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Welcome!

Basic flow chart

A flowchart detailing a step by step process of fully reviewing a new article. Designed with new reviewers in mind, to assist in reviewing difficult or complex cases.

Thank you for your interest in becoming a New Page Reviewer. Reviewing new pages is one of the most important maintenance tasks 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 thorough knowledge of deletion and notability guidelines. Once you've read this tutorial, please consider applying for the permission.

New Page Review is a vital function 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. Only New Page Reviewers can mark pages as 'Reviewed' or 'Patrolled' which releases them for indexing by search engines. Any reviewing action done through the page curation toolbar by a reviewer marks an article as reviewed (adding maintenance tags, nominating for deletion, etc.). If you don't want the article marked as reviewed, you can unreview it by opening the review panel and clicking "Mark as unreviewed".

If you are new to New Page Reviewing, it is essential that you also read Page Curation Help, view its video tour and read WP:FIELD. Reviewing needs a near-admin knowledge of deletion and notability policies. Use the flowchart on the right until you become comfortable and knowledgeable with all of the aspects of reviewing new articles.

It is important to review correctly and seriously. Because of the high volume of articles created, even a few percentage points more of erroneous or bitey reviewing can each day adversely affect hundreds of articles and deter many new users from staying on and becoming regular editors. It is critical that editors review with care and diligence. This is not a contest and there is no deadline.

Reviewing is entirely voluntary and carries no obligation.

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. 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 Wikimedia 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. New page reviewers have the option of using a user script that combines the two main Page Curation features, namely the Special:NewPagesFeed and the curation toolbar. The old Special:NewPages feed can be accessed using this script.

The NPP Browser is a tool that lets you search all currently unreviewed pages by keyword or category. It is extremely useful for focusing in on pages you feel comfortable reviewing without having to scroll through the Special:NewPagesFeed.

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 Page Reviewer Talk, 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

Play media

Watch a quick video tour

New Pages Feed screenshot

The Page Curation process is for identifying articles which do not meet the criteria for inclusion and to tag them for attention. The most critical problems are vandalism, obvious hoaxes, copyright violations , and defamatory material about living persons, followed closely by pages that exploit Wikipedia for money (think spam/promotion). Other pages need to be deleted for other reasons but may be less urgent – unpatrolled pages are not indexed by Google or other search engines.

A tool developed by a user enables reviewers to move to the Draft namespace any new articles that, while not being suitable for immediate publication, might be accepted if the creator has more time for development. The tool, Move to Draft, should be installed by reviewers in their .js page. Note: This tool is to be used with discretion, it is not a catchall for not knowing what to do with a new page.

Reviewers are encouraged to make frequent use of the existing message to creator tool. It is essential that new creators be encouraged to continue with their acceptable new articles.

Triage

New Page Review is essentially the first (and only) firewall against totally unwanted content and the place to broadly accept articles that may not be perfect but do not need to be deleted. Reviewers are not obligated to mentor new users or complete their articles, but may wish to direct new users to the Teahouse question forum, help desk and Articles for Creation for assistance. Wikipedia:Your first article, Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia, the Wikipedia:Tutorial, The Wikipedia Adventure, and other help pages are also available. When drafts are approved at AfC and moved to the mainspace they will be checked again at Curation. Some regular reviewers from the AfC team also have New Page Reviewer flag because they have related expertise.

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 stop the creation of a good faith article and drive away a new contributor.

Reviewers must fully understand Wikipedia's deletion policy and remember it. A page can be speedy deleted only if it meets one of the strict criteria. From the policy:

Before nominating a page for speedy deletion, consider whether it could be improved, reduced to a stub, merged or redirected elsewhere, reverted to a better previous revision, or handled in some other way. A page is eligible for speedy deletion only if all of its revisions are also eligible. Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criterion/criteria the page meets, and should notify the page creator and any major contributors.

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.

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 serious cases, the creator of a new page may need to be blocked to prevent further disruption 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 in a good position to detect policy breaches such as sockpuppetry, promotion, serial copyright violations, undisclosed paid editing, and child protection issues. Learn about these policies and what to do. For example, check the content of new articles for inline external spam links.

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 PROD or CSD tag. You may also wish to set your Watchlist preferences to display all pages that you edit.

