Who decides whether a Wikipedia article is deleted

Who decides whether a Wikipedia article is deleted?

Volunteers do, at several stages, and no one of them acts alone on a disputed case. The person who first raises a problem is rarely the person who deletes the page, and in a deletion discussion the person who closes it is expected to have taken no part in the argument.

The deletion policy sets one principle that runs through all of this: if an administrator is in doubt about whether there is consensus to delete a page, the page is normally not deleted.

How are new Wikipedia articles reviewed?

Through new page patrol, where trained volunteers check every new article unless its creator holds the autopatrolled right. Articles can only be created directly by autoconfirmed accounts, which means at least ten edits and four days since the account's first edit. Everyone else goes through Articles for Creation.

Reviewers work from the New Pages Feed using the Page Curation tools, which the Wikimedia Foundation built with the patrol team. To hold the new page reviewer right, an editor must normally have been registered for at least 90 days and made at least 500 non-deleted edits to articles, and an administrator checks their history before granting it. For each article a reviewer decides whether to mark it as reviewed, add maintenance tags, move it to draft space, or start a deletion process.

Three details of the patrol matter to a subject:

• Reviewers cannot delete anything. The patrol guidance says plainly that only administrators can. A reviewer's speedy deletion tag is a request.
• Unreviewed articles are hidden from search engines. An article that has not been marked as reviewed is kept out of search engine indexes for 90 days. An article sent to Articles for Deletion stays unindexed while the discussion runs, unless it is already older than 90 days.
• Draftification has limits. Reviewers are told to wait at least an hour before nominating or draftifying a new article, unless it has serious problems. Articles older than 90 days should not be moved to draft, an article should be draftified only once, and if the creator objects the question goes to discussion. An objection from an editor with a conflict of interest does not count for that purpose.

Drafts follow a separate path. Articles for Creation reviewers must have an account at least 90 days old and at least 500 undeleted article edits; administrators and new page reviewers may review drafts too. A draft accepted there is often checked again by new page patrol once it is published. Our guide to declined drafts covers that queue in detail.

Who can nominate a Wikipedia article for deletion?

Almost anyone. Any editor can add a speedy deletion tag or propose deletion, and any autoconfirmed account can open a discussion at Articles for Deletion. Unregistered users cannot create the discussion page, but they can ask on the Articles for Deletion talk page for someone to file the nomination for them.

Nominators are not a special class. Many are patrollers who found the article in the new pages queue, but a nomination can also come from someone who has never edited the topic, from a regular in a subject area, or from an editor who noticed the page through an unrelated dispute. The motive does not change how the nomination is judged. The Articles for Deletion instructions warn participants against accusing others of a conflict of interest or hidden motives, because those accusations are not reasons for keeping or deleting anything.

What is expected of a nominator is set out in the checks often called BEFORE: read the relevant policies, check the history and earlier nominations, and search for sources before claiming a subject lacks them. Our guide to Articles for Deletion covers those checks and how the nomination frames the discussion. If you are the one thinking of nominating, our guide to nominating a page for deletion walks through each route and what it puts on the record.

Who takes part in Wikipedia deletion discussions?

Any editor acting in good faith, including the article's authors and unregistered users. The instructions say that an anonymous participant who makes a civil, well-argued case grounded in policy may well change the outcome, and that comments made in obvious bad faith will be discounted.

The pool is large but uneven. Wikipedia's statistics page records that, as of 2023, about 162,000 registered editors and 85,000 IP addresses had at some point edited a deletion discussion page. In practice a smaller group of regulars takes part in a great many discussions. They have read the same arguments hundreds of times, use shorthand references to policy, and can seem abrupt to a newcomer. The instructions ask readers not to take this as rudeness.

Three groups are treated with particular care:

• People connected to the subject. Participants are asked to disclose any vested interest. A connected person may still comment, and a short comment with good sources is often the most useful thing they can add.
• New accounts. Their comments are not excluded, but closers weigh them with care, especially when several arrive at once arguing the same way.
• People drawn in from outside. Notices that aim to sway the result break the canvassing guideline, and closers can give the resulting comments little weight. A 2021 discussion about a widely reported article was closed by a panel that said outside coverage had brought in large numbers of participants and that it had therefore placed little weight on the raw count. Our guide to deletions that made the news covers that case.

What do Wikipedia administrators and closers do?

Administrators carry out deletions and closers decide what a discussion concluded. The two roles usually sit with the same person, but they are different jobs. Only administrators can delete a page, view deleted text or restore it, and every such action is written to a public log.

