Jump to content

Wikipedia:New pages patrol: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Content deleted Content added
Stub tagging: section populated
Line 131: Line 131:
#If the article does not cite any sources, consider adding {{tl|unreferenced}}, or if they are insufficient, {{tl|refimprove}} (for articles on living person, {{tl|BLP unsourced}} and {{tl|BLP sources}}).
#If the article does not cite any sources, consider adding {{tl|unreferenced}}, or if they are insufficient, {{tl|refimprove}} (for articles on living person, {{tl|BLP unsourced}} and {{tl|BLP sources}}).
#Other common tags include {{tl|no footnotes}}, {{tl|more footnotes}}, {{tl|primary sources}}, ({{tl|BLP primary sources}}), {{tl|one source}}, {{tl|self-published}}, {{tl|citation style}}, {{tl|cleanup-bare URLs}} and others.
#Other common tags include {{tl|no footnotes}}, {{tl|more footnotes}}, {{tl|primary sources}}, ({{tl|BLP primary sources}}), {{tl|one source}}, {{tl|self-published}}, {{tl|citation style}}, {{tl|cleanup-bare URLs}} and others.
#If you do not believe the subject is notable based on have looked outside the article for existence of sources, then prodding the article, or taking it to AfD may be warranted.
#If you do not believe the subject is notable based on having looked outside the article for the existence of sources, then prodding the article, or taking it to AfD may be warranted.


==Deletion==
==Deletion==

Revision as of 19:58, 18 October 2016

TutorialDiscussionNew page feed
Reviewers
Curation tool
Suggestions
Coordination
NPP backlog
Articles
11604 ↑115
Oldest article
9 years old
Redirects
394
Oldest redirect
4 months old
Article reviews
1608
Redirect reviews
5844
  • There is a very large articles backlog
  • The articles backlog is growing rapidly (↑672 since last week)

Welcome!
Congratulations on becoming a New Page Reviewer. Apart from being an Administrator, reviewing new pages is the most important single maintenance task on the whole site. It's what keeps bad pages out, and equally important, it gives a boost to new good faith users creating their first genuine articles. Reviewing new pages needs a near-admin knowledge of deletion and notability policies

New Page Review is a vital function of many Wikipedias as the front line of interaction between new authors and community members devoted to policing the quality of the project. It has a variety of detailed, quite complex possible actions for patrolling pages in all namespaces.

If you are new to New Page Reviewing, it is essential that you also read Page Curation Help and view the videos, and read WP:FIELD. Reviewing needs a near-admin knowledge of deletion and notability policies.

Basic flow chart

It is important to review correctly and seriously. The sheer volume of articles created is immense. Even a few percentage points more of erroneous or bitey reviewing can adversely affect hundreds of articles or deter many new users a day. It is critical that editors don't review sloppily nor treat it as a game or contest.

Reviewing is entirely voluntary and carries no obligation.

Watch a quick video tour

Tools: Unlike other web sites, blogs and forums, Wikipedia already puts powerful editing tools at the hands of all readers and users. New pages review is our first line of defense against unwanted pages or for quick, on-the-fly improvement of poorly written or constructed pages and it must be done accurately.

New Pages Feed Screenshot

Some useful reviewing tools can automate parts of the process. The Page Curation tool, launched in September 2012 after a year of analysis and development in direct collaboration with the Foundation, combines the New Pages Feed with a dedicated tagging, messaging, and logging system for routine reviewing. It replaces Twinkle for new page reviewing, which nevertheless provides tagging and deletion tools (as well as other tools useful for general maintenance) for pages that do not show in the New Pages Feed.

Tools such as Huggle and Stiki are specifically designed for counter-vandalism and are fine for vandalism patrollers; they should never be used for reviewing new pages.

If you have a question or concern, post a message at the New pages patrol noticeboard, and an experienced reviewer or editor will be along soon to help you. For other help using the tools see the related tabs above.

The purpose of reviewing new pages

The primary purposes of new page patrolling are to identify articles which do not meet the criteria for inclusion and/or to tag them for any glaring issues that need attention. Most critical are copyright violations and defamatory material about living persons, followed closely by pages whose creators seek to exploit our voluntary work for financial gain. Other pages may also need to be deleted, but deletion for other reasons may be less urgent – pages that are still not patrolled are not indexed and cached by Google or other search engines.

Do not be too hasty to nominate contributions by new editors for deletion if the content is marginally poor. If you are uncertain, leave the page unpatrolled, and another volunteer can review it later.

Care should be exercised when reviewing very new pages. Tagging anything other than attack pages, copyvios, vandalism or complete nonsense only a few minutes after creation may only serve to annoy the page author.

Reviewers must read and fully understand Wikipedia's deletion policy and preferably consign it to memory. A page may be nominated for speedy deletion only if it meets one of the strict criteria and no independent editor could reasonably be expected to contest the deletion. If a reviewer thinks a page should be deleted but it is not a candidate for speedy deletion, AfD, PROD or WP:BLPPROD must be used instead. Spurious nominations for speedy deletion, even if the article is later deleted at AfD, are damaging to Wikipedia and may quickly result in the reviewer losing their 'reviewer' flag and in the worst case scenarios, being blocked from editing.

If the page is not a candidate for deletion but has other problems, add appropriate tags and use the message feature of the curation tool to inform the creator of the issues (see the patroller checklists section below for more information).

User names and vandalism

In some cases, the creator of a new page may need to be blocked to prevent further disruption, a breach of policy, or damage to Wikipedia's reputation. Familiarise yourself with the WP:UAA and WP:AIV systems and their policies and report such cases as necessary.

Wikipedia forensics

Page reviewers are also detectives and are often credtited with the discovery of serious breaches of policy such as Sockpuppetry, [[WP:Advocacy}}, Undisclosed paid editing (see Orangemoody), and Child protection. Check the content of new article for barely noticeable inline external links and apparently harmless sources. Familiarise yourself with these policies and what to do.

Your patrol log and Watchlist

Check your patrol log frequently for articles that you tagged for deletion but which are still blue linked - it could be that the creator or his sock has removed the the PROD or CSD tag. You may also wish to set your Watchlist preferences to display all pages that you edit

Caution G10 attack pages must be blanked and tagged for deletion very quickly. The G10 CSD template will rapidly catch the attention of administrators, who will delete the page swiftly. However, before blanking and tagging an attack page, please be absolutely sure to read it carefully and not confuse it with G3 hoax or vandalism or with any other deletion criterion.
Caution G3 blatant hoaxes must also be deleted fairly quickly, in order to preserve the integrity of the encyclopedia. Please be absolutely sure to read such new pages carefully – hoaxes are not always immediately evident – and when a hoax is merely suspected, tag the page with {{hoax}} instead, but be sure to leave an appropriate warning on the creator's talk page (see Twinkle and WP:User warnings).
Caution G11 Conflict of Interest and Paid advocacy (artspam, advertising). Reviewers need to acquire special skills to detect these pages. See below for details. See also Orangemoody for the extent of this serious issue.
Caution Schools and educational institutions. Please be mindful about schools and colleges. They may not be tagged for deletion under CSD A7, but please do check for copyvios from the school's web site. Most mainstream high/secondary schools are notable if they are proven to exist. Middle schools and primary (elementary) schools are generally redirected to the page about the school's district (USA) or to the education section of the articles about the locality.[1] It is not necessary to tag bomb them either. People are proud of their schools and many school articles may appear to be promotional; unless it is a mere advertisement without useful content, they can be cleaned up. Cram schools or diploma mills should be treated as any other business or organisation. If an article needs attention please use the message box in the Curation Toolbar. See WP:WPSCH/AG and WP:UNI/AG.

Caution Although we have a system in place to automatically detect copyright violations, it misses a large number of them. 100% reliance should never be placed on bots, which can also produce false-positives. Copyright infringement is a pervasive problem and it is not only important that we don't host such material, but it often leads to significant additional work when not caught early. Accordingly, unless there are very good reasons to believe a copyright violation is unlikely, please check all new pages for copying from pre-existing material. Articles about organizations and music groups are especially prone to 'borrowing' content from other sources.

Hallmarks of copying include:

  • Single reference articles, or ones with large sections of text without inline references
  • Articles with text that seems 'too perfect to be true'
  • Articles whose text resembles that of a news article, press release, blog, or a book, that rarely occurs outside of a specific, invariably copyrighted use, or that has a strange tone of voice, such as an overly informal tone
  • First person pronouns and possessives (I, we, my, our), and contractions (I'm, we're, they're, can't, didn't, aren't, won't, etc.)
  • The inclusion of a slanted marketing voice with weasel words and other puffery; explicit of implicit claims of ownership of the text added and insider status as to the topic (inclusion of intellectual property symbols (™,®) is highly correlated)
  • Out of context and out of place words or phrases, smacking of an existing source or the navigation structure of an original website: "this site/page/book/whitepaper"; "top", "go to top", "next page", "click here", etc. and non-standard characters (e.g., Microsoft "smart quotes")
  • Articles whose style of referencing appears to be that of a book or other pre-existing source, not corresponding to the actual references in the article – such as reference numbers or author names in the text, including in-line footnote links such as "[1]", especially when no footnotes are given

Methods to check for copyright violations:

  1. To see if content has been copied from pre-existing writing, copy and paste a limited but unique portion of text from the page into a search engine such as Google (between quotation marks), and try a few such snippets from each paragraph.
  2. Compare the article's content with the references and external links and look for copy/pastes or close paraphrasing.
  3. Even if not given as a reference or link, see if the person or organization has a dedicated website (it is often fruitful, once located, to look for an "about", "history" or other narrative section, which will not necessarily appear in Google). If you have access to them, Facebook and linkedIn are also widespread sources of copying.
  4. Earwig's Copyvio Detector and the Duplication detector are useful tools to find copyright violations. However, do not treat a negative result by either as conclusive – both are hit and miss, being unable to read some web content and are poor at finding closely-paraphrased content.
  5. Some copyright violations are from PDF files. To read them you will need to open them in your browser or download them.

