---
type: source
title: "SCP Foundation Wiki Governance: Deletion Guide, Site Rules, and Greenlight Process"
author: "SCP Foundation Staff"
url: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/deletions-guide
date: 2026-03-18
domain: entertainment
secondary_domains: [collective-intelligence]
format: essay
status: enrichment
priority: high
triage_tag: entity
tags: [scp-foundation, governance, quality-control, peer-review, deletion, greenlight, collaborative-fiction]
processed_by: clay
processed_date: 2026-03-18
enrichments_applied: ["consumer-acceptance-of-ai-creative-content-declining-despite-quality-improvements-because-authenticity-signal-becomes-more-valuable.md", "community-owned-IP-has-structural-advantage-in-human-made-premium-because-provenance-is-inherent-and-legible.md", "entertainment IP should be treated as a multi-sided platform that enables fan creation rather than a unidirectional broadcast asset.md"]
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

Comprehensive documentation of SCP Foundation's multi-layered quality governance system, synthesized from three official wiki pages (Deletions Guide, Site Rules, Greenlight/Draft Forum Policies).

### Layer 1: Pre-Publication Quality Gates (Greenlight System)
- All NEW authors (no successful page yet) must get concepts reviewed and greenlighted by TWO experienced reviewers before requesting full draft feedback
- Greenlighters must meet criteria: Butterfly Squad Roster, Moth Squad, 3+ successful pages, or featured in Reviewers' Spotlight
- Greenlight = "vote of confidence that concept is solid enough to be drafted and will likely succeed on mainsite"
- Authors with 1+ successful page can bypass greenlight
- Drafts below minimum quality threshold receive boilerplate critique requesting author self-correct basic errors first

### Layer 2: Post-Publication Community Voting
- Every article has discussion page for evaluation and critique
- Members vote for ANY reason, but reasoning must be based on article content
- Rating system drives quality: articles must maintain community support

### Layer 3: Deletion Process
- Pages at -10 or lower become eligible for deletion
- Staff member posts "Staff Post" suggesting deletion with 24-hour timer
- Deletion requires 3 staff votes + timer expiry
- Pages at -20: timer suspended, eligible for immediate deletion with 3 staff votes
- If rating recovers above -10: all prior deletion votes voided, process restarts
- Authors may request deletion stays for rewrites

### Layer 4: Summary Deletion (Bypass)
- Staff may immediately delete: malicious content, plagiarism, unfinished placeholders, improperly attributed collaborative works
- Permanent ban for: AI-generated text or images posted to user-facing content, plagiarism, vandalism

### Governance Structure
- Staff-based hierarchical system: Disciplinary, Technical, Licensing, Chat, Curation teams
- NO formal community rank system — power concentrated in staff positions
- Staff handle discipline/infrastructure, NOT creative direction
- "Don't be a dick" as foundational principle
- No explicit canon governance — narrative coherence is emergent, not enforced

### Key Data Points
- 9,800+ SCP objects, 6,300+ tales as of late 2025
- 2,076 pages uploaded in 2025, +84,329 cumulative votes, average +41 votes per article
- 70 new author pages in 2025
- 16 language branches internationally
- AI-generated content = permanent ban (parallel to fanfiction community norms)

## Agent Notes
**Triage:** [ENTITY] — SCP Foundation as an entity with documented governance mechanisms. Also [CLAIM] material: the multi-layered quality system (greenlight → voting → deletion) is a specific, documented governance architecture.
**Why this matters:** This is the most detailed documentation of how a large-scale collaborative fiction project actually maintains quality. The four-layer system (pre-publication peer review → community voting → staff-initiated deletion → emergency bypass) is structurally analogous to academic peer review but applied to fiction.
**What surprised me:** The AI content ban. SCP Foundation — the most successful open-IP collaborative fiction project — permanently bans AI-generated content. This aligns exactly with the fanfiction community data (92% say "fanfiction is a space for human creativity"). Open IP + human-only authorship is a coherent, deliberate choice.
**KB connections:** [[GenAI adoption in entertainment will be gated by consumer acceptance not technology capability]], [[consumer definition of quality is fluid and revealed through preference not fixed by production value]]
**Extraction hints:** The four-layer governance system deserves its own claim. The AI ban is significant evidence for existing authenticity claims. The "no canon governance" finding — that narrative coherence is emergent, not enforced — is the central insight.

## Curator Notes
PRIMARY CONNECTION: community IP governance mechanisms (Session 5-6 research thread)
WHY ARCHIVED: Primary source documentation of the most successful collaborative fiction governance system. Provides verifiable mechanism details that theory articles lack.


## Key Facts
- SCP Foundation has 9,800+ SCP objects and 6,300+ tales as of late 2025
- SCP Foundation uploaded 2,076 pages in 2025 with +84,329 cumulative votes, averaging +41 votes per article
- SCP Foundation has 70 new author pages in 2025
- SCP Foundation operates 16 international language branches
- SCP Foundation uses Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license for all content
- Greenlight reviewers must meet criteria: Butterfly Squad Roster, Moth Squad, 3+ successful pages, or featured in Reviewers' Spotlight
- SCP deletion process: -10 rating triggers 24-hour timer + 3 staff votes; -20 rating enables immediate deletion with 3 staff votes
- SCP Foundation permanently bans users for AI-generated content, plagiarism, or vandalism