User Guide: Deletion criteria

This page is part of an attempt to reach a written community consensus on which places should be deleted. Without such a list our use of deletion has great potential to be arbitrary and could leave many mappers feeling aggrieved. It worked well when Wikimapia was small. It does not seem to work so well now.

The criteria will apply to all places but are particularly relevant to newly created or edited ones. Their implication is that all places that they do not include should be fixed and retained.

Background

koriakine has written:

1. "...take a look on Wikimapia layer, then yoo will se that if a house exist it must be on Wikimapia..."
2. "By any request the private info may be cleared."

In plain English:

• If a house exists it must be mapped on WikiMapia.
• If a property owner requests it, private information about their property should be removed by Wikimapia admin.

There is an essay on deletion at User Guide: Deleting Places#Deleting Places

Deletion criteria

In the following list:

• a place is a place in the real world
• a tag is a Wikimapia polygon or rectangle marking a property.

Places

1. It is impossible to determine which property a tag relates to, usually because the tag has been made too large. However:
   1. It is often possible to guess what was intended, especially if the centre of the tag (ie the crosshairs if you arrive via a watch list) is over a particular building or the description gives a clue or Googling provides an answer.
   2. Do not delete a tag simply because it is badly or inappropriately described; instead edit the description to make it acceptable.
2. Cars, buses, trucks, trains, ships, aeroplanes, etc unless there is something special about them eg a train visible on both sides of a tunnel. These will be gone next time Google updates the imagery.
3. People, animals, plants, etc unless there is something special about them eg the occasional place where zoom imagery reveals unusual visual detail (particularly OK when used for educational purposes - example). These will be gone next time Google updates the imagery.
4. Duplicates - Two or more tags for the same place. One of them should be edited and improved (if possible) and the other(s) deleted. Before deleting copy over any comments (you will have to quote them), photos and relevant description.

Rail, road, rivers, ferries

Let's focus on places first and do these later.