What to do if you find a copyright violation:

  • If substantially the entire page is an unambiguous copyright violation, and there's no non-infringing revision to revert to (which will usually but not always be true for new articles), tag the page for speedy deletion under CSD G12 using {{db-g12}}. Don't forget to warn the user with the warning notice template that will be provided to you in the text of the speedy deletion tag (If you are using Page Curation, it will do this for you, if you are examining an older page that has already been reviewed, Twinkle will also do it).
  • Where you have not marked the page for speedy deletion – for example, because removing the infringement found would still leave substantial content – then:
  1. remove all of the copyrighted infringing material from the page, noting in your edit summary where it is from ("Remove copyright violation of http://www...."). Where the copying is from more than one source, it is often easiest to remove each infringement in a separate edit.
  2. post to the article's talk page {{subst:cclean|url=URL(s) copied from}}; just place a space between the URLs if there's more than one (note: this template automatically signs for you so place no tildes).
  3. mark the revisions in the page history (typically the first edit and second to last edit) for redaction by an administrator by placing and saving at the top of the page this template: {{copyvio-revdel|start = earliest revision ID (that is, the number at end of the revision's URL after "oldid=") | end= end revision ID}}
  • Where you have not marked the page for speedy deletion, and cannot clean it up yourself, or believe your suspicion of copying warrants further looking into, send the page for investigation to Wikipedia:Copyright problems, by marking it with {{copyvio|url=insert URL}}, and then follow the instructions in the copyright investigation notice to list the page at "today's" copyright violations page and to warn the user.

Conflict of Interest (COI) and paid advocacy

Many articles are created by user with a conflict of interest in editing, resulting in a tendency toward bias because of how they are situated in relation to the topic – that makes it very difficult to write in a neutral and balanced manner. For example, people attempting to write about themselves, their family, friends, clients, employers, or anyone they have a financial or personal relationship with. Paid editing is a subset of COI editing and comes in two flavors. Most common are people who simply have a financial stake in a topic, such as a person writing about their own business. The second, paid advocacy, is an especially egregious type of COI, referring to people specifically paid to "lard" Wikipedia with an article about a topic.

A common indication of paid advertisements masquerading as articles, possibly written as works for hire, by public relations experts, or sometimes by sophisticated insiders, are: Articles That Look Too Good To Be True: Well written, perfectly formatted articles with lots of neat references and submitted by users with low edit counts. Such articles are often patrolled as OK by inexperienced patrollers. Such articles are classic examples of the need to thoroughly research an article and its user when patrolling it. See: WP:COI, WP:Paid, and the detailed description of what to look for at Long Term Abuse. To understand the extent of this problem, see Orangemoody.

Other hallmarks of COI editing include:

  • Multiple references, very clean Reflist (no naked URLs)
  • Multiple references to company, B2B, or financial listings, staff lists, interviews
  • Articles with text that seems 'too perfect to be true'
  • Articles with inline external links
  • Articles whose style of text appears to come from a news article, press release, blog, or a book
  • Articles whose style of referencing includes many references to the subject's own publications (biographies)
  • Article posted in a single edit (or very few edits, denoting meticulous offline preparation).
  • Author has posted several single edit new articles that are related
  • Author has a corporate sounding user name
  • Text with first person pronouns and possessives (I, we, my, our)

What to do if you suspect a COI

An understanding of context is important in responding to COI editing. The COI guideline only "strongly discourages” editing by those with a conflict of interest. Conflict of interest editing is thus not prohibited. However, many of the behaviors exhibited by those with a COI are prohibited or are otherwise actionable.

1) Responding to paid editing

In June 2014‎ the Wikimedia Foundation’s Term of Use were amended to require that all editors disclose their "employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which they receive, or expect to receive, compensation". These mandatory disclosure requirements are applicable to anyone having a financial stake in their edits (i.e., they not just limited to the more egregious forms of paid advocacy). Disclosure requirements are casually ignored by the majority of paid editors. Though we can seek deletion of articles containing blatant advertising; can ask for users with corporate names coupled with promotional edits to be blocked on that basis; can tag articles as the result of a COI for added scrutiny and as non-neutral; and take other indirect actions explained below, the only direct action we can take to address paid editing is to enforce disclosure compliance.

In order to compel disclosure compliance where you have a good faith basis to suspect a user of paid editing, add to the user’s talk page the template {{uw-paid1}}—which asks the user to state whether they have a financial stake in their edits, asks them to not edit further until they respond, and instructs them on how to post the required disclosure. If they continue to edit without responding, escalate to a higher level notice: {{uw-paid2}}, {{uw-paid3}} through {{uw-paid4}}, and if the final notice is ignored, seek a block at WP:AIV.

2) General COI actions

  • COI editing strongly correlates with copyright violations. Therefore, follow the prior instructions to identify and address copyvios.
  • Articles written by editors with a COI are often blatant advertisements and may also contain no credible assertion of importance or significance. Thus:
  1. if the article meets CSD G11, tag it for deletion using {{db-g11}} / {{db-spam}};
  2. if it meets CSD A7, tag it for deletion using {{db-A7}} / {{db-corp}}, or other applicable A7 deletion tag;
  3. mark for speedy deletion under such other criteria as may apply.
  4. Speedy deletion under multiple criteria can be requested using {{Db-multiple|G11|A7|etc.}}
  5. Don't forget to warn the user with the warning notice template that will be provided to you in the text of the speedy deletion tag (if you are using Page Curation, it will do this for you, if you are examining an older page that has already been reviewed, Twinkle will also do it).
  • If the article is promotional, but not sufficiently-so to meet G11 (and no other criterion applies), add applicable promotion-related maintenance tags to the article. Do not overload the article with every template that could possibly be germane.
  1. These might include (non-exclusively): {{COI}}, {{advert}}, {{POV}}, {{original research}} and {{autobiography}}. Many new articles will also need some type of tagging regarding the status of the sources cited (or the entire lack thereof). That is addressed later in this page.
  2. If possible, use {{multiple issues}}, so the issues identified are presented in a compact, single notice.
  3. It is important that you familiarize yourself with how to locate applicable templates. Explore Wikipedia:Template messages, which provides a break down of templates by type.
  • If the article makes a credible claim of importance or significance, so that A7 does not apply, but you believe the subject of the article may not be notable[2] – and after first performing a minimum check for existence of sources using a Google Books, a Google News, and a Google News archive search – you might add the tag {{notability}} to the article.

    An indication of lack of notability also implies other actions you might take – tagging for lack of sources, prodding the article, taking it to AfD, etc. – all of which are covered in later sections.

  • If an article on a company, group, or product is clearly promotional (and only if it clearly promotional), check whether the creator’s name violates WP:CORPNAME. If it does, you might post to their talk page {{Uw-username}}. If that is ignored, and there is further promotional editing, follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention (WP:UAA).
  • You might leave a message on the user’s talk page regarding their conflict of interest, including (non-exclusively): {{welcome-COI}} and {{uw-coi}}.

Recreations

Always check the history and the talk page. A new page might be a recreation of a previously deleted article; it might have been created by a 'different' user to evade a block or preventing detection of a particular pattern of editing. With other articles, someone may have removed a tag. The talk page may contain a notice that indicates that the article has already survived, or was previously deleted, at an AfD (possibly under another title).

If previously deleted (at the most recent AfD held), and if the recreated page is sufficiently identical to the previously deleted content, it may be subject to CSD G4 (tag to use: {{db-g4}} / {{db-repost}}). G4 only applies to articles deleted after discussion – not to prior speedy deletions or PRODs.

Sourcing issues

Sources are the lifeblood of Wikipedia articles, and are the foundation upon which all of our inclusion policies converge. New articles rarely meet our sourcing requirements and so should be tagged specifically for that issue: Do not overload the article with every sourcing template that could possibly be germane. Typically, one sourcing tag should be added to address lack of sources entirely or depth of those in place, and if others, to address the manner of sourcing, such as no footnotes, the poor attribution of those cited, the use of only primary sources and related issues.

  1. If the article does not cite any sources, consider adding {{unreferenced}}, or if they are insufficient, {{refimprove}} (for articles on living person, {{BLP unsourced}} and {{BLP sources}}).
  2. Other common tags include {{no footnotes}}, {{more footnotes}}, {{primary sources}}, ({{BLP primary sources}}), {{one source}}, {{self-published}}, {{citation style}}, {{cleanup-bare URLs}} and others.
  3. If you do not believe the subject is notable based on having looked outside the article for the existence of sources, then prodding the article, or taking it to AfD may be warranted.

Deletion

PROD

PROD is a way to suggest an article for uncontroversial deletion. It is an easier method than nominating at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (AfD), and is meant for uncomplicated deletion proposals that do not meet the strict criteria for speedy deletion. PROD must only be used if no opposition to the deletion is expected. To nominate an article, place {{subst:Proposed deletion|concern=reason for proposed deletion}} at the top of the page – the Page Curation tool will do this for you and notify the creator automatically.
Note: A PROD removed by the creator or another editor without addressing the issue(s) must not be restored. If you believe the article should still be deleted, you must send it for discussion at AfD.

BLPPROD

BLPPROD is used to propose articles for deletion on living persons, where the article contain no sources in any form whatsoever (as references, external links, etc., reliable or otherwise). To nominate a biography using this process, place {{subst:prod blp}} at the top of a page – the Page Curation tool will do this for you and notify the creator automatically.
Note: Unlike a PROD, if a BLPPROD is removed by the creator or another user without adding a relevant, reliable source, it must be restored. If however the creator persists in removing the tag, it might be a good idea to send the article for discussion at AfD. You may wish to add the {{uw-blpprod1}} warning to the user's talk page.

AfD

If the strict speedy deletion criteria are not applicable, and PROD/BLPPROD don't apply, but you think the article still should be deleted, it can be discussed by the community at AfD for a seven days after which it will be closed as delete, keep, redirect or no consensus by an administrator.

  • Include a link to the applicable policy and/or guideline under which you are proposing deletion
  • If you are AfDing a dePRODed article, include the words: DePRODed by creator without addressing the issue(s). Concern was:.......