Monitoring the system

A New Page Reviewer is the second set of eyes. Remember that page tagging can still be carried out by any user. Although they don't have access to the features of the Page Curation Toolbar, even IP users can tag pages. Tagged pages remain listed in the feed until patrolled by a reviewer, enabling New Page Reviewers to identify and isolate poor patrolling. Use the 'Unreview' feature for good faith errors and see the templates that can be used to encourage users to do less demanding maintenance tasks until they have more experience. Generally, template 'Stop NPP' is friendly enough to be perceived as supportive rather than assertive. In persistent cases however, it will be necessary to escalate through the warning levels. At Level 4, a block is usually appropriate at the very next tagging. Preferably notify an admin. Only post a case at WP:ANI if no admin is available to stop a disruptive spree. See: User Warnings.

Tools

• Edit filter 867 tracks large creations made in one edit by inexperienced editors. It is useful for review of potential commissioned articles.
• NPP Browser. This browser allows you to directly search articles for terms, or to view new articles by keyword groupings. It enables reviewers to patrol new articles according to their preferred areas of knowledge or interest.
  Additional useful tools are listed in the green collapsed section below.

Gadgets and user scripts

Gadgets can be installed via the 'preferences' link in the top right of the page, and User Scripts must be installed at your your common.js page (instructions).

Gadgets

• Twinkle
• Hotcat
• Moremenu

Core User Scripts

• User:Bradv/Scripts/Superlinks.js^(info) – adds links at the top right of each page to quickly view windowed history, talk, page logs, etc. Note the link to the NPP flowchart on unreviewed new pages, which opens in a sub-window and contains clickable links.
• User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js^(info) – adds a link to Special:NewPagesFeed at the top of the page near 'sandbox'.
• User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/deletionFinder.js – adds links next to article titles to indicate when an article was previously deleted.
• User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js^(info) – tool for easily moving pages to draft.
• User:DannyS712/copyvio-check.js^(info) – Automatically checks the copyvio percentage of new pages in the background and displays this info with a link to the report in the 'info' panel of the Page curation toolbar.
• User:Evad37/rater.js^(info) – tool for quickly adding Wikiproject templates to talk pages.
• User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel.js^(info) – tool for easily selecting revisions for copyright violation tagging.

Other Useful Scripts

• User:TheJosh/Scripts/NewPagePatrol.js^(info) or User:Bradv/Scripts/Powerbar.js^(info) (whichever you prefer) – Adds a simplified on-screen new pages feed on the left or right of the page (respectively).
• User:Danski454/stubsearch.js^(info) – tool for stub tagging with hierarchy based stub searching.
• User:Bradv/SearchLinks.js – adds links to various search engines to quickly look for sourcing in the left side toolbox.
• User:Enterprisey/delsort.js^(info) – tool for sorting AfD discussions.
• User:DannyS712/logs.js^(info) – Add an easy link to a page's logs, to check for previous deletions, move-to-drafts, etc.
• User:DannyS712/New pages feed.js^(info) – Add an easy link to the new pages feed, directly below the "recent changes" link in Vector.
• User:Insertcleverphrasehere/copyvios.js – adds a link to the 'more' menu that opens Earwigs copyright violation tool in a new tab.

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 be 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 manually add tags and 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. Likewise, if you use the page curation toolbar to add tags, you can manually unpatrol the article after.

Tag bombing: Do not place multiple tags that essentially concern the same or similar issues. One tag of a kind is sufficient to draw attention to the article and placing more than three tags at the top of a page is often seen as disruptive. In cases where many tags apply place only the most important tags.

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.

Top level areas of concern

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. Please read also the dedicated special policy on this CSD criterion at WP:ATP.

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).

G11 Conflict of Interest and Paid advocacy (artspam, advertising), and other forms of promotion. Reviewers need to acquire special skills to detect these pages. Simply removing promotional content may leave a stub that is still a disallowed page (WP:NOTYELLOW). See below for details and the essential reading. See also Orangemoody for the extent of these serious issues.

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 typically kept if they are proven to exist. Middle schools and primary (elementary) schools are generally redirected (per policy) 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.

Copyright violations (WP:COPYVIO)

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 not 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.

It is not a copyright violation to copy material that is in the public domain or has a compatible license if the material is properly attributed. (Templates are available but are not required.)

