SCP-4456-D was my third article posted to the site, and I consider it to be one of my claims to fame here. It was inspired by multiple discussions about the Decommissioned object class and how it was used back in the day. What piqued my interest was that while the Decommissioned class was primarily an out-of-universe tool, the tales about it, as well as how affected objects would be documented (SCP-XXX-D), implied that it had a definition in-universe, separate from the Neutralized object class.
I began asking around, doing research, seeing if I could get a definitive answer. However, its status as an outdated staff tool meant that an in-universe definition was never clearly defined, leaving it sort of open in a way. The best interpretation I could come up with was that it was an object that was deliberately neutralized by the Foundation or a member of senior staff, rather than one that was destroyed accidentally.
As I thought about it, I wondered how people would respond to another SCP that was, to some degree, Decommissioned. The practice was considered outdated, of course, but it would be neat to apply it to a modern SCP article and see if I could make it work. I already had an idea for an SCP article about an asexually reproducing warship, and decided incorporate the Decommissioned class into it.
My first hurdle was coming up with an object that would necessitate destruction, since the Foundation rarely destroys SCP objects, without being something dangerous and uncontainable to the point of being ridiculous. I thought it would be fun to explore reasons that the Foundation would destroy an object, beyond it just being something difficult to contain. I decided to throw in a couple of unorthodox wrenches here, so to speak. Obviously, it would have to be something difficult to contain and whatnot, but I also made it both expensive to keep contained, and include a situation where containing it might actually be illegal to some extent. I thought of some other reasons a generic object might be Decommissioned, and threw them all together into a neat little checklist-type form you can see on the article.
My second hurdle was a combination of both in- and out-of-universe justification. The Decommissioned class hadn't been used in an extremely long time, and I would need to be able to fit it in an article naturally, beyond just some lolFoundation thing. And thus the Decommissioning Department was born: a department dedicated to determining which objects necessitated destruction, as well as finding a way to do so effectively. I put my author avatar, Dr. C. Bold, as head of the department, mostly so I could really cement credit for this particular piece of the site.
After a lot of drafting and revising, I posted the article, along with a short tale about the Decommissioning Department. Sadly, the tale didn't survive, but the main SCP article did, and it thrived! It was my second article to reach +100, and the entire thing is something I'm quite proud I was able to pull off. Someday though, I'm gonna get back to that tale. Just you wait.
Per 