Most AfD nominations focus on notability (Reliable Sources and verifiability) or What Wikipedia Is Not issues. Notability is targeted to existence of sources (out in the world), rather than what sources are currently in an article. Thus, searching first for sources before nominating an article for an AfD discussion is crucial. Notability is also the hardest Wikipedia concept to understand.

You must read and follow WP:BEFORE before nominating an article at AfD. The minimum search expected is a normal Google search, a Google Books search, a Google News search, and a Google News archive search; Google Scholar is suggested for academic subjects.

Tag removal

If the article creator or another user removes the AfD tag, restore it. You may wish to add the {{uw-afd1}} warning to their talk page.

CSD

Speedy deletion candidates. (CSD). Read and consign to memory the major criteria. You can only use the fixed criteria – this is a strict policy – there is no catchall, so if you are not sure what to use but are sure the article should be speedied, leave the page for another reviewer. Do not be too hasty to use A1 and A3, wait at least 15 minutes. Make sure you understand what CSD A7 applies to, and in particular, that it does not apply to schools or educational establishments.

Speedy deletion is a tool which can easily be overused

Since speedy deletion removes a page without discussion, an article should not be tagged for speedy delete if there are plausible reasons that it should be kept and it is not a copyvio, attack page, hoax, empty or sheer nonsense. In particular, an article should not be tagged for speedy delete under CSD A7 where you think the topic is not notable or does not prove notability by the references included. This is a common misunderstanding. The standard under A7 is solely whether the content contains a credible assertion of importance or significance; (whether it actually is notable is a subject for an AfD discussion, not for speedy deletion). Consider using a Notability tag instead of a speedy deletion tag.

Pay attention to the policy "Contributors sometimes create articles over several edits, so try to avoid deleting a page too soon after its creation if it appears incomplete." Wikipedia articles do not have to be 100% perfect the instant they are first posted; that's why they can be edited.

Multiple criteria

It's quite possible to use more than one appropriate criterion. You'll often find, for example, that WP:A7 (significance) and WP:G11 (promotion/advertising) go together. The Curation tool puts the deletion message on the creator's talk page.

Tag removal

If the article creator removes a CSD tag, restore it. You may wish to add the {{uw-speedy1}} warning to their talk page.

Drafts

Wikipedia's 'Draft' namespace was created to provide a 'safe harbour' from deletion for pages under construction. This does not apply to copyright violations and attack pages, which should be addressed or deleted immediately in any namespace. Drafts allow new articles to be developed before being moved to Wikipedia's mainspace. Drafts are also a way for people to create an article who are not (yet) authorised to create an article directly in the mainspace. Registered users can also create user space drafts.

Moving to draft

A newly-created article may be about a generally acceptable topic, but be far from sufficiently developed or sourced for publication. Such pages can be moved to the draft namespace either manually or by the 'Move to Draft' feature in Page Curation. Page Curation has the added advantage that it automatically places a message on the creator's talk page so they know where to find the relocated page.

Reviewing drafts

Depending on the channel through which they were created, drafts may from time to time appear in the New Pages Feed. In a similar way to the process at Articles for Creation (WP:AfC), if they are suitable for publication they can be moved to the mainspace using the 'Move to Main' feature (under development) in Page Curation. A message will be automatically placed on in the author's talk page. A draft that is not suitable for publication can be 'rejected' using the feature in Page Curation (under development) in much the same way as at AfC.

Drafts in mainspace: If a new article (not a 'Draft') contains a {{newpage}}, {{inuse}}, or {{underconstruction}} template, a good rule is to wait about 15 minutes after the last edit before tagging the article (or up to an hour if a {{newpage}} tag is present). Then consider moving it to the Draft namespace.

Foreign language pages (WP:Notenglish)

Do not tag with G1 Patent nonsense - languages are not gibberish.

Google Translation can easily be used to help guess the language an article is written in, and in fact will auto-detect most languages. If not, if it looks like Arabic but the translation makes no sense, try Persian (Farsi) or Urdu; if it looks like Chinese, it may be Chinese, Japanese, Korean or other Asian language, so try a number. Remember also that many east European languages use Cyrillic, so it might not be Russian. If you know or can guess the language, then place the {{notenglish}} template e.g., {{notenglish|Spanish}}. Doing so provides a link to the relevant foreign language Wikipedia and to Google Translate – which will show you a machine translation; rough and ready, but often good enough to tell you that the article is about a non-notable band, person, company, organisation, or is nonsense, and can be speedy tagged without bothering to list it at WP:Pages needing translation.

The reason {{notenglish}} is suggested – which is not a speedy template – is that these articles are sometimes worth translating. When that expands on the article page, it gives you a message and a link to the place to paste it on the list of pages needing translation at WP:PNT, where someone who knows the language may pick it up and translate it or place PROD, BLPPROD or take other appropriate action. The Page Curation tool does this automatically and will notify the creator.

Copyright violation

Foreign language articles are often copyright violations, having been pasted from another source. Perform a Google check as well (copy and paste a sentence or a text fragment into Google, between quotation marks (e.g. "This is a test"). If it is, it can be speedily deleted under G12.

You might wish to manually notify the author. If you have listed the page at PNT, the standard message is {{uw-notenglish}}. There is also a useful set of message templates such as {{contrib-ru1}}, many of them bilingual, to tell the author that we require English and point him or her to the applicable foreign language Wikipedia. There is a list of them at WP:PNT/T.

Articles copied from foreign language Wikipedias

{{db-foreign}} or {{db-a2}} should only be used in the situation (not very common) where an existing article from a non-English-language Wikipedia has been cut-and-pasted here. That is not allowed because it disconnects the source of the content from it editing history, which we have to maintain for attribution to the original authors. The message generated for the author points them to the correct procedure at Wikipedia:Translation. The foreign Wikipedia reference should be included in the tag, e.g. {{db-foreign|source=es:Warekena}}.

Article titles

Mistitled articles. Page titles can't be edited. This is a common misunderstanding by new editors, who, finding they cannot change a typo in the title, may simply abandon the article and create a new page—a 'cut-and-paste move'. If you know how, it's actually quite easy to move a page to a more appropriate title using the "move page" function. For more information on page titles, including italics and the use of pre-nominal and post-nominal letters and social titles, see Sometimes you'll find that an article under the other title already exists, in which case you should try to merge any new material from the newly-created article into the old one, leaving a redirect in place of the new page.

Stub tagging

Stub tagging is important. Wikipedians dedicated to expanding very short articles work through stub categories. Try to avoid using the generic {{stub}} tag by adding a more informative tag such as, for example, {{England-school-stub}}. Many stub tags can be compiled intuitively - there are thousands of stub templates and often one will work, but many don't. More information is available at Stub types, but don't spend too much valuable reviewing time attempting to find the right tag.

Categorizing

Categorization: Check that the article has been assigned to one or more useful categories, and if not, either tag it with {{uncat}} or try to find a category for it. This can be done using Hotcat feature, accessible through the '+' sign at the bottom of every page. To find relevant categories, it is often useful to visit an established article on a relatively similar topic for ideas. or assign the article to one of the fundamental categories.

New unreviewed article

Pages with the New unreviewed article should be reviewed in the normal way, tagged as appropriate, and the New unreviewed article banner manually removed.

Special:NewPagesFeed

Special:NewPagesFeed logs new pages immediately after the first version is saved. While it is a good idea to reduce the backlog of unreviewed pages by working from the back of the list, it is nevertheless important that serious breaches of policy such as spam and attack pages are deleted very quickly.

Tagging: Other than attack pages, copyvios, vandalism or complete nonsense, tagging other pages only a few minutes after creation can discourage a good-faith author. Remember – if you don't click the 'reviewed' link, the article will remain in the 'unpatrolled' queue, even if you add tags or categories or make other edits to the page. Twinkle users can change their preferences to mark page as patrolled automatically when an article is tagged.

Tag bombing: Do not place multiple tags that essentially concern the same or similar issues. One tag of a kind is sufficient draw attention to the article.

Notify the author: With the exception of deletion tags, authors are not automatically made aware that their articles have been tagged. Page Curation includes a feature enabling patrollers to leave a short message for the author. It should be used. If authors remain unaware, the article can remain perma-tagged for many years.

Be nice to the newbies

Throughout the entire process of new pages patrol, it is important to remember not to bite the newbies. Far from being a monolithic horde of vandals, trolls, and spammers, the available evidence seems to indicate that newcomers write most of Wikipedia's content. If you see a new user or IP address contributing significantly, {{welcome}} or {{welcome-anon}} them if you're so inclined, and include a pointer or two of feedback about how they can make their contributions even better. Most will gladly welcome the support.

It is also important to assume good faith as much as possible, or, minimally, to assume incompetence instead of malice. For example, remember not everyone is as computer-literate as you; some people will accidentally blank or damage pages when attempting to cut and paste material from Wikipedia. Others may not understand that, yes, their changes really are visible to the entire world immediately; consider using {{Uw-draftfirst}} to suggest that new users work on their article as a userspace draft.

Remember that children also contribute, and they are not all vandals (some of our New Page Patrollers are also very young and inexperienced!). You may wish to copy and add a link to WP:Guidance for younger editors to their talk page: [[WP:Guidance for younger editors|''Guidance for younger editors'']]

Please do not be too hasty with certain speedy deletions, especially those lacking context (CSD A1) or content (CSD A3). Research has shown that writers unfamiliar with Wikipedia guidelines should be accorded at least 10 to 15 minutes to fix the article before it is nominated for speedy deletion. If you see a page that has been tagged too hastily, please notify the tagger about their hasty deletion with the {{uw-hasty}} template. The template {{hasty|placed above existing speedy tag to inform admins to of hasty tagging and to wait}} can also be added to the tagged article to flag that it was hastily tagged.

If you tag an article written by a newcomer, consider leaving a friendly note on the editor's talk page to explain that anyone may remove tags (except for AFD and CSD) after the problem has been addressed or in case of error. Most new editors don't know that they are permitted to do this.

