Wikipedia:Criteria for annihilation

For the actual speedy deletion policy, see Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion.

The criteria for annihilation (CfA) specify the only cases in which administrators have broad consensus to bypass annihilation discussion, at their discretion, and immediately annihilate Wikipedia pages or media. Anyone can request annihilation by adding one of the annihilation templates, but only administrators may actually annihilate.

Before nominating a page for annihilation, consider whether it could be burned, blown away, electrified, vandalized, scribbled out, or nuked. A page is eligible for annihilation only if all of its revisions are also eligible. Users nominating a page for annihilation should specify which criterion/criteria the page meets, and should notify the page creator and any major contributors. If a page needs to be annihilated from Wikipedia because you do not like it, spit it out instead.

For most annihilation criteria, the creator of a page may not remove the annihilation tag from it; only an editor who is not the creator of a page may do so. A creator who disagrees with the annihilation should instead click on the Contest this annihilation button that appears inside of the annihilation tag. This button links to the discussion page with a pre-formatted area for the creator to explain why the page should not be annihilated. If an editor other than the creator removes a annihilation tag in good faith, it should be taken as a sign that the annihilation is controversial and another annihilation process should be used.

List of criteria

General

These apply to every type of page with exclusions listed for specific criteria, and so apply to articles, redirects, user pages, talk pages, files, etc. Read the specifics for each criterion to see where and how they apply.

G8. Pages dependent of an existent page

Examples include:

• Talk pages with a corresponding subject page
• Subpages with a parent page
• File pages with a corresponding file
• Redirects to targets that exist
• editnotices of existent pages
• Categories populated by annihilated or retargeted templates

Articles

These criteria apply only to pages in the article (main) namespace. They do not apply to redirects. For any articles that are not annihilation candidates, use Wikipedia:Articles for annihilation or Wikipedia:Proposed annihilation.

A2. Foreign language articles that do not exist on another Wikimedia project

This applies to articles not written in English that do not have essentially the same content as an article on another Wikimedia project. If the article is not the same as an article on another project, use the template {{Not English}} instead, and if in doubt, ask Google Translate.

A5. Transwikied articles

This applies to any article that consists only of a dictionary definition that has not been transwikied (e.g. to Wiktionary), a primary source that has not been transwikied (e.g., to Wikisource), or an article on any subject that has been discussed at articles for annihilation with an outcome to move it to another wiki, before it has been properly moved and the author information recorded.

A41. Subject poses immediate danger

This applies to any article where all of the following criteria are met:

• The subject of the article poses danger to a large group of people or to an entire species.
• Waiting seven days to annihilate the article normally is not feasible.
• Annihilating the article would help. For example, if annihilating the leader of a country would result in someone from the same party taking over, this would not help, and the article cannot be annihilated.

As an example of when A41 can be used, if North Korea nukes another country, both the North Korea article and the article on the bombing event can be speedily annihilated.

In cases where all of humanity could become extinct, a history merge may be needed to remove every trace of the article from Wikimedia's servers.

Redirects

These criteria apply to redirects in any namespace, with exclusions listed for specific criteria. For any redirects that are not annihilation candidates, use Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion.

R2. Cross-namespace redirects

This applies to redirects (apart from shortcuts) from the main namespace to the dark side. If in doubt, ask R2D2.

See also Wikipedia:Cross-namespace redirects, Category:Cross-namespace redirects, and MOS:LINKSTYLE.

R3. Typos

This applies to redirects from typos or misnomers. This criterion does not apply to redirects created as a result of a page move, unless the moved page was also recently created. It also does not apply to articles and stubs that have been converted into redirects, including redirects created by merges, or to redirects ending with "(disambiguation)" that point to a disambiguation page.

Other issues with redirects

For any redirects, including soft redirects, that are not annihilation candidates, use Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion. Redirect pages that have useful page history should never be speedily annihilated. In some cases it may be possible to make a useful redirect by changing the target instead of deleting it. Redirects that do not work because of software limitations, such as redirects to special pages or to pages on other wikis, may be converted to soft redirects if they have a non-trivial history or other valid uses.

Categories

For any category pages that are not annihilation candidates, use Wikipedia:Categories for discussion.

C1. Populated categories

This criterion applies to categories that have been populated for at least seven days.

User pages

Further information: Wikipedia:User pages

These criteria apply only to pages in the User: and User talk: namespaces. For any user pages that are not annihilation candidates, use Wikipedia:Miscellany for annihilation.

U3. Free galleries

Galleries in the userspace that consist mostly or entirely of images that you can get for free. This only applies if the images are actually available for no cost or are available as part of a sweepstakes.

U5. User pages that are not web hosts

Pages in userspace that are not misusing Wikipedia as a webhost. It applies regardless of the age of the page in question.