Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

Three Ways to Delete an Article

Only administrators can delete articles outright. Your job is to ask for deletion using one of three methods:

• Speedy. If the article meets any of the criteria in the Criteria for Speedy Deletion policy, then go for it.

• Proposed deletion. If the article doesn’t quite qualify for a speedy deletion, then use the Proposed Deletion template, which starts a 5-day countdown.

• Articles for Deletion (AfD). If you’re in doubt, start a discussion at the Articles for Deletion page about whether or not the article is worth keeping.

Each of the three methods follows a different procedure, discussed next.

Note

An article should have only one type of deletion being considered at any time: CSD, proposed deletion (prod), or AfD. If you see an AfD messagebox on an article, you should remove any CSD or prod templates on the same article; if you see a prod messagebox, you should remove any CSD template.

Figure 19-1. During 2006 and 2007, about half the articles that were created were subsequently deleted; an unknown number were also essentially deleted by being made into redirects. Between late 2006 and mid-2007, article deletions averaged about 2,000 per day. Since then, the trend has been downward, with the average in late 2007 being about 1,500 articles per day deleted. [This graph is from editor Dragons Flight (Robert A. Rohde), based on a log analysis he did in late 2007.] ...