Unreviewing

Page Curation also includes a feature to 'unreview' a new article. By mid November 2016 all New Page Reviewers will have to convince the community that they have sufficient knowledge and experience to review new pages. However, nobody is absolutely perfect and errors can happen. If you come across an article that appears to have been wrongly or inappropriately tagged, consider using the 'unpatrol' feature in Page Curation and leave a friendly note for the patroller. If an incorrect CSD criterion has been applied, change it manually for the correct one and perhaps leave a friendly message for the patroller about what you have done. If a page has been inappropriately tagged for speedy deletion, decline the CSD and notify the patroller using {{Uw-csd}}. If you notice a patroller making frequent errors, tagging to quickly, or tag-bombing, offer friendly support or direct them to a specific section of this or another help page. In extreme cases you may need to inform an administrator or post at WP:ANI, but always try to help your colleague first.

Reviewer checklists

TutorialDiscussionNew page feed
Reviewers
Curation tool
Suggestions
Coordination
NPP backlog
Articles
11604 ↑115
Oldest article
9 years old
Redirects
394
Oldest redirect
4 months old
Article reviews
1608
Redirect reviews
5844
  • There is a very large articles backlog
  • The articles backlog is growing rapidly (↑672 since last week)

Welcome!
Congratulations on becoming a New Page Reviewer. Apart from being an Administrator, reviewing new pages is the most important single maintenance task on the whole site. It's what keeps bad pages out, and equally important, it gives a boost to new good faith users creating their first genuine articles. Reviewing new pages needs a near-admin knowledge of deletion and notability policies

New Page Review is a vital function of many Wikipedias as the front line of interaction between new authors and community members devoted to policing the quality of the project. It has a variety of detailed, quite complex possible actions for patrolling pages in all namespaces.

If you are new to New Page Reviewing, it is essential that you also read Page Curation Help and view the videos, and read WP:FIELD. Reviewing needs a near-admin knowledge of deletion and notability policies.

Basic flow chart

It is important to review correctly and seriously. The sheer volume of articles created is immense. Even a few percentage points more of erroneous or bitey reviewing can adversely affect hundreds of articles or deter many new users a day. It is critical that editors don't review sloppily nor treat it as a game or contest.

Reviewing is entirely voluntary and carries no obligation.

Watch a quick video tour

Tools: Unlike other web sites, blogs and forums, Wikipedia already puts powerful editing tools at the hands of all readers and users. New pages review is our first line of defense against unwanted pages or for quick, on-the-fly improvement of poorly written or constructed pages and it must be done accurately.

New Pages Feed Screenshot

Some useful reviewing tools can automate parts of the process. The Page Curation tool, launched in September 2012 after a year of analysis and development in direct collaboration with the Foundation, combines the New Pages Feed with a dedicated tagging, messaging, and logging system for routine reviewing. It replaces Twinkle for new page reviewing, which nevertheless provides tagging and deletion tools (as well as other tools useful for general maintenance) for pages that do not show in the New Pages Feed.

Tools such as Huggle and Stiki are specifically designed for counter-vandalism and are fine for vandalism patrollers; they should never be used for reviewing new pages.

If you have a question or concern, post a message at the New pages patrol noticeboard, and an experienced reviewer or editor will be along soon to help you. For other help using the tools see the related tabs above.

The purpose of reviewing new pages

The primary purposes of new page patrolling are to identify articles which do not meet the criteria for inclusion and/or to tag them for any glaring issues that need attention. Most critical are copyright violations and defamatory material about living persons, followed closely by pages whose creators seek to exploit our voluntary work for financial gain. Other pages may also need to be deleted, but deletion for other reasons may be less urgent – pages that are still not patrolled are not indexed and cached by Google or other search engines.

Do not be too hasty to nominate contributions by new editors for deletion if the content is marginally poor. If you are uncertain, leave the page unpatrolled, and another volunteer can review it later.

Care should be exercised when reviewing very new pages. Tagging anything other than attack pages, copyvios, vandalism or complete nonsense only a few minutes after creation may only serve to annoy the page author.

Reviewers must read and fully understand Wikipedia's deletion policy and preferably consign it to memory. A page may be nominated for speedy deletion only if it meets one of the strict criteria and no independent editor could reasonably be expected to contest the deletion. If a reviewer thinks a page should be deleted but it is not a candidate for speedy deletion, AfD, PROD or WP:BLPPROD must be used instead. Spurious nominations for speedy deletion, even if the article is later deleted at AfD, are damaging to Wikipedia and may quickly result in the reviewer losing their 'reviewer' flag and in the worst case scenarios, being blocked from editing.

If the page is not a candidate for deletion but has other problems, add appropriate tags and use the message feature of the curation tool to inform the creator of the issues (see the patroller checklists section below for more information).

User names and vandalism

In some cases, the creator of a new page may need to be blocked to prevent further disruption, a breach of policy, or damage to Wikipedia's reputation. Familiarise yourself with the WP:UAA and WP:AIV systems and their policies and report such cases as necessary.

Wikipedia forensics

Page reviewers are also detectives and are often credtited with the discovery of serious breaches of policy such as Sockpuppetry, [[WP:Advocacy}}, Undisclosed paid editing (see Orangemoody), and Child protection. Check the content of new article for barely noticeable inline external links and apparently harmless sources. Familiarise yourself with these policies and what to do.

Your patrol log and Watchlist

Check your patrol log frequently for articles that you tagged for deletion but which are still blue linked - it could be that the creator or his sock has removed the the PROD or CSD tag. You may also wish to set your Watchlist preferences to display all pages that you edit

Caution G10 attack pages must be blanked and tagged for deletion very quickly. The G10 CSD template will rapidly catch the attention of administrators, who will delete the page swiftly. However, before blanking and tagging an attack page, please be absolutely sure to read it carefully and not confuse it with G3 hoax or vandalism or with any other deletion criterion.
Caution G3 blatant hoaxes must also be deleted fairly quickly, in order to preserve the integrity of the encyclopedia. Please be absolutely sure to read such new pages carefully – hoaxes are not always immediately evident – and when a hoax is merely suspected, tag the page with {{hoax}} instead, but be sure to leave an appropriate warning on the creator's talk page (see Twinkle and WP:User warnings).
Caution G11 Conflict of Interest and Paid advocacy (artspam, advertising). Reviewers need to acquire special skills to detect these pages. See below for details. See also Orangemoody for the extent of this serious issue.
Caution Schools and educational institutions. Please be mindful about schools and colleges. They may not be tagged for deletion under CSD A7, but please do check for copyvios from the school's web site. Most mainstream high/secondary schools are notable if they are proven to exist. Middle schools and primary (elementary) schools are generally redirected to the page about the school's district (USA) or to the education section of the articles about the locality.[3] It is not necessary to tag bomb them either. People are proud of their schools and many school articles may appear to be promotional; unless it is a mere advertisement without useful content, they can be cleaned up. Cram schools or diploma mills should be treated as any other business or organisation. If an article needs attention please use the message box in the Curation Toolbar. See WP:WPSCH/AG and WP:UNI/AG.

Caution Although we have a system in place to automatically detect copyright violations, it misses a large number of them. 100% reliance should never be placed on bots, which can also produce false-positives. Copyright infringement is a pervasive problem and it is not only important that we don't host such material, but it often leads to significant additional work when not caught early. Accordingly, unless there are very good reasons to believe a copyright violation is unlikely, please check all new pages for copying from pre-existing material. Articles about organizations and music groups are especially prone to 'borrowing' content from other sources.

Hallmarks of copying include:

  • Single reference articles, or ones with large sections of text without inline references
  • Articles with text that seems 'too perfect to be true'
  • Articles whose text resembles that of a news article, press release, blog, or a book, that rarely occurs outside of a specific, invariably copyrighted use, or that has a strange tone of voice, such as an overly informal tone
  • First person pronouns and possessives (I, we, my, our), and contractions (I'm, we're, they're, can't, didn't, aren't, won't, etc.)
  • The inclusion of a slanted marketing voice with weasel words and other puffery; explicit of implicit claims of ownership of the text added and insider status as to the topic (inclusion of intellectual property symbols (™,®) is highly correlated)
  • Out of context and out of place words or phrases, smacking of an existing source or the navigation structure of an original website: "this site/page/book/whitepaper"; "top", "go to top", "next page", "click here", etc. and non-standard characters (e.g., Microsoft "smart quotes")
  • Articles whose style of referencing appears to be that of a book or other pre-existing source, not corresponding to the actual references in the article – such as reference numbers or author names in the text, including in-line footnote links such as "[1]", especially when no footnotes are given

Methods to check for copyright violations:

  1. To see if content has been copied from pre-existing writing, copy and paste a limited but unique portion of text from the page into a search engine such as Google (between quotation marks), and try a few such snippets from each paragraph.
  2. Compare the article's content with the references and external links and look for copy/pastes or close paraphrasing.
  3. Even if not given as a reference or link, see if the person or organization has a dedicated website (it is often fruitful, once located, to look for an "about", "history" or other narrative section, which will not necessarily appear in Google). If you have access to them, Facebook and linkedIn are also widespread sources of copying.
  4. Earwig's Copyvio Detector and the Duplication detector are useful tools to find copyright violations. However, do not treat a negative result by either as conclusive – both are hit and miss, being unable to read some web content and are poor at finding closely-paraphrased content.
  5. Some copyright violations are from PDF files. To read them you will need to open them in your browser or download them.

