Help:Archiving Articles

Since the archive namespace was created as an alternative to deleting articles, this page will give instances where it makes sense to do so. "Archiving an article" means moving it to the Archive namespace. The following examples aren't always exclusive, and sometimes may overlap, but it's up to your best judgement. The reason the namespace was made was to preserve old articles with substance or long histories that would otherwise be deleted, or otherwise don't belong in mainspace anymore.

When to archive articles

 * When the article is a user character.
 * When the article has historical importance.
 * When the article is well-written and/or has a substantial amount of content.
 * When an LQA exists of a topic that will continue to exist without an article, and the existing content is important and unable to be merged elsewhere.

When to delete articles

 * When the article breaks site policy (spam, swearing, bullying, advertising, disregarding the OOC policy, etc).
 * When the article is a 1:1 parody, with very little original content.
 * When the content of the article can easily and seamlessly be merged onto a related page, if the page isn't redirected. (e.g. discographies onto a musician's page)
 * When the article is short, poorly written, and not of importance.