CZ:Article Deletion Policy

Articles deletable by constables acting on their own recognizance

In general, an article may (and in some cases should) be deleted by a constable, acting on his or her own recognizance, if:

• it was copied from Wikipedia or some other online source (where it can now be read) over one week ago, and no one has made any substantive revisions to it then or since then, regardless of whether it was marked "CZ Live" or not;
• it was drafted solely by a contributor and then blanked by that contributor;
• it consists of two sentences or less, or 50 words or less, which have been left on the wiki for more than two hours;
• it is for some reason evidently worthless, as in the case of vandalism; or
• it is primarily (and thus presumably could be entirely) the result of a copyright violation.

Articles deletable only after editor instruction

While at present only constables have the system permissions to delete articles, deletion of article on certain other grounds requires an instruction from the relevant discipline workgroup.

Deletion requires workgroup instruction if the proposed grounds for deletion include:

• the article is of such low quality (in terms of inaccuracy, bias, poor writing, or whatever) that it would be more efficient to start over than to try to clean up the current one (this also can be achieved by blanking, if one does in fact wish to start over);
• there is another entire article, of higher quality, that should replace the current one (note, this also can be achieved simply by pasting the new article over the old one); or

(Note that deletion in both of the above cases is not strictly necessary, except to delete the page history and to make links to the article turn red.)

• the article is not maintainable;
• either the topic or the contents of the article constitutes original research; or
• the article is unduly near in subject matter to another related article (so that one of the two articles "must go").