It is important to remember that any text that is a copyright violation should be removed from the article and the revisions deleted, even if the text doesn't qualify for G12 deletion.

Hallmarks of copying include:

• The addition of a large portion of text in a single or few edits – especially when coupled with other indicia listed below
• 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 or 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. Use filters in the page curation feed to see if any edits on a particular page has been flagged as a copyright violation.
2. 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.
3. Compare the article's content with the references and external links and look for copy/pastes or close paraphrasing.
4. 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.
5. 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. Positive results too must be checked by a human, including to see whether the source is in the public domain or bears a suitable free copyright license. This user script can be added to create a link in your tools that will run the current page through Earwig's tool.
6. Some copyright violations are from PDF files. To read them you will need to open them in your browser or download them.
7. Although less likely to be relevant for new pages than existing articles, it is important to understand "backwards copyvios" – that Wikipedia content gets quickly picked up and duplicated by outside sources, and false-positives may be triggered by searches finding content copied from the Wikipedia article. The Wayback Machine is an invaluable tool in sorting these.

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).
• Note: for copyright violations where the content is copied from multiple sources, you can put more than one URL into twinkle, but page curation only has a single field, to get around this, simply put a space and write "and" between the URLs and enter them both in the single field.
• 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. if you are an administrator, revision delete the span of edits containing the copyright violations, and if you are not, 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}} Please be careful to search for the oldid and not the diff number when requesting revision deletion.

• If you are a non-administrator, User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel is a userscript that semi-automates the requesting of revision deletion and helps speed up the process.
• 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), paid editing

Many articles are created by users with a conflict of interest in editing, resulting in a tendency to favour the topic. Such users find it very difficult to write in a neutral and balanced manner. For example, people attempting to write about themselves, their business, band, family, friends, clients, employers, favourite charity, or anyone they have a financial or personal relationship with. Paid editing is a subset of COI editing and comes in three 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 insert an article into Wikipedia. The third kind are users who sell a service to write Wikipedia pages about people and organizations.

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 one or a 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

The WMF Terms of Use require all paid editors to disclose their "employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which they receive, or expect to receive, compensation". Disclosure requirements are casually ignored by the majority of paid editors. We can seek deletion of articles containing blatant advertising or promotion of individuals; users with corporate names can be blocked on that basis. You can tag articles for COI for added scrutiny and take other indirect actions explained below; the only direct action we can take to address paid editing is to enforce disclosure compliance.

If you have a good faith basis to suspect a user of paid editing, add to the user's talk page the template:

• {{subst: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.
• {{subst:uw-paid2}} if they continue to edit without responding
• {{subst:uw-paid3}} if they still don't respond
• {{subst:uw-paid4}} if the final notice is ignored, and seek a block at WP:AIV or contact an admin directly.

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 page meets CSD G11, tag it for deletion using {{db-g11}} / {{db-spam}}.
2. If the page meets CSD A7, tag it for deletion using {{db-A7}} / {{db-corp}}, or other applicable A7 deletion tag.
3. Mark the page 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 single, compact 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 normal Google, 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 is clearly promotional), check whether the creator's name violates WP:CORPNAME. If it does, you might post to their talk page: {{subst:Uw-username|it appears to unambiguously represent the name of a company, group, institution or product; see WP:CORPNAME}}. 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): {{subst:welcome-COI}} and {{subst: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

Criteria for speedy deletion (CSD)

Speedy deletion candidates. (CSD). Read and consign to memory the major speedy deletion criteria. In most cases you can only use the fixed criteria; there is no catchall – so if you are not sure what criterion to use, but are sure the article should be speedied, leave the page for another reviewer. Do not be too hasty to use CSD A1 (no context) and CSD A3 (no content); wait at least 15 minutes to give time to the creator to add content. 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, a 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. Any number of tags can be placed together using {{Db-multiple|G11|A7|etc.}} The Curation tool places a deletion notification on the creator's talk page. If you are not using Page Curation, nor using Twinkle, copy and paste the warning notification template to the creator's talk page that you will always find displayed in the body of the deletion template you used.

Tag removal

If the article creator removes a CSD tag, restore it and warn them on their talk page using the warning series starting at {{subst:uw-speedy1}}.

