User blog comment:Reddude/I remember/@comment-1874924-20150521033925

I'm quite certain that I haven't said anything to MTDM about character pages, at least not recently.

The longstanding policy is that when a story is deleted, all associated character pages are also deleted unless (a) another story is still using them; (b) the author has specific plans to reuse them in the near future and expressly requests that they be retained on that basis; or (c) the character has been publicly identified as a "character for hire". All this assumes, of course, that the character page meets our content requirements. (If it doesn't, it will be deleted regardless.)

On a related note, we should have a special category for "characters for hire", if we don't already. That, combined with a blurb in the Community Messages sideboard, would be an easy and effective way to publicize them.

I don't think we've ever set a formal "dead character" policy comparable to our dead fic policy, beyond what I've noted above.