Following the SCP-7000 contest, a number of redirect pages were made as contest entries were renamed from the /7000contestusername format into their permanent Series 8 slots. As the Wiki twitter had made a post on each entry during the contest, the decision to make these redirects was done so to allow people to still find the entries even after the contest finished. These pages were made with the agreement that they were a temporary measure, and would be deleted within two months.
On 2022/10/15, several members of staff were involved in the compilation and deletion of these ~70 temporary redirect pages. The ListPages module used to compile the pages to be deleted was incorrect, and instead listed all redirect pages on the site, not simply the ones associated with 7000 contest entries. The deleter on duty performed these deletions without fully checking each page, resulting in the deletion of three non-critical redirect pages and one SCP article:
- The redirect page at /scp-2721 that led to /protected:scp-2721.
- The redirect page at /scp-4000 that led to /taboo.
- The redirect page at /sandbox that led to the sandbox site.
- The redirect page at /scp-1047-j that led to the Joke articles list.
All have since been recreated and reattributed where necessary.
SCP-1047-J is slightly more complicated, as it was treated as an article with the joke being that it would simply redirect the user right back to the Joke SCPs list. Despite this, it had a rating of over +150 and many comments. It has been recreated and reattributed but the votes and comments it had are lost, due to the permanent nature of Wikidot deletions.
At the moment, an internal investigation is underway to locate the points of failure, whether systemic or individual, that allowed the deletion mishap to occur and make any changes necessary.