Help:Deleting a page

Important note: When you edit this page, you agree to release your contribution into the public domain. If you don't want this or can't do this because of license restrictions, please don't edit. This page is one of the Public Domain Help Pages, which can be freely copied into fresh wiki installations and/or distributed with MediaWiki software; see Help:Contents for an overview of all pages. See Project:PD help/Copying for instructions.

When not to delete a page

Typically you would delete a page if the contents are entirely inappropriate and do not match the purposes of the Wiki. In other situations, you would take a less extreme course of action, for example:

• The page should have a different title -- See Help:Moving a page
• The contents should have been placed on a different page -- Add the contents to the other page, and then supply a redirect. See Help:Redirects
• The contents are already on a different page -- Delete the duplicate content and leave a redirect. That way, the page title, which made sense to somebody, will helpfully redirect to the information. See Help:Redirects
• The page is out-of-date -- Re-word sentences to be in the past tense, to make the page an historical record. Alternatively, label the information as out-of-date, with a warning notice.

An actual delete is generally necessary only if the title of the page is inappropriate. In other situations, a merge and redirect is more appropriate.

Proposing changes

Deciding on appropriate content/page titles can be a difficult aspect of Wiki organization, and one which can often provoke debates. If the merge or deletion you have in mind is one which might cause upset, you should propose the change first. Do this by leaving a note to give your reasons on the talk page. You might also establish a system for labeling the page with a delete/merge proposal template, to make everybody aware of your intentions.

Unlinking a page

The 'What links here' toolbox feature (bottom of left sidebar) will tell you which other Wiki pages link to the current page. Always use this feature to check before proceeding with deleting. These related pages will need to be edited for their links to reflect the change.

Deletion itself

Normal users cannot permanently delete a Wiki page. This is a deliberate design feature, and is an important part of why wikis work. Every kind of editing operation can be reverted by any other user, and that includes resurrecting deleted content. It doesn't cause significant wasted space; and with nothing but a 'delete' label, the page is effectively deleted anyway.

'Sysop' users are able to delete a page semi-permanently. See Help:Sysop deleting and undeleting. Typically 'sysops' might look for delete labels, and do a proper delete on these pages, after a period of time. If for some reason you need a page to be deleted more quickly than that, you will need to contact a 'sysop' to request this.

See also

• Help:Sysops and permissions

Syntax

{{Languages|PageName}}

• PageName (optional) - the name of the page to display language links for. If omitted then the English version of the current page is used. This parameter can normally be omitted, as it is only required if you want to link to a page other than the one you place the template on, which is very uncommon. If this parameter is used on a sub-page make sure you supply the root name, not the full page name (e.g. on MediaWiki/fr you would need to use {{Languages|MediaWiki}} and not {{Languages|MediaWiki/fr}}).

Usage

The template should only be placed on pages that exist in more than one language, and it should be placed in the same location on each translation of the page.

The English version of a page is always the main version, with all other languages as sub-pages, named using the appropriate language code (see below).

For example, on the Main Page you would include the text {{Languages}}, both on Main Page itself, and on each of its language sub-pages. The template automatically creates links to any language sub-pages that exist, e.g. Main Page/ja<tt>, <tt>Main Page/fr, and ignores non-existant languages.

See Project:Language policy for further details about translating pages.

Supported languages

This shows you the name of each language's sub-page (using Main Page as an example). Other languages may be added easily as necessary. Please use the appropriate prefix, as used on Wikipedia when adding a new language. Please do not add languages for which no pages exist yet, as this will increase the time needed to include the template without adding any benefit (languages are only displayed to the user when the relevant page exists).

The link on the language names goes to the Wikipedia in that language. If no Wikipedia in your language exists, do not add pages in that language to MediaWiki.org! This wiki is not the place for language advocacy - please go through the correct channels, and once your language has a Wikipedia then please return to add content here.

Page Name	Language
Main Page	English

Example

Here is how the language bar looks on the MediaWiki page: Template:Help/Category