What to do if you find a copyright violation:

  • If substantially the entire page is an unambiguous copyright violation, and there's no non-infringing revision to revert to (which will usually but not always be true for new articles), tag the page for speedy deletion under CSD G12 using {{db-g12}}. Don't forget to warn the user with the warning notice template that will be provided to you in the text of the speedy deletion tag (If you are using Page Curation, it will do this for you, if you are examining an older page that has already been reviewed, Twinkle will also do it).
  • Where you have not marked the page for speedy deletion – for example, because removing the infringement found would still leave substantial content – then:
  1. remove all of the copyrighted infringing material from the page, noting in your edit summary where it is from ("Remove copyright violation of http://www...."). Where the copying is from more than one source, it is often easiest to remove each infringement in a separate edit.
  2. post to the article's talk page {{subst:cclean|url=URL(s) copied from}}; just place a space between the URLs if there's more than one (note: this template automatically signs for you so place no tildes).
  3. mark the revisions in the page history (typically the first edit and second to last edit) for redaction by an administrator by placing and saving at the top of the page this template: {{copyvio-revdel|start = earliest revision ID (that is, the number at end of the revision's URL after "oldid=") | end= end revision ID}}
  • Where you have not marked the page for speedy deletion, and cannot clean it up yourself, or believe your suspicion of copying warrants further looking into, send the page for investigation to Wikipedia:Copyright problems, by marking it with {{copyvio|url=insert URL}}, and then follow the instructions in the copyright investigation notice to list the page at "today's" copyright violations page and to warn the user.

Conflict of Interest (COI) and paid advocacy

Many articles are created by user with a conflict of interest in editing, resulting in a tendency toward bias because of how they are situated in relation to the topic – that makes it very difficult to write in a neutral and balanced manner. For example, people attempting to write about themselves, their family, friends, clients, employers, or anyone they have a financial or personal relationship with. Paid editing is a subset of COI editing and comes in two flavors. Most common are people who simply have a financial stake in a topic, such as a person writing about their own business. The second, paid advocacy, is an especially egregious type of COI, referring to people specifically paid to "lard" Wikipedia with an article about a topic.

A common indication of paid advertisements masquerading as articles, possibly written as works for hire, by public relations experts, or sometimes by sophisticated insiders, are: Articles That Look Too Good To Be True: Well written, perfectly formatted articles with lots of neat references and submitted by users with low edit counts. Such articles are often patrolled as OK by inexperienced patrollers. Such articles are classic examples of the need to thoroughly research an article and its user when patrolling it. See: WP:COI, WP:Paid, and the detailed description of what to look for at Long Term Abuse. To understand the extent of this problem, see Orangemoody.

Other hallmarks of COI editing include:

  • Multiple references, very clean Reflist (no naked URLs)
  • Multiple references to company, B2B, or financial listings, staff lists, interviews
  • Articles with text that seems 'too perfect to be true'
  • Articles with inline external links
  • Articles whose style of text appears to come from a news article, press release, blog, or a book
  • Articles whose style of referencing includes many references to the subject's own publications (biographies)
  • Article posted in a single edit (or very few edits, denoting meticulous offline preparation).
  • Author has posted several single edit new articles that are related
  • Author has a corporate sounding user name
  • Text with first person pronouns and possessives (I, we, my, our)

What to do if you suspect a COI

An understanding of context is important in responding to COI editing. The COI guideline only "strongly discourages” editing by those with a conflict of interest. Conflict of interest editing is thus not prohibited. However, many of the behaviors exhibited by those with a COI are prohibited or are otherwise actionable.

1) Responding to paid editing

In June 2014‎ the Wikimedia Foundation’s Term of Use were amended to require that all editors disclose their "employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which they receive, or expect to receive, compensation". These mandatory disclosure requirements are applicable to anyone having a financial stake in their edits (i.e., they not just limited to the more egregious forms of paid advocacy). Disclosure requirements are casually ignored by the majority of paid editors. Though we can seek deletion of articles containing blatant advertising; can ask for users with corporate names coupled with promotional edits to be blocked on that basis; can tag articles as the result of a COI for added scrutiny and as non-neutral; and take other indirect actions explained below, the only direct action we can take to address paid editing is to enforce disclosure compliance.

In order to compel disclosure compliance where you have a good faith basis to suspect a user of paid editing, add to the user’s talk page the template {{uw-paid1}}—which asks the user to state whether they have a financial stake in their edits, asks them to not edit further until they respond, and instructs them on how to post the required disclosure. If they continue to edit without responding, escalate to a higher level notice: {{uw-paid2}}, {{uw-paid3}} through {{uw-paid4}}, and if the final notice is ignored, seek a block at WP:AIV.

2) General COI actions

  • COI editing strongly correlates with copyright violations. Therefore, follow the prior instructions to identify and address copyvios.
  • Articles written by editors with a COI are often blatant advertisements and may also contain no credible assertion of importance or significance. Thus:
  1. if the article meets CSD G11, tag it for deletion using {{db-g11}} / {{db-spam}};
  2. if it meets CSD A7, tag it for deletion using {{db-A7}} / {{db-corp}}, or other applicable A7 deletion tag;
  3. mark for speedy deletion under such other criteria as may apply.
  4. Speedy deletion under multiple criteria can be requested using {{Db-multiple|G11|A7|etc.}}
  5. Don't forget to warn the user with the warning notice template that will be provided to you in the text of the speedy deletion tag (if you are using Page Curation, it will do this for you, if you are examining an older page that has already been reviewed, Twinkle will also do it).
  • If the article is promotional, but not sufficiently-so to meet G11 (and no other criterion applies), add applicable promotion-related maintenance tags to the article. Do not overload the article with every template that could possibly be germane.
  1. These might include (non-exclusively): {{COI}}, {{advert}}, {{POV}}, {{original research}} and {{autobiography}}. Many new articles will also need some type of tagging regarding the status of the sources cited (or the entire lack thereof). That is addressed later in this page.
  2. If possible, use {{multiple issues}}, so the issues identified are presented in a compact, single notice.
  3. It is important that you familiarize yourself with how to locate applicable templates. Explore Wikipedia:Template messages, which provides a break down of templates by type.
  • If the article makes a credible claim of importance or significance, so that A7 does not apply, but you believe the subject of the article may not be notable[4] – and after first performing a minimum check for existence of sources using a Google Books, a Google News, and a Google News archive search – you might add the tag {{notability}} to the article.

    An indication of lack of notability also implies other actions you might take – tagging for lack of sources, prodding the article, taking it to AfD, etc. – all of which are covered in later sections.

  • If an article on a company, group, or product is clearly promotional (and only if it clearly promotional), check whether the creator’s name violates WP:CORPNAME. If it does, you might post to their talk page {{Uw-username}}. If that is ignored, and there is further promotional editing, follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention (WP:UAA).
  • You might leave a message on the user’s talk page regarding their conflict of interest, including (non-exclusively): {{welcome-COI}} and {{uw-coi}}.

Recreations

Always check the history and the talk page. A new page might be a recreation of a previously deleted article; it might have been created by a 'different' user to evade a block or preventing detection of a particular pattern of editing. With other articles, someone may have removed a tag. The talk page may contain a notice that indicates that the article has already survived, or was previously deleted, at an AfD (possibly under another title).

If previously deleted (at the most recent AfD held), and if the recreated page is sufficiently identical to the previously deleted content, it may be subject to CSD G4 (tag to use: {{db-g4}} / {{db-repost}}). G4 only applies to articles deleted after discussion – not to prior speedy deletions or PRODs.

Sourcing issues

Sources are the lifeblood of Wikipedia articles, and are the foundation upon which all of our inclusion policies converge. New articles rarely meet our sourcing requirements and so should be tagged specifically for that issue: Do not overload the article with every sourcing template that could possibly be germane. Typically, one sourcing tag should be added to address lack of sources entirely or depth of those in place, and if others, to address the manner of sourcing, such as no footnotes, the poor attribution of those cited, the use of only primary sources and related issues.

  1. If the article does not cite any sources, consider adding {{unreferenced}}, or if they are insufficient, {{refimprove}} (for articles on living person, {{BLP unsourced}} and {{BLP sources}}).
  2. Other common tags include {{no footnotes}}, {{more footnotes}}, {{primary sources}}, ({{BLP primary sources}}), {{one source}}, {{self-published}}, {{citation style}}, {{cleanup-bare URLs}} and others.
  3. If you do not believe the subject is notable based on having looked outside the article for the existence of sources, then prodding the article, or taking it to AfD may be warranted.

Deletion

PROD

PROD is a way to suggest an article for uncontroversial deletion. It is an easier method than nominating at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (AfD), and is meant for uncomplicated deletion proposals that do not meet the strict criteria for speedy deletion. PROD must only be used if no opposition to the deletion is expected. To nominate an article, place {{subst:Proposed deletion|concern=reason for proposed deletion}} at the top of the page – the Page Curation tool will do this for you and notify the creator automatically.
Note: A PROD removed by the creator or another editor without addressing the issue(s) must not be restored. If you believe the article should still be deleted, you must send it for discussion at AfD.

BLPPROD

BLPPROD is used to propose articles for deletion on living persons, where the article contain no sources in any form whatsoever (as references, external links, etc., reliable or otherwise). To nominate a biography using this process, place {{subst:prod blp}} at the top of a page – the Page Curation tool will do this for you and notify the creator automatically.
Note: Unlike a PROD, if a BLPPROD is removed by the creator or another user without adding a relevant, reliable source, it must be restored. If however the creator persists in removing the tag, it might be a good idea to send the article for discussion at AfD. You may wish to add the {{uw-blpprod1}} warning to the user's talk page.

AfD

If the strict speedy deletion criteria are not applicable, and PROD/BLPPROD don't apply, but you think the article still should be deleted, it can be discussed by the community at AfD for a seven days after which it will be closed as delete, keep, redirect or no consensus by an administrator.

  • Include a link to the applicable policy and/or guideline under which you are proposing deletion
  • If you are AfDing a dePRODed article, include the words: DePRODed by creator without addressing the issue(s). Concern was:.......

Most AfD nominations focus on notability (Reliable Sources and verifiability) or What Wikipedia Is Not issues. Notability is targeted to existence of sources (out in the world), rather than what sources are currently in an article. Thus, searching first for sources before nominating an article for an AfD discussion is crucial. Notability is also the hardest Wikipedia concept to understand.

You must read and follow WP:BEFORE before nominating an article at AfD. The minimum search expected is a normal Google search, a Google Books search, a Google News search, and a Google News archive search; Google Scholar is suggested for academic subjects.

Tag removal

If the article creator or another user removes the AfD tag, restore it. You may wish to add the {{uw-afd1}} warning to their talk page.

