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The purpose of reviewing new pages

New Page Patrol is equally responsible for finding articles which do not follow Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and for supporting and nurturing new editors. Particular focus is given to articles which may be eligible for speedy deletion, particularly if they might be obvious hoaxes, copyright violations, defamatory material about living persons, pages that exploit Wikipedia for money (think spam, promotion, and undisclosed paid editing). 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 for 90 days.

Reviewers will be working with editors of a wide range of skills and motivations. Excellent communication is an essential part of the new page patrol process. Reviewers should make use of the curation toolbar to post messages to the talk page, provide informative edit summaries, and otherwise appropriately engage with other editors. Reviewers are encouraged to make frequent use of the existing message to creator tool. It is essential that good faith new creators be encouraged to continue creating articles and editing Wikipedia.

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 by new page patrollers in many instances.

Triage

New page review is the first and best firewall against totally unwanted content and the place to accept articles that may not be perfect but do not need to be deleted.

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.

It is often helpful to review the oldest pages in the NPP queue, rather than the newest, as these may have even been indexed by search engines. When reviewing from the back of the queue, you may come across pages that were created long ago but that recently were changed from being a redirect to an article (or vice versa). These articles pose a distinct challenge, as they are often the result of edit wars or other forms of tendentious editing. You can find a guide to additional concerns and suggestions related to these types of pages here.

Care

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. Outside these exceptions, an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. Remember articles have up to 90 days to be reviewed before they become part of a backlog.

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. Many of these topics are covered in more detail on this page.

Monitoring the system

Other editors, particularly those that are interested in fighting vandalism, also regularly frequent newly created articles to tag articles for maintenance or deletion. Although they don't have access to the features of the Page Curation Toolbar, all editors, 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. If you find inappropriate new page patrolling, you can use the template {{Stop NPP}} as a supportive ask. In persistent cases however, it will be necessary to escalate through the warning levels and might need administrator attention at a place like ANI or by getting help on the NPP discussion page.

Tools

There are many useful tools available to make doing NPP easier. You can find many of them on the resources page or linked throughout this page. The most important tool is the page curation toolbar, which appears on all pages in the new pages feed. It contains the actual button to mark a page as reviewed. It also contains an information summary about the page and its creator, tools for tagging articles with maintenance tags, and a tool to send barnstars and other nice things to editors that have worked on the article. Note: the deletion and maintenance template portions of the toolbar have multiple known bugs; Twinkle is suggested as a more reliable tool. A copyright violation detector can be added to the toolbar with this user script.

Special:NewPagesFeed

Special:NewPagesFeed, available as a link with this script, 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. There is also a bot created list classified by subject, along with a short excerpt of the article.

Copyright violations (WP:COPYVIO)

Copying material without the permission of the copyright holder from sources that are not public domain or compatibly licensed (unless it's a brief quotation used in accordance with Wikipedia's non-free content policy and guideline) is likely to be a copyright violation. Content on other Wikimedia projects is free content, and may be copied, subject to attribution statements that are part of Wikipedia's licensing terms.

Wikimedia projects

All content contributed to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-SA), and may be reused and built upon by anyone. This includes copying material from one Wikipedia article to another, or translating material from another language Wikipedia. Wikipedia's licensing requires that attribution be given to all users involved in creating and altering the content of a page. This requirement is fulfilled by adding an attribution statement to the edit summary, for all copied or translated material.

If you notice an article containing a translation from another Wikipedia and there is no attribution in an edit summary, you should add one. You may use this model:

NOTE: The previous edit of 22:31, October 32, 2020‎, contains content translated from the French Wikipedia page at [[:fr:Exact name of French page]]; see its history for attribution.

This is per Wikipedia's licensing which requires such attribution. For further details, please see Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia#Repairing insufficient attribution.

Other sources

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, 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 criteria listed below
• Single reference articles, or ones with large sections of text without inline references
• Articles with text that seems too good to be true
• Articles whose text resembles that of a news report, 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. Copyright violations can also come in the form of machine translated text from sources; these can either be manually checked by reading the translated source, or pasting the text into a text comparison website such as Copyleaks.
8. 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. If needed, look for organic development of content over multiple edits by combing though the diffs in the page history.

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. You may use a script 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.

What not to do:

• Note that moving an article with a copyright violation to Draft space is not an option. See section § Drafts below.

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 submitted by users with low edit counts. Such articles are often patrolled as okay by inexperienced patrollers, but they 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. Note that sometimes we do get articles by people who sit down, read up on how to create an article, and produce a near-B level article in less than 50 edits. If there doesn't seem like there could be an ulterior motive for writing the article, it is unlikely to be undeclared paid editing. Articles about living people and companies that are still in business are the most common topics for COI and paid editing.

