Wikipedia:New pages patrol

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Welcome! This page contains background and instructions on patrolling new pages. If you have a question or concern regarding new page patrol, consider adding an entry at the New pages patrol noticeboard.
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New pages patrol is a process by which newly created articles are checked for obvious problems. The patrol is entirely voluntary and carries no obligation. At its heart, it's really just a way to see that every page gets checked in a timely manner and is given a boost on its way to becoming a quality article, and that Wikipedia is not deluged with poor-quality articles and totally inappropriate pages.

Wikipedia puts powerful editing tools at the hands of all readers and users. New Page Patrol is our first line of defense against unwanted pages or for improvement of poorly written or constructed pages and it must be done accurately.

NewPages Defcon 2
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The queue at Special:NewPages is currently 42 days.
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Last updated 4 days ago by Luxure (manually).
CSD Defcon
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Category:Candidates for speedy deletion currently contains 3 pages.
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Purge server cache


Patrolling new pages[edit]

The primary tasks of new page patrollers are to identify new pages that meet the criteria for deletion, and to detect copyright violations. If a page meets one or more speedy deletion criteria, then please tag it for deletion. If a page does not meet any of the strict CSD criteria, consider PROD instead. If the page is not a candidate for deletion, you should mark the page as being patrolled, but please tag for any other glaring issues and use the message feature of the curation tool to inform the creator. If you are uncertain, leave the page unpatrolled, and another volunteer may review it later.

Caution G10 attack pages must be blanked and tagged for deletion very quickly. The G10 CSD template will rapidly catch the attention of administrators, who will delete the page swiftly. However, before blanking and tagging an attack page, please be absolutely sure to read it carefully and not confuse it with G3 hoax or vandalism or with any other deletion criterion.

Caution G3 blatant hoaxes must also be deleted fairly quickly, in order to preserve the integrity of the encyclopedia. Please be absolutely sure to read such new pages carefully – hoaxes are not always immediately evident – and when a hoax is merely suspected, tag the page with {{hoax}} instead, but be sure to leave an appropriate warning on the creator's talk page (see Twinkle and WP:User warnings).

Caution Schools and educational institutions. Please be intuitive about schools and colleges. They may not be tagged for deletion per CSD-A7, but check for copyvios from the school web site. Most mainstream high/secondary schools are notable if they are proven to exist. Middle schools and primary (elementary) schools are generally redirected to the page about the school's district (USA) or to the education section of the articles about the locality.[1] It is not necessary to tag bomb them either. People are proud of their schools and many school articles may appear to be promotional; unless it is a mere advertisement without useful content, they can be cleaned up. Cram schools or diploma mills should be treated as any other business or organisation. If an article needs attention please use the message box in the Curation Toolbar. See WP:WPSCH/AG and WP:UNI/AG.

Copyright violations (WP:COPYVIO)[edit]

Caution CorenSearchBot attempts to automatically detect copyright violations. However, it misses a large number of them, and 100% reliance should never be placed on bots which can also produce false positives. Articles that show suspicion of text copied from other sources should be checked manually. Articles about organizations and music groups are especially prone to 'borrowing' content from other sources. Therefore, when reviewing a new page, please consider the following:

  • Single reference articles,
  • Articles with large sections of text without inline references.
  • Articles whose style of text appears to come from a news article, press release, blog, or a book.
  • Articles whose style of referencing appears to be that of a book or other published source, such as reference numbers or author names in the text which do not correspond to actual references in the article.
  • Text with an informal style of prose, 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, can't, didn't, etc.)
  1. Compare the article's content with the reference and looking for copy/pastes or close paraphrasing
  2. Run a random passage of text from the article through a search engine for that exact phrase (use quotation marks) to see if it has been copied from somewhere.
  3. If you find similar text on other sites, use the Duplication detector.
  4. If appropriate, either remove the plagiarised content, or if this is not practical and most of the article is blatant copyright violation, tag the article for speedy deletion under G12.
  5. Many pages that read like press releases will list a source or an external link, which should always be checked. The ones that don't list the organization's web site are even more likely to be copyvio – look for their web sites. Always check not just the main page, but also the "about us" and the "our history" pages, which will not necessarily appear in Google.
  6. Some copyright violations are on PDF pages. To read them you will need to open them in your browser or download them.

Foreign language pages (WP:Notenglish)[edit]

Dealing with foreign language new pages[edit]

Not everyone is a linguist, but the Google Translate facility can easily be used to help guess the language, and in fact will auto detect most languages. If not, if it looks like Arabic but the translation makes no sense, try Persian (Farsi) or Urdu; if it looks like Chinese, it may be Chinese or Japanese, so try both. Remember also that several east European languages use Cyrillic, so it might not be Russian. If you know or can guess the language, then put, e.g., {{notenglish|Spanish}}. That gives a more useful template, including a link to the relevant foreign Wikipedia, and also a link 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 nonsense, and can be speedy tagged without bothering to list it at WP:Pages needing translation.

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

Note that {{db-nonsense}} does not apply to "coherent non-English material".

Much more usually, what we get is a foreign text input by somebody who probably doesn't know any other Wikipedia exists. The right tag then is {{notenglish}}, which is not a speedy request, because sometimes these articles are 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 or PROD, BLPPROD or whatever is appropriate.

To check if it is a copyright violation, do 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.