CSD

Speedy deletion candidates. (CSD). Read and consign to memory the major criteria. You can only use the fixed criteria – this is a strict policy – there is no catchall, so if you are not sure what to use but are sure the article should be speedied, leave the page for another reviewer. Do not be too hasty to use A1 and A3, wait at least 15 minutes. Make sure you understand what CSD A7 applies to, and in particular, that it does not apply to schools or educational establishments.

Speedy deletion is a tool which can easily be overused

Since speedy deletion removes a page without discussion, an article should not be tagged for speedy delete if there are plausible reasons that it should be kept and it is not a copyvio, attack page, hoax, empty or sheer nonsense. In particular, an article should not be tagged for speedy delete under CSD A7 where you think the topic is not notable or does not prove notability by the references included. This is a common misunderstanding. The standard under A7 is solely whether the content contains a credible assertion of importance or significance; (whether it actually is notable is a subject for an AfD discussion, not for speedy deletion). Consider using a Notability tag instead of a speedy deletion tag.

Pay attention to the policy "Contributors sometimes create articles over several edits, so try to avoid deleting a page too soon after its creation if it appears incomplete." Wikipedia articles do not have to be 100% perfect the instant they are first posted; that's why they can be edited.

Multiple criteria

It's quite possible to use more than one appropriate criterion. You'll often find, for example, that WP:A7 (significance) and WP:G11 (promotion/advertising) go together. The Curation tool puts the deletion message on the creator's talk page.

Tag removal

If the article creator removes a CSD tag, restore it. You may wish to add the {{uw-speedy1}} warning to their talk page.

Drafts

Wikipedia's 'Draft' namespace was created to provide a 'safe harbour' from deletion for pages under construction. This does not apply to copyright violations and attack pages, which should be addressed or deleted immediately in any namespace. Drafts allow new articles to be developed before being moved to Wikipedia's mainspace. Drafts are also a way for people to create an article who are not (yet) authorised to create an article directly in the mainspace. Registered users can also create user space drafts.

Moving to draft

A newly-created article may be about a generally acceptable topic, but be far from sufficiently developed or sourced for publication. Such pages can be moved to the draft namespace either manually or by the 'Move to Draft' feature in Page Curation. Page Curation has the added advantage that it automatically places a message on the creator's talk page so they know where to find the relocated page.

Reviewing drafts

Depending on the channel through which they were created, drafts may from time to time appear in the New Pages Feed. In a similar way to the process at Articles for Creation (WP:AfC), if they are suitable for publication they can be moved to the mainspace using the 'Move to Main' feature (under development) in Page Curation. A message will be automatically placed on in the author's talk page. A draft that is not suitable for publication can be 'rejected' using the feature in Page Curation (under development) in much the same way as at AfC.

Drafts in mainspace: If a new article (not a 'Draft') contains a {{newpage}}, {{inuse}}, or {{underconstruction}} template, a good rule is to wait about 15 minutes after the last edit before tagging the article (or up to an hour if a {{newpage}} tag is present). Then consider moving it to the Draft namespace.

Foreign language pages (WP:Notenglish)

Do not tag with G1 Patent nonsense - languages are not gibberish.

Google Translation can easily be used to help guess the language an article is written in, and in fact will auto-detect most languages. If not, if it looks like Arabic but the translation makes no sense, try Persian (Farsi) or Urdu; if it looks like Chinese, it may be Chinese, Japanese, Korean or other Asian language, so try a number. Remember also that many east European languages use Cyrillic, so it might not be Russian. If you know or can guess the language, then place the {{notenglish}} template e.g., {{notenglish|Spanish}}. Doing so provides a link to the relevant foreign language Wikipedia and to Google Translate – which will show you a machine translation; rough and ready, but often good enough to tell you that the article is about a non-notable band, person, company, organisation, or is nonsense, and can be speedy tagged without bothering to list it at WP:Pages needing translation.

The reason {{notenglish}} is suggested – which is not a speedy template – is that these articles are sometimes worth translating. When that expands on the article page, it gives you a message and a link to the place to paste it on the list of pages needing translation at WP:PNT, where someone who knows the language may pick it up and translate it or place PROD, BLPPROD or take other appropriate action. The Page Curation tool does this automatically and will notify the creator.

Copyright violation

Foreign language articles are often copyright violations, having been pasted from another source. Perform a Google check as well (copy and paste a sentence or a text fragment into Google, between quotation marks (e.g. "This is a test"). If it is, it can be speedily deleted under G12.

You might wish to manually notify the author. If you have listed the page at PNT, the standard message is {{uw-notenglish}}. There is also a useful set of message templates such as {{contrib-ru1}}, many of them bilingual, to tell the author that we require English and point him or her to the applicable foreign language Wikipedia. There is a list of them at WP:PNT/T.

Articles copied from foreign language Wikipedias

{{db-foreign}} or {{db-a2}} should only be used in the situation (not very common) where an existing article from a non-English-language Wikipedia has been cut-and-pasted here. That is not allowed because it disconnects the source of the content from it editing history, which we have to maintain for attribution to the original authors. The message generated for the author points them to the correct procedure at Wikipedia:Translation. The foreign Wikipedia reference should be included in the tag, e.g. {{db-foreign|source=es:Warekena}}.

Article titles

Mistitled articles. Page titles can't be edited. This is a common misunderstanding by new editors, who, finding they cannot change a typo in the title, may simply abandon the article and create a new page—a 'cut-and-paste move'. If you know how, it's actually quite easy to move a page to a more appropriate title using the "move page" function. For more information on page titles, including italics and the use of pre-nominal and post-nominal letters and social titles, see Sometimes you'll find that an article under the other title already exists, in which case you should try to merge any new material from the newly-created article into the old one, leaving a redirect in place of the new page.

Stub tagging

Stub tagging is important. Wikipedians dedicated to expanding very short articles work through stub categories. Try to avoid using the generic {{stub}} tag by adding a more informative tag such as, for example, {{England-school-stub}}. Many stub tags can be compiled intuitively - there are thousands of stub templates and often one will work, but many don't. More information is available at Stub types, but don't spend too much valuable reviewing time attempting to find the right tag.

Categorizing

Categorization: Check that the article has been assigned to one or more useful categories, and if not, either tag it with {{uncat}} or try to find a category for it. This can be done using Hotcat feature, accessible through the '+' sign at the bottom of every page. To find relevant categories, it is often useful to visit an established article on a relatively similar topic for ideas. or assign the article to one of the fundamental categories.

New unreviewed article

Pages with the New unreviewed article should be reviewed in the normal way, tagged as appropriate, and the New unreviewed article banner manually removed.

Special:NewPagesFeed

Special:NewPagesFeed logs new pages immediately after the first version is saved. While it is a good idea to reduce the backlog of unreviewed pages by working from the back of the list, it is nevertheless important that serious breaches of policy such as spam and attack pages are deleted very quickly.

Tagging: Other than attack pages, copyvios, vandalism or complete nonsense, tagging other pages only a few minutes after creation can discourage a good-faith author. Remember – if you don't click the 'reviewed' link, the article will remain in the 'unpatrolled' queue, even if you add tags or categories or make other edits to the page. Twinkle users can change their preferences to mark page as patrolled automatically when an article is tagged.

Tag bombing: Do not place multiple tags that essentially concern the same or similar issues. One tag of a kind is sufficient draw attention to the article.

Notify the author: With the exception of deletion tags, authors are not automatically made aware that their articles have been tagged. Page Curation includes a feature enabling patrollers to leave a short message for the author. It should be used. If authors remain unaware, the article can remain perma-tagged for many years.

Be nice to the newbies

Throughout the entire process of new pages patrol, it is important to remember not to bite the newbies. Far from being a monolithic horde of vandals, trolls, and spammers, the available evidence seems to indicate that newcomers write most of Wikipedia's content. If you see a new user or IP address contributing significantly, {{welcome}} or {{welcome-anon}} them if you're so inclined, and include a pointer or two of feedback about how they can make their contributions even better. Most will gladly welcome the support.

It is also important to assume good faith as much as possible, or, minimally, to assume incompetence instead of malice. For example, remember not everyone is as computer-literate as you; some people will accidentally blank or damage pages when attempting to cut and paste material from Wikipedia. Others may not understand that, yes, their changes really are visible to the entire world immediately; consider using {{Uw-draftfirst}} to suggest that new users work on their article as a userspace draft.

Remember that children also contribute, and they are not all vandals (some of our New Page Patrollers are also very young and inexperienced!). You may wish to copy and add a link to WP:Guidance for younger editors to their talk page: [[WP:Guidance for younger editors|''Guidance for younger editors'']]

Please do not be too hasty with certain speedy deletions, especially those lacking context (CSD A1) or content (CSD A3). Research has shown that writers unfamiliar with Wikipedia guidelines should be accorded at least 10 to 15 minutes to fix the article before it is nominated for speedy deletion. If you see a page that has been tagged too hastily, please notify the tagger about their hasty deletion with the {{uw-hasty}} template. The template {{hasty|placed above existing speedy tag to inform admins to of hasty tagging and to wait}} can also be added to the tagged article to flag that it was hastily tagged.

If you tag an article written by a newcomer, consider leaving a friendly note on the editor's talk page to explain that anyone may remove tags (except for AFD and CSD) after the problem has been addressed or in case of error. Most new editors don't know that they are permitted to do this.

Unreviewing

Page Curation also includes a feature to 'unreview' a new article. By mid November 2016 all New Page Reviewers will have to convince the community that they have sufficient knowledge and experience to review new pages. However, nobody is absolutely perfect and errors can happen. If you come across an article that appears to have been wrongly or inappropriately tagged, consider using the 'unpatrol' feature in Page Curation and leave a friendly note for the patroller. If an incorrect CSD criterion has been applied, change it manually for the correct one and perhaps leave a friendly message for the patroller about what you have done. If a page has been inappropriately tagged for speedy deletion, decline the CSD and notify the patroller using {{Uw-csd}}. If you notice a patroller making frequent errors, tagging to quickly, or tag-bombing, offer friendly support or direct them to a specific section of this or another help page. In extreme cases you may need to inform an administrator or post at WP:ANI, but always try to help your colleague first.