Other hallmarks of COI editing include:

• Multiple references to company, B2B, or financial listings, staff lists, interviews
• 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
• 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 username or a name that is otherwise reminiscent of the subject
• Text written in first or second person (I, we, my, our, you, your)
• Biographies with photos that look like professional headshots, especially when attributed to the same editor that wrote the article as "own work"
• WP:REFBOMBed articles with an absurd amount of references that are trivial and redundant

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. If the editor can be confirmed as a paid editor, their submission may be moved to draft space, as the COI guideline clearly states that any new articles should be submitted through Articles for Creation (make sure to use the move to draft tool or else add the AfC submission template).

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; generally the only direct action we can take to address paid editing is to enforce disclosure compliance. If you are able to confirm that the editor is a paid editor (based on their username being connected obviously with the company, or perhaps some other evidence such as their LinkedIn page) you can move the article directly to draft space. Paid editors are expected to submit their articles through Articles for Creation.  Moving to draftspace and requesting that editors submit through AfC is also an appropriate response for articles that have hallmarks of COI and are overloaded with an unnecessarily large amount of references that would make it extremely time-consuming to review, as this comprises an attempt to game the system.

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 index, 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^[1] – 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 prevent 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). A script can also add a button which appears when there has been a previous deletion or AfD for an article.

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 relevant. 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

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.

Criteria for speedy deletion (CSD)

Speedy deletion candidates (CSD). Carefully read through 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), CSD A3 (no content), or CSD A7 (no indication of importance for people, animals, organizations, web content, events); wait at least 15 minutes to give time to the creator to add content.

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.

Make sure you understand what CSD A7 applies to, and in particular, that it does not apply to schools or educational establishments. An article should not be tagged for speedy delete under CSD A7 simply because an article 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.

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 inappropriately 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. Converting an article to a redirect without prior discussion is allowed and is not tendentious editing so long as proper BRD procedure is followed.

Proposed Deletion (PROD)

PROD is a way to suggest an article for uncontroversial deletion. It is designed to be a less time-consuming 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.

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.

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 rare, early 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).

• 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.

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.

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).

Content forks

To aid reader navigation and make efficient use of editor resources, Wikipedia prohibits having multiple articles on the same or an extremely similar topic, which is known as content forking.

If you encounter a broad or popular topic that you are surprised didn't already have a page, there is a high chance that it has been forked. Authors sometimes also link to pages they have forked from the "see also" section.

When you encounter a fork, you have two options. If the new page has content the existing page does not, nominate the pages for merging; otherwise, just convert the new page into a redirect.

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) authorized to create an article directly in the mainspace. Registered users can also create user space drafts. Moving an article to draft should not be used in place of a formal deletion process.

To unilaterally move an article to draft space, you should:

• notify the author (this is facilitated by the script User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js),
• be accountable for your draftification decisions per the standard described at Wikipedia:Administrators#Accountability.

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

In progress articles

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.

Pages in languages other than English

Do not tag articles written in another language 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 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.

Non-English articles eligible for speedy deletion

If an article is a copyright violation it may be nominated for G12.

{{db-foreign}} or {{db-a2}} should only be used in the rare situation 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}}.

Titles and redirects in other languages

Articles should be titled based on the name most commonly used in reliable English-language sources. In some cases this may be a non-English title, even though an English translation may exist (e.g. Niños Héroes), and may contain characters not present in the English alphabet (e.g. Aşk-ı Memnu (novel)), but will never be entirely in a non-Latin alphabet.

Redirects from titles in languages other than English are allowed if there is a significant connection between the language in question and the target subject. Examples include non-English titles for creative works originally written in those languages such as Cien años de soledad, or regional names for foods such as kebapcinja. These are allowed even in alphabets other than Latin, such as Москва or 日本. However, names for common objects that have no particular association with any culture despite global use (e.g. Bahnwagen, German for Railroad car) or even use with a sufficiently broad subset of countries (e.g. Bidé, Italian for bidet), are discouraged and generally deleted at RfD.

Article titles

Mistitled articles 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. Moving an article 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. Here is a 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 usually only include parenthetical disambiguation (a title like Mercury (planet) or Windsor, Berkshire) when there is an existing Wikipedia article (or plausible one) on a topic with an identical or confusingly similar name. See also the disambiguation policy. Unnecessary disambiguation or precision can also be a warning sign of an editor trying to avoid scrutiny (i.e. the article at the correct title was deleted at AfD).
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.

Where an existing page or redirect has been used as the target of a cut-and-paste move the edit should be reversed, restoring the original page content.

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.

NPP professionalism

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.

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|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 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. 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 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, an NPP coordinator, or post at WP:ANI, but always try to help your colleague first.

Reviewer checklists

Using the NPP flowchart is an excellent way for new reviewers to ensure that they complete all primary New Page Patrol tasks.

