Help:Maintenance template removal: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 04:13, 31 March 2025

Revision as of 12:37, 2 May 2025

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# When it can reasonably be concluded that the template is no longer relevant, such as a {{tlx|Current}} template appearing in an article that no longer documents a current event;

# If the maintenance template is of a type that requires support but is not fully supported. For example, neutrality-related templates such as {{tlx|COI}} (associated with the [[WP:COI|conflict of interest guideline]]) or {{tlx|POV}} (associated with the [[WP:NPOV|neutral point of view policy]]) strongly recommend that the tagging editor initiate a discussion (generally on the article's talk page) to support the placement of the tag. If the tagging editor failed to do so, or the discussion is dormant, and there is no other support for the template, it can be removed. A {{tlx|notability}} tag may be removed and may not be re-added if an article has passed an [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion]] review.

# You may remove a template when according to your best judgment the lack of edits and/or talk page discussion should be interpreted as the issue not worth fixing (as a form of "[[Wikipedia:Silence and consensus|silent consensus]]"). Please note there is currently no consensus for ''general'' age-related removal of maintenance templates{{snd}}that is, removing a template purely or chiefly because it is old is ''not'' considered a sufficient argument. Exception:An exception is that removing POV-related templates whose discussions have gone dormant is encouraged, as addressed in the bullet point immediately above;.

# Lastly, there are times when a person attempting to address a maintenance template that flags some fundamental matter may find that the issue ''cannot'' actually be addressed. For example, if an article is flagged as lacking citations to [[Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources|reliable]], [[WP:SECONDARY|secondary]] sources, written by [[Wikipedia:Identifying and using independent sources|third-parties]] to the topic, and a user seeing the maintenance templates discovers that such sources appear ''not to exist'', that usually means the article should be [[Wikipedia:Deletion process|deleted]]. In such cases, it is not so much that the template does not belong and should be removed, but rather that flagging the page for maintenance will never address the more critical issue that the page itself does not belong on Wikipedia at all.