GuildWiki:What (not) to Delete

Proposed shortcuts:

A wiki is powered by community spirit; we want as many people as possible to contribute as much as they can. However, sometimes it becomes necessary to remove content from the wiki - content that someone thought useful at some point. This may lead to conflict. This policy is aimed at reducing this kind of conflict by setting clear guidelines that clarify when it is acceptable to delete, and when it is not.

General Guidelines
Any edit or deletion is ok as long as nobody complains. A complaint must have a reasonable cause. This is to avoid "rules lawyers" blocking common sense edits with this policy.

If a conflict arises, ask an admin for an independent opinion.

Total Deletion
If an editor deletes something on a wiki page or uploads a new file atop an old one, the old content is still available via the history function. Only admins can delete content from the file storage and the article histories. This is done in these cases:


 * 1) Publishing the content would be illegal in the United States or Great Britain. This often applies to copyright violations. See the Image use policy and the Image_license_guide. Posting contact information for a person other than yourself is often a breach of privacy.
 * 2) The content clearly exceeds the level of maturity of the game. In the USA, Guild Wars is rated Teen, in the UK it is rated 12+.
 * 3) Empty pages - the content has moved elsewhere, or there never was any, and the page is not linked, transcluded or displayed on other pages.

See also Criteria_for_deletion.

Articles
Information in articles, templates etc. has to be useful and correct. To that end, incorrect or incomplete information may be corrected or removed. Pages may be restructured. We advise editors that plan large rewrites or restructurings to seek community consensus via the talk pages before committing too much energy into the project. See Article retention and Style_and_formatting for details. Tip: our Creative Commons license allows you to copy the content to your own page and modify it there.

User: pages
All editors may modify the information on their own userpage(s) as they see fit, to the point of blanking the page (i.e. deleting everything on it). It is usually unacceptable to edit another user's pages, unless you have permission.

Comments
This section applies to all pages where signed comments are expected to be made, even if a particular comment carries no signature.

You may edit your own comments for spelling, grammar and style. If your edits are extensive, please re-sign the comment.
 * some long example text that we assume has been heavily edited over and over and then resigned using --◄mendel► 13:27, 24 June 2008 (UTC) (edited 13:42, 24 June 2008 (UTC))

If you are dissatisfied with what you wrote, you can employ use tags, and add a retraction/correction comment. We advise editors to think and preview their contributions before they post.

It is usually unacceptable to edit another user's comments.

Section headers on comment pages are not considered part of the comment. On a user's talk page that user may edit section headers. Since editing a section posts the section header to Recent Changes, anyone may edit section headers to remove insults or profanity and thereby avoid repeating it over and over each time the section is edited.

Special cases
Profanity, suggestive content or insults are not usually considered sufficient cause to edit other people's user pages or comments.

Behavior that violates the Guild Wars Rules of Conduct may be sufficient cause to edit other people's user pages or comments.

If it is posted without the consent of the person concerned, contact information or any other content that links Guildwiki personae to personae on other websites or real persons without the consent of that person may be deleted by anyone. Consent is implied if that information has been publicly published.

To remove unwanted information from view, moving the content to an archive page is often a viable alternative to deleting.