles.

When you find an article that’s deletion worthy, you can prod it. Do this by clicking the edit link, and insert {{subst:prod|REASON ~~~}}. Replace the “REASON” with your reason for proposed deletion, and be sure to cite any policies that are relevant (WP:V, WP:BIO, etc.). Mention the prodding in your edit summary. When you save the page, it will now contain the prod message, which contains at the bottom some syntax to place on the talk page of contributors to the article (found in its history). It’s a good idea to put the prod warning on the talk page of the article’s creator, and of anyone who has made major changes to it.

Now you’re done. Put a diff of this on your adoption page, to see how you went, and keep an eye on the article to see if it’s deleted, or if the prod is removed. If the prod is removed, then you may need to move onto the next option:

Deletion debates - You’ve already had experience in voting in AfDs, so I’m not going to talk about that again. The times when you are most likely to nominate AfD’s are when a prod is removed, or when you find an article that would be too controversial to prod (for example, an article about a video game in development, written by its developers, would have no chance at a prod, because the prod would be removed by the developers straight away. In this case, an AfD would force them to “obey”).

If the article you prodded in the previous part of this task was successful (it was deleted), you’ll need to find another one (well, you won’t need to, since this is optional. A successful prod indicates that you have good judgement in this regard). If you do want to nominate an AfD, you can do it manually be following the instructions at WP:AFD, or you can use an automated tool such as Twinkle (which also has great vandal fighting features), or AfD helper (which also makes voting in AfD’s easier).

If you do decide to create an AfD, or if you are forced to because of your prod being removed, then be sure to bring a link to it to your adoption page. Creating an AfD is not a required part of this task.

Speedy deletion - This is the third and final form of deletion. Speedy deletion applies to articles that fall under the criteria for speedy deletion. A few random examples include spam (advertising etc.), nonsense pages, and blatant copyright violations.

Speedy deletion (CSD) is generally done when new page patrolling - a fancy name for monitoring the creation of articles on Wikipedia. You can do this at Special:Newpages. Just load the page, and refresh it regularly.

When you find an article that you think should be deleted because it meets a criterion for speedy deletion, then click the edit link in it, and insert one of the CSD templates. The full list can be found at {{deletion tools}} (which is a useful template to keep on your userpage, as it contains templates for all forms of deletion). The most commonly used ones will probably be {{db-spam}}, {{db-bio}}, {{db-nonsense}}, and {{db-attack}}. After saving the page with the appropriate CSD tag at the top, the page that loads will contain your tag, and the syntax to place a warning on the talk page of the article’s creator. Be sure to do this.

Having tagged the article for deletion, and placed a warning on the talk page of its creator, bring both diff's to your adoption page (if I’m quick, I’ll see the article too). If you have problems finding articles to prod or CSD please let me know. Good luck!