Help:Administrator's Handbook/Delete

Sometimes, deleting a page from the wiki is completely necessary, rather than fixing it or redirecting it elsewhere.

Deleting a page
Once you have become a sysop, one of the first things you will notice is a brand-new "delete" tab at the top of most pages in addition to the normal ones. This will take you to a deletion prompt.



Deleting specific revisions
Sysops are allowed to delete file revisions of an image or audio, while suppressors are able to change the visibility of specific revisions of a page, for example, someone's private contact details, or a copyright violation.

To delete a revision of a file, one must go to the file's page "File History" section. At the section, a table will appear, consisting of an empty heading column. Below the empty heading column, a few options will appear for each past/current file revisions of that file, which includes the "delete" option.

To change the visibility of a specific revision of a page, one must have the suppressor role. Now go to the page's revision history page, and you'll see small square checkboxes listed on each revision log. To select the revisions you want to change visibility on, check the boxes. When done selecting, there will be a button on top saying "Change visibility of selected revisions", then click that.

Once clicked, you'll be transferred to the revision delete page, and the revision(s) that you selected will appear, and beneath that will show a set of choices of how the visibility of the selected revision(s) shall be changed. When everything is set, find a grey-colored background button that says, "Apply to selected revision(s)", then click that.

Restoring deleted revisions
Once a page has been deleted it is invisible to normal users, but sysops visiting that same "no such article" page will also see a line at the top saying " View or restore ## deleted edits? ". This line also appears on the revision history page if the page was previously deleted and some revisions were not restored.

Regardless of its location, clicking on the link will display the revision history.

If you want to restore all deleted revisions merely click "Restore", but if you want to exclude specific revisions you will need to check the boxes of every revision other than those ones before clicking Restore, at the moment there is no "restore all but selected" option. For pages that have had a lot of edits, this can be a laborious process.

Revision restoration does not have to happen all at once, however, and even multiple admins can simultaneously restore edits of the same page (although they will encounter some errors if they both select a matching revision).

Merging page histories
Sometimes when merging pages it is desirable to merge their edit histories together rather than simply using redirects. In this case, you will need to delete the page in question, move one of the source pages over top of it, delete the page again, move the next over top, etc. etc. etc. Once completed simply restore all the revisions by clicking the history tab and going through the procedure described above.

You may need to revert to an earlier revision where all the source pages had already been merged.

Administrative steps
When deleting an item, administrators should consider the following:
 * See if at least some of the information presented can be moved elsewhere. If so, do so, and note it in the edit summaries of both pages.
 * Simply deleting an item does not automatically delete its talk page. If doing so, delete its talk page first, then its main page.
 * Retaining the talk page or the subpages of a deleted page may be wise. If the talk page is kept, link its deletion discussion thread there.
 * When providing a reason for deletion, avoid including any copyright-infringing text or the personal information of others.
 * Redirects to deleted items should be deleted, or be redirected elsewhere to avoid broken redirects.

When deciding whether or not to delete a page or file, see if a rough consensus of its fate has been achieved, and always use common sense and respect the judgment and feelings of wiki participants. When in doubt, don't delete. Excessive or unjustified deleting may result in the loss of administrative powers.