Administrators are volunteers, not employees of the Wikimedia Foundation. On English Wikipedia they are chosen either through a public request for adminship, decided by community discussion, or through an administrator election held by secret ballot, a route that began in 2024. Candidates must hold the extended confirmed right. The administrator policy adds several duties that matter to anyone affected by a deletion:

• They must not use their tools in a dispute they are involved in.
• They are accountable for their actions and are expected to answer questions about them promptly and civilly.
• Reinstating an administrative action that another administrator has already reversed, known as wheel warring, can lead to arbitration and the loss of the tools, even the first time.
• The community can start a recall petition. If it reaches 25 signatures, the administrator must stand for reconfirmation within 30 days or lose the tools.

When closing a discussion, the closer reads the arguments against policy rather than counting them. Experienced editors who are not administrators may close some clear-cut discussions, and very large or contentious ones are sometimes closed by a panel of several closers who sign a joint statement. Above the closer sits deletion review, where other editors can ask whether the close read the consensus correctly.

What are inclusionism and deletionism on Wikipedia?

They are two long-standing views on how broad Wikipedia's coverage should be. The labels describe tendencies in how editors approach borderline articles, not organised groups, and the difference between them has been debated within the community for many years.

Most editors sit somewhere between the two and lean differently depending on the subject. Both views are argued through the same policies that inform every deletion discussion: notability, verifiability, reliable sources and what Wikipedia is not. A closer judges the arguments by those policies whichever way the participants lean.

For a subject, the practical point is that the people who happen to join a discussion bring their own starting points. A comment that rests on independent, in-depth sources holds up under either view. A comment that rests on how important or useful the subject is will persuade nobody who does not already agree.

Why do deletion outcomes differ between topic areas?

Because each area has its own guidelines, its own precedents and its own regular participants. The Articles for Deletion instructions point nominators to the subject-specific notability guidelines and to a page summarising the common outcomes for different kinds of article, so that a nomination can be measured against how similar articles have fared.

Who sees a discussion also varies by topic. Two systems bring specialist editors in:

• Deletion sorting. WikiProject Deletion sorting keeps topical lists of open discussions, such as those for companies, businesspeople, academics, actors or particular countries. Editors watch the lists for their interests, so a discussion added to one draws people who know that area's sources.
• WikiProjects. English Wikipedia has more than 2,000 WikiProjects, groups of editors working on a subject. Projects that subscribe receive automated Article Alerts when an article tagged with their banner enters a deletion process, and nominators may leave a brief, neutral note on a project's talk page.

WikiProjects have no special authority. The WikiProject information page says they have no special rights over articles, cannot claim ownership of a topic area and may not impose their preferences on articles. Their members take part as ordinary editors. What they bring is knowledge: which trade publications in a sector are independent, which awards count, which local newspapers are reliable. That knowledge cuts both ways, since a specialist is also quicker to spot a sponsored feature presented as coverage.

The mechanics of how a discussion is listed are explained in our guide to Articles for Deletion.

What does this mean if your Wikipedia page is under review?

It means finding out which stage the page has reached, because that decides who you are dealing with and where a response belongs.

A few points hold at every stage. Each person involved is a volunteer applying written rules, and each can be asked about a decision on their talk page. Every conversation is public and stays in the record. Messages sent privately to individual editors to win their support are canvassing, and Wikipedia treats them as disruption. The most effective response is almost always the same: one clear statement of any connection to the subject, and the best independent sources, posted in the place the process expects.

Our guides to proposed and speedy deletion and reading a deletion log cover the individual stages.

When can you deal with reviewers and closers yourself?

When the problem is specific and the fix is in your hands. A reviewer who tags a new article for missing citations, or a proposed deletion that names a lack of sources, can often be answered by adding good independent sources and saying so politely on the talk page. That is what the tag or the proposal asks for, and no special standing is needed.

It gets harder when the question turns to judgment. At Articles for Deletion the participants who decide the result are often the regulars of that topic area, and they will recognise at once which sources are independent coverage and which are interviews, profiles or paid placements. A subject arguing alone tends to lead with the material they are proudest of, which is rarely the material those editors count. Whatever is posted becomes part of the record that the closer, and any later reviewer, will read.

An experienced editor's contribution is mostly preparation: identifying the stage and the decision-maker, testing the sources against the guideline that area actually applies, and putting one well-founded case in the right place. If you are unsure what stage your page is at, a free page health check reads the tags, logs and discussions and tells you. Expect an answer by the next working day.