Help:Deleting a page
Gardeners can delete or restore pages and images, as well as view the history of a deleted article; Administrators can also hide or unhide individual revisions from the page history tab.
When are pages deleted?
Pages subject to deletion generally include spam and other vandalism and content not relevant to the wiki. See Fanlore's Mark for Deletion policy.
Copyrighted material that does not fall under fair use and is not used with permission is also subject to deletion. See Fanlore:Image Policy.
If a fan is outed on Fanlore, and they need their identity protected, the pages where the outing occurred will usually be edited, rather than deleted outright (depending on the situation, of course!). See Help:Protecting Identity for procedures.
See also the Intro to Fanlore FAQ.
Deletion Procedure
To delete a page,
- Check that no other wiki pages link to the page that is to be deleted.
- Hover over the arrow next to the View history tab in the upper right hand corner of the page.
- Click the delete link in the drop-down.
- A new screen, asking for confirmation that the page should be deleted, as well as for an explanation for the deletion, will appear.
- Select the reason for the deletion from the drop-down box or type it into the "Other/Additional reason" field.
- Click "delete page."
- The page might have an existing talk page which should be deleted as well.
Pages can be undeleted for as long as they are in the archive. This archive is occasionally lost in database crashes. If a page has not been recreated since being deleted, there will be a message on the page indicating how many deleted revisions exist. Clicking on this (or the undelete tab) will bring up a page displaying all the deleted revisions, each of which can be viewed separately. To undelete a page, click the restore button on the confirmation page; this will restore all deleted revisions by default. Undeletion occurs as soon as the button is clicked and will be logged just like deletions. If some revisions are not restored, the log will record how many were.
If a page still exists but an administrator wants to restore previous revisions, the administrator must go to the page history. There will be a link to undelete as described above.
Revision History Procedures
Hide revisions: Go to the page history tab and click the "show/hide" link next to the revision you want to hide. If you want to hide a majority of the revisions on the page, try deleting and restoring instead (see below).
Delete revisions: To delete only a few revisions from the history, delete the article normally, then begin the undeletion procedure. Before clicking the "Restore" button, check the revisions you want to restore. All others will remain deleted. To delete one version of an image, click the (del) link beside that version under the "File history" heading. The most recent version cannot be deleted without deleting all previous versions. To remove a revision completely and permanently, you can also use Special:HideRevision.
Merge edit histories: The edit histories of two articles may be merged into one. To merge histories, delete the page where all the histories are supposed to be restored. Move the other page to the just deleted page, and then restore all the deleted revisions. This cannot be manually undone, and it is very difficult to split edit histories.
Split an edit history: To split an edit history, manually delete all revisions, then restore those belonging to one article (which may be difficult to recognize). Move the undeleted page to a new title to split off those revisions. Restore the revisions belonging to the deleted page (now a redirect), then revert to the penultimate revision (i.e., before the redirect).
For any other questions, you can use the Talk page or contact the Fanlore Committee.