Permanently deleting an article

Deleting removes the article and breaks every link to it. Archiving is nearly always the better answer.

Deleting removes the article and breaks every link to it. Archiving is nearly always the better answer.

What deleting does

The article is gone, along with its revisions and its votes. Every link pointing at it, from your macros, your emails, other articles and search results, now leads nowhere.

Archive instead

Archiving takes an article out of the knowledge base while keeping it. It can be restored, and you can still see what it said.

That covers what people actually want: the article should not be found any more, and the knowledge should not be lost.

When deleting is right

• A duplicate created by mistake.
• A test article.
• Something that should never have been published, where keeping it is the risk.

All three are cases where nothing links to it and nothing is lost.

Redirect what had traffic

An article people arrived at from search leaves those people with nothing. Where it had traffic, point the old address at whatever replaced it rather than letting it die.

See also

• Archiving and restoring an article
• Can I redirect traffic from deleted articles
• Inserting and managing links