Reviewer checklists

Template loop detected: Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Article namespace checklist

Image namespace checklist


Special:NewFiles logs all files as they are uploaded. This includes uploads over existing files. PageTriage and Special:NewPagesFeed do not work in this namespace. To mark a file as patrolled, use the "Mark this file version as patrolled" link that appears at the bottom right of the licensing section of unpatrolled files.

Check each for the following problems:

  • Copyright tag Check that an appropriate image copyright tag has been added. If not, leave a note on the contributor's talk page and tag the image with {{subst:nld}}.
  • Source The image description must say how the image was obtained, for example if the uploader took it himself. Tag unsourced images with {{subst:nsd}}.

For non-free files:

  • Check to see if the file meets the non-free content criteria. Common situations to watch out for:
    • Images used to illustrate living people, unless the person is in jail or a free image could otherwise not be created: notify the uploader and tag with {{subst:rfu|reason=As the person this image depicts is still alive, a free image could be taken}}.
    • Similarly, use {{subst:rfu}} for other replaceable images. Common examples include charts, graphs, tables, and maps (where the map is used to show something and is not itself discussed)
    • Make sure a fair use rationale exists for each use of the image. Remove the image from all non-mainspace pages. If the file was not uploaded extremely recently (a few hours), tag orphaned non-free files with {{subst:orfud}}.
    • If the upload is over an existing image, tag the page with {{subst:orfurrev}}.
      • If the new file is merely a higher-resolution version of the existing file, the upload should be reverted unless there is good reason not to.
    • Double-check that the copyright tag is appropriate for the image (i.e. {{Non-free logo}} should only be used on logos, etc.) If not, either fix the tag yourself or notify the uploader and apply {{db-f7}} for immediate deletion. Only do the latter in egregious scenarios, such as calling an entire song a sample.
    • If the source cited is Getty Images, a news agency, or other commercial stock photo agency, check to see if the image itself is being discussed in the article. If not, tag with {{db-f7}}.
  • If you are sure that the image and rationale are proper, append |image_has_rationale=yes to the copyright tag.

For free files:

  • If a source is cited other than the uploader, and there is no evidence of the license claimed at the website provided, tag it with {{subst:npd}} and notify the uploader.
  • Run a reverse image search to see if the image is a copyright violation. If it is, notify the uploader and tag with {{db-f9|url=}}. Remember that a blatant copyright violation requires that the image you find online be of the same or greater resolution than the uploaded version. If the file exists at lower resolution on many websites, or you have other doubts about authorship (professional quality, web resolution, missing EXIF data) consider sending it to WP:FFD.
  • If it is clearly an image for a userpage (i.e. a selfie), tag it with {{userspace file}} so it does not get transferred to Commons.
  • Only mark these files as patrolled if you are sure they are free.

Copyright is a serious matter. Do not mark files as patrolled if you have any doubt as to whether it is acceptable. This is especially true for complex situations such as freedom of panorama, copyright renewals, and non-US works.

Wikipedia namespace checklist

Common reasons for speedy deletion of new Wikipedia namespace pages:

  • G2: Pages consisting of test post. {{db-test}}
  • G6: Page unambiguously created in error. {{db-g6|rationale=page unambiguously created in error since (reason)}}

Note: The descriptions above are brief summaries of these speedy deletion criteria. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the exact criteria before tagging a page for speedy deletion. See WP:CSD.

Page specific check list:

  • Wikipedia:
  • Essay pages - (i) is it instead a strictly personal viewpoint about Wikipedia or does not contain enough advice or opinions (User essay); (ii) does it supplement or clarify communal consensus through impartiality (Information page) - (see WP:WES)
  • "Fun" pages - judge on a case by case basis; consider userfying
  • Wikipedia:Ambassadors -
  • Wikipedia:Articles for creation - Normally pages should be created under "Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation".
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion page - Is the nomination in the Articles for deletion page complete?- If someone else besides the AfD nom posted on the page, then the nomination likely is complete. If only the nom has posted 1. Check "What links here" - the article page should be linked and a Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/ page should be listed as (transclusion); 2. Was {{subst:afd2}} used to post the nomination (Step II. see WP:AFDHOWTO)? Fix these as needed.
  • Wikipedia:Featured list candidates -
  • Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates -
  • Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion - Check to see whether the page is transcluded
  • Wikipedia:Peer review - Check to see whether the page is transcluded
  • Wikipedia:Requests for feedback -
  • Wikipedia:School and university projects -
  • Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations - Check to see whether a sockpuppet created the page.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost - Signpost editors will usually remove any unneeded or bogus articles from this space
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject - Subpage proposals for WikiProjects sometimes need to be transcluded to a higher-up page. If only the noms post is on the page, check "What links here" to see if the page was transcluded.

General check list

  • Does the page qualify for speedy deletion? - If so, usually {{db-test}} will be the appropriate template to add to top of the page. Also, notify the page creator. Generally see WP:CSD.
  • Is the page in the wrong namespace (e.g. an article in Wikipedia namespace) - can simply be moved and then tag the redirect for speedy deletion using {{db-reason}} using the reason: Redirect left after a cross-namespace move - G6 Housekeeping. Notify the author of the original page of the cross-namespace move.
  • Does the page belong on Wikipedia? If you think the page qualifies for deletion, follow How to list pages for deletion at MfD. If an experienced editor posted the page, consider asking about the Wikipedia namespace page before listing it at MfD.
  • Is the page categorized? If the page is not assigned to any categories, add some appropriate categories to the bottom of the page. It is usually fairly easy to find at least one appropriate category.

Other issues

Stubs
  • Stubs are the beginnings of meaningful and encyclopedic articles but which need a little help:
  • Bold face the article title in the lead.
  • Link relevant terms.
  • [[]]MOS:OVERLINK|Overlinking]] - remove unnecessary internal links
  • Phrase the article in complete sentences, including the first.
  • Close up orphaned sentences into a.paragraphs
  • Place an appropriate stub notice at the end of the stub.
  • Inform the author of what you have done by using the message feature of the Curation tool.
Style

Try to fix any style problems yourself. If you cannot, add one or more specific cleanup tags for pages which need tidying up. In particular, the following tags are common:

  • {{cleanup|date=November 2024}} – for general problems
  • {{internallinks|TOPIC}} – for pages that need linking to other related topics.
  • {{unreferenced|article}} – for articles that conspicuously lack references

minor *Inform the author of what you have done by using the message feature of the Curation tool.

Orphans

Orphaned articles: Page Curation automatically highlights pages that have no internal links to other Wikipedia articles. Sometimes orphans result from a mistitled article (see above). It may be helpful to search for mentions in other articles.

Unsourced articles

Articles without sources Page Curation automatically highlights pages that have no sources. The best time to ask for sources is when an article creator is still online and logged in. Tag the article with an appropriate tag in Page Curation and leave a message for the creator.

Inform

Inform the author of what you have done by using the message feature of the Curation tool.

Moving new content to other projects

  • Dictionary definitions. These can be transwikied to Wiktionary or converted into disambiguation pages. Many may be redeemable as Wikipedia articles, if sufficiently refactored, rewritten, and expanded.
  • Primary source texts. These should be transwikied to Wikisource.
  • How-tos or instructional materials. In some cases, these can be transwikied to Wikibooks; however, it's often possible to turn these into meaningful articles by rewording the text to make it more descriptive and less prescriptive. Try to improve an article by adding some more material before resorting to moving it out of Wikipedia.
Tools

^

  • User:Ryan Vesey/sidebar.js puts a link in your sidebar direct to the New Pages Feed.
  • NPWatcher is a new-page monitoring and reporting tool for Windows. It also provides extensive deletion processing tools for admins.
  • Kissle is a program similar to NPWatcher for Windows.
  • RC patrol script permits rapid tagging of new pages with the relevant criteria for speedy deletion (i.e.: for articles that don't indicate the subject's significance, use "A7"). This tool isn't useful for new page patrol unless you have some of the CSDs committed to memory. However, it also gives non-admins tools for revert, filter, and popup, while using the (default) monobook skin.
  • The WikiProject Check Wikipedia script scans new pages on a daily basis, and passes them through a series of Wiki syntax checks. The result is listed as a series of reports of pages to fix.
  • WikiAlerter (beta) is a Windows program designed to aid users in tagging pages for deletion and patrolling new pages.
  • Special:Log Set the type of action to "Patrol" (default is "all logs") and add a user's name to see which pages the person has marked as patrolled.
  • Subject area patrol filter: Add importScript( "User:Fred Gandt/getUnpatrolledOfAlexNewArtBotResultsPages.js" ); to your account's common.js file, and then you can use the subject-specific lists at User:AlexNewArtBot to focus on specific content areas.
  • Twinkle is a user script that for New Page Review has been overhauled by Page Curation. It contains quick reverting, deletion, warning, and reporting features. It can be used to tag articles for speedy deletion, and when used by authorised page reviewers, it will mark the page as patrolled when applying tags. The script includes all of the most commonly used article tags, and makes sure that article creators are automatically notified of CSD, PROD, BLPPROD, and AfD tags.
  • New Page Patroller shows a box in the sidebar that loads a live feed updated every 5 seconds of the 10 newest articles.

Manually marking pages as patrolled

In some editing contexts, authorised editors will see a 'mark this page as patrolled' link. Otherwise, everything editors can do to help out with patrolling is most welcome. Be sure to inform the author of what you have done.

