Deletion Process

Before we begin, here are some important links for Deleters:

• Deletions Guide (O5) - This and its sister link below basically say the same things; they lay out why/how deletions are carried out in layman's terms.
• Deletions Guide (SCP Wiki) - See above.
• Rewrite Guide (SCP Wiki) - This page lays out the process of delaying a deletion vote on pages that are over a year old and have fallen into deletion threshold.
• Timers (O5) - This page has an easy-to-use code for processing the 24 hour timers that are placed on pages which are undergoing deletion.
• Lowest Rated Pages (SCP Wiki) - This is where you locate the pages that need to be deleted/added to the deletion schedule.
• Google Chrome Download - The scripts only work on Chrome, unfortunately.
• How to Enable Developer Mode On Chrome - The extensions require developer mode to be on.
• Tampermonkey Addon Install - The only way to run the scripts is on Tampermonkey.
• Deleter Script (Staffcord) - Script one of two.
• Robocimm Script (Staffcord) - Script two of two.
• Current Deletion Thread - This one changes too often for me to keep up with on this little guide, so instead I will link to the appropriate forum it is stickied in. It should be one of the more active ones, always near the top.

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INTRO

So you've been drafted into the never-ending war that is deleting pages on the wiki. Congratulations. It didn't break Conwell, it hasn't broken me, and it won't break you. It may feel a little scary at first, but rest assured, the task is pretty easy as long as you follow the steps. So what are the steps? I'm so glad you asked!

BACKGROUND STUFF

As you might have guessed by my linking of Chrome up top, you will need that browser in order to work with the deletion scripts. You could do this manually, but its a lot harder to do properly and leaves a lot more room for error, so it's just easier to use the scripts. Anyway, once you have Chrome installed and Developer Mode on, as well as Tampermonkey added to your browser, click on the Tampermonkey extension in your Chrome browser, which I have highlighted in the figure below.

Once there, click on "Create New Script", then erase everything that's already on there and copy paste one of the two scripts into there, then hit the File button on the top left of the text window, then hit Save. Once you have the first one done, repeat the process for the second script and then you should be done with the technical parts. If you have any questions about the scripts or are having problems running it, reach out to @psychicprogrammer on Discord or @nk1221 on Discord.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can move onto locating pages that meet deletion criteria.

First things first, go to the Lowest Rated Pages page on the SCP Wiki. It is available on the sidebar now, as well as linked above. From there, scroll down to where it says
Pages in Deletion Range with deletion-range Tag, and start clicking links. These pages should all be at -10 or lower, so don't worry too much about that part, but instead scroll down to the Comments and check to make sure it has three witnesses and the timer has expired.

The example in this image doesn't quite meet the requirements yet, so it is not eligible for deletion yet. If you don't have three witnesses, feel free to go harangue people to witness pages in Staffcord's #deletions channel and make sure to ping the @Deleter role.

However, let's say that a page does meet the requirements and you finished checking all the pages that are in the category. Now, the deletions process may begin.

DELETING A PAGE

This is the actually important part.

Once you have identified a page as eligible for deletion in votes, that has run its timer, and has three witnesses, open up the current deletions thread and go back to the actual content of the page you intend to delete. So for example, let's say you were deleting SCP-99999999, you were previously in its Discussion page because you were checking for witnesses, so just hit back on your browser to return to the SCP-99999999 page proper. Once there, go up to the address bar and click at the end of the address, then add the following: #d

So if you did it correctly, the page will look like this:

After this, hit Enter on your keyboard, then refresh the page by hitting Ctrl + R. This should¹ open up a new tab containing a standard staff message and the contents of the page. It looks like this:

Give the page a moment to load, and make sure it loads the article's contents before sending. Once it loads, just hits send and you can close out the tab.

Once this is done, go back to the article and copy a small section of it, typically the first two sentences of the Description if its an SCP or the hook if its a Tale, then paste it in the following format in a new post in the current deletion thread:

Make sure you don't post until all the pages are deleted, and keep it all to one post.

From there, go back to the original tab you were working on and scroll down to the bottom of the page, click Options, then Delete, then click Delete Completely on the radio button. This will bring up a little screen asking if you're sure. Hit yes.

Congratulations! You have deleted a page.

WHAT IS THE DELETION-RANGE TAG?

So you have deleted the page, you've documented it on our deletion thread, you sent the PM informing the author their work was deleted as well as included the original work in it. Now what? Well, we still need to add the deletion-range tag to articles that need it. To do this, go to the Lowest Rated Pages page again and scroll down to where it says "Pages Needing deletion-range Tag". It looks like this:

Now, make sure you add the deletion-range tag to all articles that are at -10 or below, and you have only one more thing to do. The timer! Go to the Timers page on O5 and click Deletions and 1 day, then have it generate a timer for you and copy+paste what the box gives you. Don't forget to title your post "Staff Post - Deletion". So ideally, if you did everything right, it will look like this:

And that's mostly everything there is to deletions!

OTHER AUXILIARY STUFF

As you may have noticed, sometimes people post AI to the site. It sucks, and we do our best to get rid of it ASAP. Typically, they are detected before the page's deletion happens, but they almost all inevitably fall into deletion, but even if they don't, AI Generated works can be summarily deleted. This means that it doesn't have to be at -10 or lower in order to be deleted. It does, however, still need to be given the three witnesses and the user sent their article. I typically change the two paragraphs in the notification PM to the following when it's an AI case:

A mainsite page created by you has recently been deleted, due to it being found to use Generative AI. As this is against Site Rules, your article has been removed. I am sending you the page source for your own purposes below.

This is also up to you, but I generally don't quote the offending AI-generated work on the deletions thread. I usually just list that the work was deleted for using AI and note the witnesses.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

• Kufat - If no one's voting on deletions, I know Kufat's voting on deletions. A great help in the never-ending ebb and flow of deletions and also maintains the Timer widget, and an extra thanks for reviewing this beast.
• psychicprogrammer - For creating the scripts. Thanks for making deletions a lot easier than they used to be.
• Jacob Conwell - For being the workhorse that ran deletions for years and laying the foundation (lol) for current deletions process, as well as being a generally swell guy.
• SoullessSingularity - For making me realize that no one had bothered to write how we actually do deletions and making me sit down and write this.
• My dog, Panda - For listening to me sing to her and letting me rubber duck the verbiage to her.

Footnotes

1. In the case where the original author's account is deleted, it will not open a tab. If you feel like this is a mistake, you can always check the Page History at the bottom to see if the original author deleted their account.