When tagging pages for speedy deletion do not mark the page as reviewed. CSDed pages should be left 'unreviewed' so that in the case the author inappropriate removes the tag, it will be sent back to the new page feed to be checked again (previously, when CSDs were marked as 'reviewed', these articles could fall through the cracks if the original reviewer didn't check up on them). Similarly, if the CSD is declined by an admin or other user, it should also be re-reviewed; declined CSD articles may be candidates for AfD instead.

Redirect

The deletion policy and its associated guideline clearly emphasise that not all unsuitable articles must be deleted. In many cases a redirect may be more appropriate. Redirects are not contentious. See a classic example of the templates to use. More templates are listed at the R template index.

Proposed 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 anyone—including the article creator, and even without any explanation for the removal or attempt to address the issue(s)—must not be restored. If you believe the article should still be deleted, you should nominate it for removal through a deletion discussion at AfD.

When tagging pages for proposed deletion do not mark the page as reviewed. PRODed pages should be left 'unreviewed' so that in the case the author removes the tag, it will be sent back to the new page feed to be checked again (previously, when PRODs were marked as 'reviewed', these articles could fall through the cracks if the original reviewer didn't check up on them). Contested PRODs should also be re-reviewed as they may be candidates for AfD instead.

Proposed deletion of biographies of living people (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 {{subst:uw-blpprod1}} warning to the user's talk page.

When tagging pages for proposed deletion do not mark the page as reviewed. BLPPRODed pages should be left 'unreviewed' so that in the case the author removes the tag, it will be sent back to the new page feed to be checked again (previously, when PRODs were marked as 'reviewed', these articles could fall through the cracks if the original reviewer didn't check up on them). Contested BLPPRODs should also be re-reviewed as the tag may have been removed without adding sources, and even if sources have been added, they may be candidates for AfD instead.

Articles for deletion (AfD)

If neither the strict speedy deletion criteria nor PROD/BLPPROD are applicable, but you think an article should still be considered for deletion, you can nominate it for removal on its merits through a deletion discussion held by the community at AfD. Outside of ocassional, early "snow" closings, Articles for Deletion discussions are held over a minimum seven-day period (longer if relisted), after which the discussion is closed (usually by an administrator) – as kept, merged, redirected, incubated, renamed/moved to another title, userfied to a user subpage, or deleted per the deletion policy.

• Include in your nomination rationale a link to the applicable policy and/or guideline under which you are proposing deletion
• If you are AfDing a dePRODed article, mention this in your rationale: DePRODed by creator without addressing the issue(s). Concern was:.......
• You should mention in your nomination rationale what attempts you made to look for sources and the results of your efforts.

Most AfD nominations focus on notability (existence, or not, of reliable, secondary, independent sources for a topic), though AfDs focused on verifiability, original research and What Wikipedia Is Not issues also occur. 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.

You must read and follow WP:BEFORE before nominating an article at AfD. The minimum searches expected (to the extent they are appropriate for the subject) are 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 or using this script to have an "Search Google" link show up. As a supplement to the above searches, a narrow Wikipedia Reference Search (WP:WRS) can be performed using this script.

Curation toolbar bug

The curation toolbar's AfD nomination does not work correctly if the page had been previously nominated for deletion. You can use Twinkle as an alternative.

Tag removal

If the article creator or another user removes the AfD tag, restore it and warn them on their their talk page using the warning series starting at {{subst:uw-afd1}}.

Unlike CSDs and PRODs, you can mark AfDed pages as 'reviewed' after tagging them, as their fate will be decided via discussion and they can't fall through the cracks if tags are removed (a bot will restore them so long as the AfD discussion is open).

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 manually. An explanatory note and link to the draft should be left on the article creator's talk page. The resulting redirect should be suppressed if you have the page mover user right, or tagged for deletion with CSD R2. The MoveToDraft script is a useful tool for automating this process.

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

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

Foreign language pages (WP:Notenglish)

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

If you are not sure what language an article is written in, Google Translate will generally auto-detect the language. If unsuccessful, if it looks like Arabic but the translation makes no sense, try Persian (Farsi) or Urdu; if an Asian language, it may be Chinese, Japanese, Korean or others, so try a number of them. Remember also that many east European languages use Cyrillic, so it might be Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian or a host of others. If you know or can guess the language, place the {{notenglish}} template, e.g., {{notenglish|Spanish}}. This 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 thus whether it can be speedy tagged without bothering to list it at WP:Pages needing translation. You can paste a Google translation to the article talk page, but not on the article main page.

