User blog:Evilquoll/Nominating for deletion; there's a right way and a(t least one) wrong way

From the general rules: "Do not vandalize the site in any way, such as blanking an article or adding non-sensible text." (emphasis mine)

Unfortunately, it seems that many users (here and elsewhere) reckon that this common-sense rule doesn't apply to them, at least not when doing a delete nomination. They reckon that simply replacing the text of the article in question with {&zwj;{|delete}} (not even bothering to state a reason) is enough.

It isn't, of course. By doing that, they are in effect claiming that the world revolves around them, that a simple implied and unsupported "I don't like this page" is reason enough for it to be gone, and that removal of its contents is vastly more important than allowing others to judge for themselves whether those contents are, in fact, valid material.

The truth is that, no matter how fanonical a page might be, blanking it is only justified in cases where there is a genuinely urgent reason why the page contents must be gone now, without waiting for deletion; such cases include pornography or hate crime. Merely "I think this is fanon" (even if the matter appears to be clear-cut) is not an emergency and thus does not justify blanking.

Likewise, just saying "{&zwj;{|delete}}" instead of "{&zwj;{|delete|for this reason}}" states "I don't need no stinkin' reason, I just want it gone because I say so". No admin with any sense will honour such a request, unless they have their own reasons for wanting the deletion. There is at least one wiki where just adding a delete tag, without also adding a reason, is prohibited by official policy.

So: the right way to do a delete nomination is to add the tag, including a stated reason, to the existing page contents. The wrong ways include replacing the contents with the tag, and not stating the reason for the tag.