To delete a page, edit it and erase all of its contents (be sure to erase everything; don't leave extra blank lines). Save it.

The page will remain for several days (this depends on what your wiki's ExpirationPeriod is set to), so that the community can review the deletion and decide if it was proper. After that time, the page will be automatically removed from the database.

Socially, that isn't very wise. Without an avenue to argue whether a page should be deleted, frustration mounts, and flame wars spew. If you're going to have a deletion war, it should at least be over the issue of deleting the page, rather than the act. A better situation, I think, is to place a tag like DeletedPage at the top of pages to be scavenged, a la MeatballWiki. cf. MeatBall:PageDeletion -- SunirShah

I agree although I think that this practice on WikiPedia has led to some serious problems and users leaving in anger AndrewCates

Couldn't that be a configureable thing? I'm going to be using one for my journal/braindump; there isn't anyone I have to have an argument with. -- infinitera

Maybe this isn't in the "True Wiki Spirit" or anything, but I think there should be instructions on how to delete pages immediately (at least for those of us with admin access). I use a private wiki (also not part of the "true wiki spirit") for certain things, and I don't see a lot of need to await an arbitrary expiration period at all times, and in some communities everyone might agree on a certain page's removal ASAP. Of course, one could set the ExpirationPeriod to nothing, but you may want the period to stay for certain other pages...no...wait...setting it to zero makes them live forever...the shortest I guess is one day.

True wiki sprit or not, unfortunatly not everyone plays nice, I would really like to see the admin functions beef'ed up a little more than just block/lock.. Since most of us have already password protected our admin func's. There should be more admin control over paged, kinda like the lock page, but insted of locking, unlocked, unwanted pages should be able to be removed immediatly, for thoes who DontPlayNice and arent follweres of the TrueWikiSpirit.

--Spindizy

This maybe has been answered before, but. What happens to the links to the deleted page?

They remain where they were, but they are not links anymore since the target page doesn't exist. They will show up as plain text with a question mark after it, LikeThis? (please don't ruin the example by creating a page). With WikkiTikkiTavi, you can use WantedPages to locate such dangling links, then visit the pages containing them and decide what to do with them in that page's context. --Zenga

I think it is better to have both of:

  1. empty a page to delete it (good for user)
  2. delete multiple pages by ticking boxes in the AdminPage?, /admin/index.php (good for the Wiki admin) --AaronLaw

A way to delete a page immediately is very important. Let's say someone comes along and creates a wiki page threatening the US President, or linking various illegal things. Sure, someone could wipe this, but it's still there in "view document history" waiting to be pulled up. Now, as it is, anyone with direct DB access can wipe things instantly by removing the necessary entries. However, sometimes it's important to be able to do this remotely too. -- Numien

It seems to me that all you would need to do is edit the page twice. Once to wipe the content and replace it with something like: "This page is no longer valid..." and then the second time to activate the delete sequence. It you wanted to do a full admin lockdown after that then the page is effectively removed. But let's not go putting steering wheels on motorcycles! Just learn how to use what we've got... Cheers! :-D -- Frink