Free Pascal wiki:Deletion policy

  Note: As of 2022‑01‑24 this is a draft. The section speedy deletion nevertheless reflects the status quo.

This policy describes when and how to delete content in this Wiki. There are two venues of deletion proceedings:

• speedy deletion
• contestable deletion

Speedy Deletion

A speedy deletion request does not warrant any discussion about the If, i. e. uncontroversial cases. The name refers to the expedited procedure, but the actual deletion might occur days or months later.

Uncontroversial Cases

Out of project scope:

• any spam
• commercial advertisement beyond promotional showcasing
• encrypted data unless for the specific purpose of demonstrating such (posting your [base64-encoded] GPG public key is [in principle] nevertheless OK)

Legal and cultural considerations:

• defamatory statements
• depictions of physical violence, including staged violence against humans/human-like beings (on this site it primarily concerns screenshots of shooter games)
• overtly sexual imagery
• contents undoubtedly violating intellectual property rights

Maintenance:

• broke files, files of non-permitted types (as of 2022‑01‑24 only PNG, GIF, JPG/JPEG, WebP and XML are allowed)
• (except in the User/User talk namespaces) pages with non-English page titles: To facilitate multilingualism all pages must have English titles, plus a two-letter language suffix (except in the case of English) separated by a forward slash. Ideally preserve the contents under an appropriate English title, i. e. move the page. The automatically created redirection stub in the foreign language can be deleted without discussion if there are no pages referring to it (anymore).
• (except in the User and all talk namespaces) substantial contents of a page do not match the page language indicated by its title: A page …/fr must contain French content (source code is exempt from this rule). Ensure the mismatch cannot be reasonably resolved by simply renaming the page. A grace period for a translation in progress is granted.
• redundant images, i. e. if the nominated image is without doubt inferior to a different image showing the same
• category description pages of empty categories (pure maintenance categories like Category: Pages for deletion are exempt from this)

Other:

• pages in the User/User talk namespaces if the deletion request comes from the respective user [please contact an active administrator if you are the heir of a deceased person and cannot find their login credentials]

Request

An SDR is submitted simply by putting the page into Category: Pages for deletion:

[[Category: Pages for deletion]]

Naming a reason in the edit summary is appreciated although not mandatory for the process, e. g.:

nominate for [[:Category: Pages for deletion|deletion]]: spam

  Note: Contents may be deleted at the discretion of administrators without an intervening SDR step. Therefore, ensure your contents do not give raise for serious concerns at any time, e. g. ensure proper source and license attribution of legitimately copied materials.

Retraction

Any user may undo such an SDR. It is always best to try improving a page first.

Contestable Deletion

Contents outside the User/User talk namespaces can still be nominated for deletion if they do not qualify for a speedy deletion.

Guidelines

• All pages need maintenance. Deleting a page means we, collectively, especially the pool of active users, can no longer ensure a page will be maintained in the long-term. Eventually this may reflect poorly on the actual FPC and Lazarus projects, especially among newcomers. Therefore deleting content can be legitimate last resort.
• pages not fulfilling a documentary purposes, or not facilitating the advancement of the project
  • tutorials and proposals are OK
• contents verifiably containing steganographic messages unless for the specific purpose of demonstrating such a feature