Help talk:Deleting a page

How to delete a page that's not accessible

I'm an admin of my own mediawiki page and there's a page that was created with different software, then imported into the wiki. When I click on it, it gives a "403 Forbidden" error. How can I delete it if I can't actually display the page?

Hello unsigned commenter, if you can't display the page and want it deleted, you can create a direct link to the delete button. Here's an example: yourdomain.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=delete. Replace "?title=Main_Page" with "?title=[The name of the problematic article that is causing you issues]". If the issue cannot be fixed that way (For example, the delete link also gives you an error 403 forbidden) or persists, you're gonna have to export your wiki without the problematic page and then import everything back into a new MediaWiki instance. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 16:32, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Explain where the 'delete' link can be found

This article is not easy to understand or follow. It needs to: detail where the 'delete' link can be found; define what a 'sysop' admin user is; outline how to actually delete the page (as a step by step process). In addition to this the writing needs to be cleaned up to clarify the entire article - in its present state it doesn't read well.

I don't know how to delete a page and therefore am not able to carry out the required edits myself. I've added the comments because as a user needing help I'm still none the wiser. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.135.106 (talk • contribs)

perhaps you see no [delete] tab. not all wiki visitors have all rights. see perhaps Help:User_rights for more. -- peblusto 12:25, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes. If you can't see the 'delete' link (tab at the top), you are not a "sysop", so your main problem with understanding this page, will be that you are trying to find out how to do something which you are not allowed to do. The page could perhaps be clearer in explaining that you are not allowed to do it, but really I think there's only two little problems remaining with this page:

Firstly the page currently doesn't explain what you can do, as a normal user (delete the text contents of the page, and lable it as deleted) This was the section I put at the very top of the page, but as discussed below, it has been removed.

Secondly the section which mentions requiring sysop rights, should link to Help:User rights, or some other page. However currently Help:User rights is not a useful page to link to, since it has no basic explaination of what a sysop user is, or you how you might become one. It should explain these things, instead of detailing config variables which belong in the manual (but that's a discussion I'm also having at Help talk:User rights)

I guess frustration at not seeing "delete" link is what prompts you to say "writing needs to be cleaned up", I can't see any major writing clean-up type issues. Just the above two things need tackling.

--Harry Wood 11:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

We now have more information under Help:Sysops and permissions including step-by-step details at Help:Sysop deleting and undeleting#Use the 'delete' tab ...although if you are a sysop, is pretty obvious how to delete. Whether to delete is the more tricky point -- Harry Wood 15:14, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

No checkbox or triangle

I am running 1.28 and have carefully tried to enable the deletion of revisions (i.e. deleterevision) as described, but no delete button shows up despite my careful inspection of the page and even changing the theme to give it a different appearance (wow, is Cologne Blue ever ugly!). Somebody on my site posted a cleartext password on a talk page and I really need to get it gone, but am at my wits end. I can make accounts and see a delete tab on the top of pages, but no triangle or checkbox on the revision history. There seems to be something missing from the documentation, I presume!

Using the algorithm in Manual:Administrators I was able to delete the whole talk page and selectively restore the revisions that were not a problem, but that seems rather inelegant and not what deleterevisions is supposed to provide! [ Greg ] Nexus501 (talk)

Normal users can just delete the page contents

My little top section got removed

On several smaller scale wikis, with less wikipedia style proccesses in place, I've found that the best thing is to advise users to remove the text from the page, and label it as deleted. I know that advice doesn't apply to mediawiki.org, and other wikimedia projects (large wikis with more processes in place) but it is not "absolutely bogus advice". It is advice based on experience of working with smaller wikis (most wikis where these help pages will get copied to)

To my mind the current page fails to perform its primary function of telling normal users how to do it

Maybe we need the advice on these pages to also be reasonably valid within the mediawiki.org wiki, so I guess that presents a conflict of purposes.

-- Harry Wood 17:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Permanently deleting a page

It would be extremely nice if deleted pages could be permanently deleted. I don't see why this feature was left out (especially for admins), yes it is nice to undelete deleted pages, however it should be an option on a per-wiki basis (ie make some variable that would turn on permanent deletion) and left up to the admins to decide. ~nouse4anick

I'm sysop (admin) I delete a lot of spam pages, it removes them from public but still it's not removed (still undelete option). Who can remove it permanently and how. Bureaucrats? --78.156.198.55 10:42, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

+1 --46.244.169.241 13:45, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

System adminstrators can: deleteArchivedRevisions.php. --Nemo 19:59, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

I personally feel that functionality should be a Special Page. While I get that permanently deleting stuff on WP is problematic, few others have the same size headache, and with proper permission control it shouldn't be an issue to provide basic maintenance tools like this through the wiki itself. I also don't get why there's no retention settings for deleted content (or I couldn't find it if there is). Especially when it comes to media files, you eventually take up a lot of space by having "deleted" content haunting the system. But looking at the script you linked to, it looks like it just purges the entire archive with no discretion, which is not necessarily what you'd want. Some proper control would be nice (just a suggestion for the authors). --Metalbunny (talk) 08:36, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

The DELETE tab is hidden

If you are already an admin or a sysop and you are looking for the "delete" tab, look for a down arrow or triangle next to the "View History" tab. If you mouse over the triangle you should see "delete", "move", "protect" and "watch". Dedwarmo 20:40, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

This is because the help page probably was written at the time of monobook, when things were easier to find. I'm not sure we can do anything about Vector, other than suggesting people to use monobook when they try to use the wiki fully (for such a suggestion there isn't consensus). --Nemo 10:53, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

How do you apply a 'delete' label?

It's really frustrating for new users when the help page on how to delete an article tells users to apply a "'delete' label" to the page and then give no direction as to how to do so.

How do you do it? How much hunting do you expect new users to do every time they want to do something new?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.61.35.2 (talk • contribs)

Just hunted and found it.. you're totally right. To request a speedy deletion of a page: put {{db|1=some reason]] <- except those two brackets at the end would be curly brackets as well. I can't put them here because it would mark this page for deletion! Chursaner (talk) 03:32, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Can you use phpMyAdmin to Delete Pages?

I have dozens of pages, posted by spammers, that cannot be deleted, because of character mismatches (the posted text uses an asian character set). Is there a safe way to remove them from the database using a tool like phpMyAdmin?

This is a great question. Does anyone know if this can be done (permanently deleting pages with phpMyAdmin)? I have a wiki I've been building on localhost (in Windows 10). The wiki has both private (personal financial info) and public (regular wiki articles on all kinds of topics) pages, categories, etc. Now I want to split the wiki into a private one that I will keep on my computer (to help manage household finances and bookkeeping duties) AND then publish the public pages to the web as a separate wiki. My research shows no solution for "remove pages permanently" through the MediaWiki interface or plugins. It would be great to know if phpMyAdmin can remove the pages permanently, and if so, what specific steps to execute the permanent page removal are. Ehtech2000 (talk) 13:18, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Internationalisation of the redirect

Wouldn't it better to internationalise this redirect page changing the ref to [[Special:MyLanguage/Help:Sysop deleting and undeleting]] rather than have many lang subpages of it? Titles of that subpages do not help with the search of the internationalised text anyway. Why "hard linking" the pages written in a particular language (using lang prefixed subpage in ref) is a better way? (I see it defines a different behaviour as compared to Special:MyLanguage page usage.)

MediaWiki forbids redirects to special pages, that's why. --Nemo 21:59, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. The question is closed. --Olion17 (talk) 19:47, 3 October 2014 (UTC)