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 {{subst: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 its 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 but must, rather, be moved to a new title using the "move page" function. This preserves the page history, which is required to be maintained under our copyright licenses. Especially where you have not requested speedy deletion of a new page, moving it to a more appropriate title is an important patrolling task. Your move will automatically create a redirect. If the prior name, now a redirect, was an implausible typo or misnomer, request its deletion using {{Db-r3}} / {{Db-redirtypo}} / {{Db-redirmisnomer}}. Otherwise, it is fine to remain. There are technical limitations that may restrict you from moving to a better title, such as where the title is protected from creation, or already exists and cannot be moved over a redirect. In such cases, ask for a technical move or, if potentially controversial, see Wikipedia:Requested moves for more information.

In order to understand whether an article title is or is not appropriate, and what title a page should be moved to, please familiarize yourself with Wikipedia:Article titles. This can be a complex area. In summary of titling issues commonly encountered with new pages:

1. The common names section of the policy provides that topics are generally given their common name – the name that is most commonly used for the topic, as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources.
2. The precision and disambiguation section of the policy provides that usually, titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that. We only include parenthetical disambiguation (a title like Jane Doe (economist)) when there is an existing Wikipedia article on a topic with an identical or confusingly similar name. See also the disambiguation policy.
3. The WP:TITLEFORMAT section of the policy provides that titles take sentence case – proper nouns are capitalized, and other words that would not be in running text, are not.
4. We generally do not include honorifics in titles (Sir, Dame, The Most Noble, Saint, CH, etc.), nor educational degrees, certifications or social social titles (PhD, Esq., Dr. Doctor, Professor, etc.). In names of companies, we generally do not include Inc. Corp. Ltd. etc. – except where they are needed for natural disambiguation.
5. Using an ALL CAPS title is a common mistake seen at new pages: We capitalize acronyms (NASA, FAQ, SQL) – except when the acronym is no longer typically treated as an acronym but was originally ("Laser", "Scuba") – and ignore all pure caps stylization [(Carquest (not: CARQUEST) (Ridgid (not: RIDGID)], unless the capitalized part of the title is pronounced by each letter (ATI Technologies, EVGA Corporation). We ignore most other matters of trademark stylization: Pink (not: P!nk) Toys "R" Us (not: Toys Я Us).
6. Where a title should be displayed as italicized (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles#Italics), italics will be automatically placed by any infobox you add to the page if it's dedicated to the type of topic (e.g. {{infobox album}} for articles on albums). If not placing a dedicated infobox, you can italicize the display of the entire title by placing at the top of the page {{Italic title}}. If only part of the title should be italicized, use the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} magic word, e.g. {{DISPLAYTITLE:Lorem ''ipsum'' dolor}}

Addressing cut-and-paste moves. Finding they cannot change a typo in the title, or being unaware of redirects and wanting a topic found at another title, new users sometimes create new pages with the content of existing articles – 'cut-and-paste moves'. Doing so severs the edit history, required under copyright. In such situations, request deletion using {{Db-a10|article=Existing article title}} / {{Db-same|article=Existing article title}}. Though these templates have their own warnings, separately warn the user using {{subst:uw-c&pmove}}. In the rare situation that the user has added significant content to the copy they posted that is worth merging, list the page for a history merge (note: not the same as a merge) at WP:SPLICE.

Duplicate articles with separate origins. If you come upon an article on a duplicate topic but that has a separate origin (not copied from the existing article, addressed above), this also can be asked to be deleted under CSD A10. However, here, if the article has content that warrants merging, perform a merge (do not ask for a history merge) and redirect to the existing article. Be sure to provide mandatory copyright attribution when you do so. See WP:MERGETEXT.

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. You can check similar articles for potentially relevant categories. The Hotcat gadget can help in adding or changing categories.

If the article is a stub, then tag it as such. You can use the generic {{stub}} tag, but consider choosing a more specific one, like {{England-school-stub}}. More information is available at Stub types, but don't spend too much time attempting to find the right tag; there are dedicated stub sorters at WikProject Stub Sorting who can frequently figure out how to sort them quickly. User:Danski454/stubsearch is a script available to easily find stub tags.