Essential further reading

Notes

  1. ^ See WP:OUTCOMES § SCHOOLS – this is not a policy or a guideline; it simply lists current accepted precedents and practices.
  2. ^ Do not confuse notability of a topic, with the very low bar necessary to assert importance or significance in the text. Notability assesses the merits of the subject to warrant an article based on evidence out in the world of substantive publication about the topic in reliable, secondary, independent sources, whereas, A7 looks exclusively to the current content. For that reason, notable subjects may be deleted under A7 based on their meager content, and articles that sufficiently assert importance in their text, may be on thoroughly non-notable subjects.
  3. ^ See WP:OUTCOMES § SCHOOLS – this is not a policy or a guideline; it simply lists current accepted precedents and practices.
  4. ^ Do not confuse notability of a topic, with the very low bar necessary to assert importance or significance in the text. Notability assesses the merits of the subject to warrant an article based on evidence out in the world of substantive publication about the topic in reliable, secondary, independent sources, whereas, A7 looks exclusively to the current content. For that reason, notable subjects may be deleted under A7 based on their meager content, and articles that sufficiently assert importance in their text, may be on thoroughly non-notable subjects.
Image namespace checklist


Special:NewFiles logs all files as they are uploaded. This includes uploads over existing files. PageTriage and Special:NewPagesFeed do not work in this namespace. To mark a file as patrolled, use the "Mark this file version as patrolled" link that appears at the bottom right of the licensing section of unpatrolled files.

Check each for the following problems:

  • Copyright tag Check that an appropriate image copyright tag has been added. If not, leave a note on the contributor's talk page and tag the image with {{subst:nld}}.
  • Source The image description must say how the image was obtained, for example if the uploader took it himself. Tag unsourced images with {{subst:nsd}}.

For non-free files:

  • Check to see if the file meets the non-free content criteria. Common situations to watch out for:
    • Images used to illustrate living people, unless the person is in jail or a free image could otherwise not be created: notify the uploader and tag with {{subst:rfu|reason=As the person this image depicts is still alive, a free image could be taken}}.
    • Similarly, use {{subst:rfu}} for other replaceable images. Common examples include charts, graphs, tables, and maps (where the map is used to show something and is not itself discussed)
    • Make sure a fair use rationale exists for each use of the image. Remove the image from all non-mainspace pages. If the file was not uploaded extremely recently (a few hours), tag orphaned non-free files with {{subst:orfud}}.
    • If the upload is over an existing image, tag the page with {{subst:orfurrev}}.
      • If the new file is merely a higher-resolution version of the existing file, the upload should be reverted unless there is good reason not to.
    • Double-check that the copyright tag is appropriate for the image (i.e. {{Non-free logo}} should only be used on logos, etc.) If not, either fix the tag yourself or notify the uploader and apply {{db-f7}} for immediate deletion. Only do the latter in egregious scenarios, such as calling an entire song a sample.
    • If the source cited is Getty Images, a news agency, or other commercial stock photo agency, check to see if the image itself is being discussed in the article. If not, tag with {{db-f7}}.
  • If you are sure that the image and rationale are proper, append |image_has_rationale=yes to the copyright tag.

For free files:

  • If a source is cited other than the uploader, and there is no evidence of the license claimed at the website provided, tag it with {{subst:npd}} and notify the uploader.
  • Run a reverse image search to see if the image is a copyright violation. If it is, notify the uploader and tag with {{db-f9|url=}}. Remember that a blatant copyright violation requires that the image you find online be of the same or greater resolution than the uploaded version. If the file exists at lower resolution on many websites, or you have other doubts about authorship (professional quality, web resolution, missing EXIF data) consider sending it to WP:FFD.
  • If it is clearly an image for a userpage (i.e. a selfie), tag it with {{userspace file}} so it does not get transferred to Commons.
  • Only mark these files as patrolled if you are sure they are free.

Copyright is a serious matter. Do not mark files as patrolled if you have any doubt as to whether it is acceptable. This is especially true for complex situations such as freedom of panorama, copyright renewals, and non-US works.

Wikipedia namespace checklist

Common reasons for speedy deletion of new Wikipedia namespace pages:

  • G2: Pages consisting of test post. {{db-test}}
  • G6: Page unambiguously created in error. {{db-g6|rationale=page unambiguously created in error since (reason)}}

Note: The descriptions above are brief summaries of these speedy deletion criteria. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the exact criteria before tagging a page for speedy deletion. See WP:CSD.

Page specific check list:

  • Wikipedia:
  • Essay pages - (i) is it instead a strictly personal viewpoint about Wikipedia or does not contain enough advice or opinions (User essay); (ii) does it supplement or clarify communal consensus through impartiality (Information page) - (see WP:WES)
  • "Fun" pages - judge on a case by case basis; consider userfying
  • Wikipedia:Ambassadors -
  • Wikipedia:Articles for creation - Normally pages should be created under "Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation".
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion page - Is the nomination in the Articles for deletion page complete?- If someone else besides the AfD nom posted on the page, then the nomination likely is complete. If only the nom has posted 1. Check "What links here" - the article page should be linked and a Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/ page should be listed as (transclusion); 2. Was {{subst:afd2}} used to post the nomination (Step II. see WP:AFDHOWTO)? Fix these as needed.
  • Wikipedia:Featured list candidates -
  • Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates -
  • Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion - Check to see whether the page is transcluded
  • Wikipedia:Peer review - Check to see whether the page is transcluded
  • Wikipedia:Requests for feedback -
  • Wikipedia:School and university projects -
  • Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations - Check to see whether a sockpuppet created the page.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost - Signpost editors will usually remove any unneeded or bogus articles from this space
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject - Subpage proposals for WikiProjects sometimes need to be transcluded to a higher-up page. If only the noms post is on the page, check "What links here" to see if the page was transcluded.

General check list

  • Does the page qualify for speedy deletion? - If so, usually {{db-test}} will be the appropriate template to add to top of the page. Also, notify the page creator. Generally see WP:CSD.
  • Is the page in the wrong namespace (e.g. an article in Wikipedia namespace) - can simply be moved and then tag the redirect for speedy deletion using {{db-reason}} using the reason: Redirect left after a cross-namespace move - G6 Housekeeping. Notify the author of the original page of the cross-namespace move.
  • Does the page belong on Wikipedia? If you think the page qualifies for deletion, follow How to list pages for deletion at MfD. If an experienced editor posted the page, consider asking about the Wikipedia namespace page before listing it at MfD.
  • Is the page categorized? If the page is not assigned to any categories, add some appropriate categories to the bottom of the page. It is usually fairly easy to find at least one appropriate category.

Other issues

Stubs
  • Stubs are the beginnings of meaningful and encyclopedic articles but which need a little help:
  • Bold face the article title in the lead.
  • Link relevant terms.
  • [[]]MOS:OVERLINK|Overlinking]] - remove unnecessary internal links
  • Phrase the article in complete sentences, including the first.
  • Close up orphaned sentences into a.paragraphs
  • Place an appropriate stub notice at the end of the stub.
  • Inform the author of what you have done by using the message feature of the Curation tool.
Style

Try to fix any style problems yourself. If you cannot, add one or more specific cleanup tags for pages which need tidying up. In particular, the following tags are common:

  • {{cleanup|date=November 2024}} – for general problems
  • {{internallinks|TOPIC}} – for pages that need linking to other related topics.
  • {{unreferenced|article}} – for articles that conspicuously lack references

minor *Inform the author of what you have done by using the message feature of the Curation tool.

Orphans

Orphaned articles: Page Curation automatically highlights pages that have no internal links to other Wikipedia articles. Sometimes orphans result from a mistitled article (see above). It may be helpful to search for mentions in other articles.

Unsourced articles

Articles without sources Page Curation automatically highlights pages that have no sources. The best time to ask for sources is when an article creator is still online and logged in. Tag the article with an appropriate tag in Page Curation and leave a message for the creator.

Inform

Inform the author of what you have done by using the message feature of the Curation tool.

Moving new content to other projects

  • Dictionary definitions. These can be transwikied to Wiktionary or converted into disambiguation pages. Many may be redeemable as Wikipedia articles, if sufficiently refactored, rewritten, and expanded.
  • Primary source texts. These should be transwikied to Wikisource.
  • How-tos or instructional materials. In some cases, these can be transwikied to Wikibooks; however, it's often possible to turn these into meaningful articles by rewording the text to make it more descriptive and less prescriptive. Try to improve an article by adding some more material before resorting to moving it out of Wikipedia.
Tools

^

  • User:Ryan Vesey/sidebar.js puts a link in your sidebar direct to the New Pages Feed.
  • NPWatcher is a new-page monitoring and reporting tool for Windows. It also provides extensive deletion processing tools for admins.
  • Kissle is a program similar to NPWatcher for Windows.
  • RC patrol script permits rapid tagging of new pages with the relevant criteria for speedy deletion (i.e.: for articles that don't indicate the subject's significance, use "A7"). This tool isn't useful for new page patrol unless you have some of the CSDs committed to memory. However, it also gives non-admins tools for revert, filter, and popup, while using the (default) monobook skin.
  • The WikiProject Check Wikipedia script scans new pages on a daily basis, and passes them through a series of Wiki syntax checks. The result is listed as a series of reports of pages to fix.
  • WikiAlerter (beta) is a Windows program designed to aid users in tagging pages for deletion and patrolling new pages.
  • Special:Log Set the type of action to "Patrol" (default is "all logs") and add a user's name to see which pages the person has marked as patrolled.
  • Subject area patrol filter: Add importScript( "User:Fred Gandt/getUnpatrolledOfAlexNewArtBotResultsPages.js" ); to your account's common.js file, and then you can use the subject-specific lists at User:AlexNewArtBot to focus on specific content areas.
  • Twinkle is a user script that for New Page Review has been overhauled by Page Curation. It contains quick reverting, deletion, warning, and reporting features. It can be used to tag articles for speedy deletion, and when used by authorised page reviewers, it will mark the page as patrolled when applying tags. The script includes all of the most commonly used article tags, and makes sure that article creators are automatically notified of CSD, PROD, BLPPROD, and AfD tags.
  • New Page Patroller shows a box in the sidebar that loads a live feed updated every 5 seconds of the 10 newest articles.

Manually marking pages as patrolled

In some editing contexts, authorised editors will see a 'mark this page as patrolled' link. Otherwise, everything editors can do to help out with patrolling is most welcome. Be sure to inform the author of what you have done.

Essential further reading

Notes