Article namespace checklist

First questions

• Does the article qualify for speedy deletion? If the article matches any of these criteria, mark the page for speedy deletion by adding the appropriate template to the top of the page.
• Does the article belong on Wikipedia? An article may qualify for deletion if it has obvious notability problems, is a content fork, or suffers from any other common reasons for deletion. First, consider the steps listed at WP:BEFORE. Then, if you believe that the article is not salvageable, either propose it for deletion or nominate it for deletion, whichever is more appropriate.

Collaborate with article creators

• Does the article have an appropriate title? Titles should conform to the standards at WP:TITLE. If the title is inappropriate, it may be necessary to move the article to a more appropriate title. Common errors are capitalizing every word in the title, not capitalizing proper nouns, and including honorifics, academic titles, and postnominals.
• Is the article very short? If so, it may be a stub. Either add {{Stub}} to the article, or (even better) find a more specific stub-sorting template to use at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types.

• Is the article referenced? References are essential to Wikipedia articles. If the article is unreferenced or poorly referenced, you may be able to improve the article by adding better references. Otherwise, add appropriate tag(s) to the top of the article (see collapsed box to the right).
• Is the article categorized? If the article is not assigned to any categories, either add {{Uncategorized}} to the very bottom of the article, or add some appropriate categories to the bottom of the article. It is usually fairly easy to find two or three appropriate categories. If the subject is a living person, it must be categorized in Category:Living people.
• Do other articles link to this article? Click the "What links here?" link (in the Toolbox, left margin) to see how many articles link to the article you're patrolling. If the article has no incoming links (from actual articles, excluding disambiguation pages and pages in other namespaces like User talk, Talk, Wikipedia, etc.) add {{Orphan}} to the top of the page. Conversely, if the article has few or no links to other articles, add {{Deadend}} to the top.
• Are there versions of the article in other languages? Look below "Languages" in the left-hand sidebar. It may be that, even without translation, the existence of a fuller version with references in another language suggests that, rather than tag an unpromising stub for deletion, it could be tagged with an "Expand" template such as {{Expand Spanish}}.
• Is the article properly formatted? If the article lacks a proper lead section, add {{lead missing}} or {{lead too short}} to the top of the page. If the article uses HTML markup instead of wiki markup, add {{cleanup-HTML}}. If the citation style is messy, confusing or inconsistent, add {{citation style}} or {{format footnotes}}.
• Does the article have grammar or spelling mistakes? If so, either fix the mistakes or add {{Copyedit}}.
• Does the article have any other glaring issues? Try to fix them. If you can't, then check Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup for any appropriate cleanup tags that might need to be applied to the article.

Article namespace checklist tips

• Don't be discouraged by the number of things that need to be checked. As you become more familiar with patrolling, you will no longer need to "check" for such things, but instead you begin to spot them instinctively.
• It's preferable to include dates in your cleanup tags, for instance: {{Unreferenced|date=February 2022}}; or you can use {{subst:dated|Unreferenced}}, which becomes the same thing. This helps to quickly track how long an article has suffered from a particular issue.
• If there are more than three cleanup tags at the top of an article, it's generally preferable to condense the cleanup tags using the {{Multiple issues}} template.
• Tools exist to help speed up and automate the process of adding cleanup tags to articles, nominating articles for deletion, and tagging articles for speedy deletion. The most popular include Twinkle and AutoWikiBrowser.
• New page patrollers are highly encouraged to patrol the oldest pages in the queue first (i.e. patrol from the back of the queue). It is often considered disruptive for new page patrollers to add cleanup tags and/or propose the deletion of articles that are only a few minutes old.
• There are a lot of new pages created every day! New page patrollers are encouraged to fix as many issues as they practically can, and add cleanup tags for any issues that haven't been addressed.
• Familiarize yourself with the common outcomes for deletion discussions to get a better idea of which articles are usually deleted and which are usually kept.

Other issues

Article clean-up

The curation toolbar will highlight some common issues:

• Orphaned articles, or articles 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.
• Articles without 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.

It is common for New Page Patrollers to also help with basic article cleanup. Common examples include:

• Stubs are the beginnings of meaningful and encyclopedic articles but which need a little help: Place an appropriate stub notice at the end of a stub.
• 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.
• Condense orphaned sentences into existing paragraphs.

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.

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.

Further reading

Essential

Related

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
• Noticeboards – All about noticeboards and which one to use.
• The new page patrol source guide – a list of sources whose reliability has been previously discussed by the Wikipedia community, organized by region and/or topic
• Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Resources - A list of useful policy pages, user scripts, and templates.

History

• 2011 New Page Patrol Survey
• 2011–2018 ACTRIAL
• 2016 New Page Rewiewer policy
  • 2016: Wikipedia:New pages patrol/RfC for patroller right and Wikipedia:New pages patrol/RfC for patroller qualifications
• 2018 ACPERM

Notes