WikiProject Sorting

Ensuring that Talk pages are tagged with relevant WikiProjects is an important way to get additional eyes on new articles and it can help get interested editors involved in expanding stubs and in copy editing and fact checking. You can add WikiProjects either manually or using a script. Evad37's Rater is one current tool, and another, no longer actively developed one, is Kephir's Rater.

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, post a welcome template to their talk page, such as {{subst:welcome}} or {{subst:welcomeg}} or, for IPs specifically, {{subst:welcome-anon}} or {{subst:Anonwelcomeg}}, 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 {{subst: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). Writers unfamiliar with Wikipedia guidelines should be accorded at least 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 {{subst:uw-hasty}}. The template {{hasty|one hour after creation UTM}} 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 their talk page, pointing them to Help:Maintenance template removal (WP:MTR), which is dedicated to explaining the process of addressing and removing maintenance tags and including that anyone can remove them (except for AFD and CSD tags) after the problems have been addressed (or if they were truly added in 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. All New Page Reviewers 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.

Incorrect CSD tagging: inform the creator, instruct the patroller:
Incorrect CSD tagging can be harmful to the project. Vast numbers of new pages are and should be deleted. However, among the cross-section of people who manage to create, in their first edits, articles that should not be deleted, will be a higher concentration of those who are likely to become valuable editors – if they can be retained. Incorrect speedy tagging is one way such people may be driven away.

If an incorrect CSD criterion has been applied, change it manually for the correct one. If no CSD basis applies, decline the CSD and then notify the creator of the article of your removal and that the page is no longer nominated for speedy deletion, using {{subst:Declinedsd}}, so that the stinging effect of the previous and incorrect notification (assuming they were notified of the CSD tagging), will be greatly lessened.

In either case, please take the time to explain to the newpages patroller what you have done and why the basis for their tagging was incorrect. Since new pages patrolling is a vital task, teaching people to do it more effectively, while avoiding biting, is likewise vital. The template {{Sdd4}} provides a friendly, guided way to inform a new pages patroller of the reason their tagging was incorrect. The template automatically fills in a description of the criterion based on what CSD basis you supply that was incorrectly applied, and provides model suggestions of language you can use for various common errors in tagging, while allowing you to tailor the message. See its documentation.

The CSD helper is a good script for declining CSD tagging. It can remove speedy deletion template from a page and inform the tagger of the removal quickly and easily. It also includes an option to change the CSD tag to a proposed deletion tag.

If you notice a patroller making frequent errors, tagging too 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

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.
• Overlinking – remove unnecessary internal links.
• Phrase the article in complete sentences, including the first sentence.
• Close up orphaned sentences into existing paragraphs.
• Place an appropriate stub notice at the end of a 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 (use {{multiple issues}}, if possible, rather than each tag separately):

• {{cleanup|date=April 2019}} – for general problems
• {{Underlinked|date=April 2019}} – for pages that need linking to other related topics.
• {{Unreferenced|date=April 2019}} and {{Refimprove|date=April 2019}} – respectively, for articles that conspicuously lack any references, or whose references are insufficient.
• 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.

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. Do not mark pages with attack titles as patrolled, as this leaves an additional publicly-visible record of the name.

Redirects converted to articles

If a redirect or blanked page is converted to an article, it will be marked as unreviewed and placed in the new pages feed. This is to avoid people creating redirects for inappropriate pages and later converting them into articles to avoid review. If you see an old page (such as one from 2005 or 2016) it is likely that it was recently converted from a redirect. In these cases, you should check the page history, and if the page is not appropriate as an article, restore the redirect and notify the person who created the article. If you are reverted and you still believe the article is inappropriate, you should list it at Articles for Deletion. Redirects that are currently listed at Redirects for Discussion should simply be marked as reviewed.

Essential further reading

Related further reading

Reviewers are far more often in direct contact with article creators than most other editors working in the Wikipedia 'back office'. Good communications are therefore essential.

• Help:Using talk pages – How to use talk pages (video guide).
• Wikipedia:Don't lose the thread – Using different talk pages
• Article Deletion – A concise guide for new users whose articles have been deleted
• Noticeboards – All about noticeboards and which one to use.

Notes