Articles for Improvement (AFI) is where Wikipedians discuss how to improve low quality articles. Articles are listed for at least seven days, after which the nomination may be closed; although they may remain listed for longer provided improvement is being carried out and until consensus on improvement is reached. During the period that articles are listed, users may offer suggestions on how to improve the article, including any possible sources, or may directly edit the article.

The process is designed to support the development and expansion of articles which do not meet the deletion criteria at WP:DEL-REASON, but are in need of care, especially those which have had cleanup and maintenance tags for over a month, yet are still awaiting improvement. The process follows the advice at Wikipedia:Before and the policy notes at WP:DEL-CONTENT to work to improve an article rather than list it at AfD.

How to contribute

AFIs are a place for rational discussion of how an article could be improved to meet Wikipedia’s article guidelines and policies. To participate, the user just needs to edit the article's entry and provide useful comments on how to improve the article.

There are a few basic practices that most Wikipedians use in AFI discussions:

• Start your comments or recommendations by writing Comments and sign them by adding ~~~~ to the end. If you are responding to another editor, put your comment directly below theirs, making sure it is indented (using multiple *s).
• Please disclose whether you are the article's creator, a substantial or minor contributor, or if you otherwise have a vested interest in the article; WP:AVOIDCOI.
• Please have a look at the article before making a recommendation. Do not base your recommendation solely on the information supplied by the nominator. To understand the situation, it may also help to look at the history of the article. Also, please read the earlier comments and recommendations. They may contain relevant arguments and further useful information.

What must be avoided

The following are practices that should be avoided:

• The debate is not a discussion wether the article should be deleted or not, but how it might be improved.
• The debate is not a vote; please make recommendations on the course of action to be taken, sustained by arguments.
• You can explain your earlier recommendation in response to others, but do not repeat your recommendation on a new bulleted line.
• Nomination already implies that the nominator recommends improvement (unless indicated otherwise), and nominators should refrain from repeating this recommendation on a separate bulleted line.
• Do not make conflicting recommendations; if you change your mind, modify your original recommendation rather than adding a new one. The recommended way of doing this is to use strike-through by enclosing a retracted statement between <s> and </s> after the *.

When consensus is reached

Consensus to close the nomination is reached when an user agrees that the article has been substantially improved [or that after 7-14 days, there is not main interest into improving the article]. This consensus is showcased through a voting process held on the nomination page, where participants may vote *Ready followed by their signature if they believe that improvement has been done. After all users agree, an uninvolved user or administrator may close the discussion and archive the page.

Close proceeding

To close an AFI nomination, the closing user/admin may follow these steps:

1. Add {{Archive top}} and {{Archive bottom}} to the nomination page.
2. Add {{AFI Multi|ARTICLENAME|DATE}} to the article's talk page.
3. Remove the nomination from the "current nominations" section below.
4. Add the nomination to the monthly log af archived nominations.