Finally, you might wish to notify the author (recommended). If you have listed the page at PNT, the standard message is {{Uw-notenglish}}. There is also a useful set of message templates such as {{contrib-ru1}}, many of them bilingual, to tell the author that we require English and point him to the foreign WP. List of them at WP:PNT/T.

Special:NewPagesFeed[edit]

Special:NewPagesFeed logs new pages immediately after the first version is saved. Consideration should be given to working from the back of the queue so as to reduce the backlog of unreviewed pages.

Care should be exercised when reviewing very new pages. Tagging anything other than attack pages, copyvios, vandalism or complete nonsense only a few minutes after creation may only serve to annoy the page author. Remember – if you don't click the 'reviewed' link, the article will remain in the 'unpatrolled' queue, even if you add tags or categories or make other edits to the page. Twinkle users can change their preferences to mark page as patrolled automatically when an article is tagged.

Care should be taken to ensure that the author has finished the initial version before you evaluate the page, especially if the new article contains a {{newpage}}, {{inuse}}, or {{underconstruction}} template. A good rule of thumb is to wait about 15 minutes after the last edit before tagging the article (or up to an hour if a {{newpage}} tag is present). It may also be helpful to check the editor's contributions history to be sure that you don't offend an experienced editor who has a set plan to create a valid article.

Prior tool
Special:NewPages, which is useful for reaching further back.

Be nice to the newbies[edit]

Shortcut:

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

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

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

Please do not be too hasty with certain speedy deletions, especially those lacking context (CSD A1) or content (CSD A3). Research has shown that writers unfamiliar with Wikipedia guidelines should be accorded at least 10 to 15 minutes to fix the article before it is nominated for speedy deletion. If you see a page that has been tagged too hastily, please notify the tagger about their hasty deletion with the {{uw-hasty}} template. The template {{hasty|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 the editor's talk page to explain that anyone may remove tags (except for AFD and CSD) after the problem has been addressed or in case of error. Most new editors don't know that they are permitted to do this.

Patroller checklists[edit]

New page patrolling is intended to catch problems with new articles, and either fix those problems or tag the article for future cleanup by other editors. There are a few basic checks that all new page patrollers should perform on each article they patrol. Following the checklist below can help ensure that our new articles are quickly improved, and not lost in the shuffle.

Article namespace checklist[edit]

First questions[edit]

Common reasons for speedy deletion of new articles

Collaborate with article creators[edit]

Common referencing problems
  • 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[edit]

  • Don't be discouraged by the number of things that need to be checked. Once you get into a rhythm, you can check all of the above things in less than 30 seconds. 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=June 2015}}; 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[edit]

  • Stubs, which are the beginnings of meaningful and encyclopedic articles but which need a little help (a little wikifying, as it were). The basics of wikifying stubs:
  • Style problems. First, try to fix any style problems yourself. If you cannot, add one or more specific cleanup tags for pages which need tidying up. In particular, the following tags are common:
  • {{cleanup|date=June 2015}} – for general problems
  • {{internallinks|TOPIC}} – for pages that need linking to other related topics.
  • {{unreferenced|article}} – for articles that conspicuously lack references
  • Mistitled articles. Usually it's straightforward to move a page to a more appropriate title (WP:Name) using the "move page" function. Sometimes you'll find that an article under the other title already exists, in which case you should try to merge any new material from the newly created article into the old one, leaving a redirect in place of the new page.
  • Categorization Check that the article has been assigned to a useful category and if not, either tag it with {{uncat}} or try to find a category for it. If the article links to other Wikipedia articles, you can check their categorizations for ideas, or assign the article to one of the fundamental categories.
  • Orphaned articles Checking the "What links here" link will tell you if any other page points to the newly created article. Sometimes orphans result from a mistitled article (see above). Other times you'll want to find a related article and link the new one to it. It may be helpful to search for mentions in other articles. If none are found, an {{Orphan}} tag can be placed.
  • Articles without sources The best time to ask for sources is when an article is fresh and the contributor is still around to ask about the origin of the information in it. Tag articles with {{unreferenced}} and let the contributor know with {{subst:uw-unsourced1}}, or try to find some yourself. If there aren't any, it might need to be deleted.

Moving new content to other projects[edit]

  • 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.

New pages that may require deletion[edit]

  • Speedy deletion candidates. Read and be familiar with the speedy deletion criteria, then if you see any such pages created, tag them with {{db|Your reason here}}, so that they can be deleted by an administrator. You may want to use one of the following, which provides the reason from the criteria automatically: {{db-empty}}, {{db-bio}}, {{db-repost}}, {{db-attack}} or {{db-music}}, {{db-spam}}, or {{db-nonsense}}. You might also want to consider placing {{test}} on the creator's user talk page to help point him or her in the right direction. If you tag an article for deletion as a non-notable bio, you may opt to notify the user who created the article with {{nn-warn}}. Many of the speedy delete templates suggest a readily formed tag that appears at the bottom of the resulting speedy deletion box and can be easily copied and pasted into the creator's user talk page. When leaving messages for new editors, consider using {{First article}} rather than the usual warnings.

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 is any plausible reason that the article should be kept. In particular, an article should not be tagged for speedy delete using A7 for not being notable (in your opinion): an article does not have to prove that its subject is notable, it only has to pass the much lower test of asserting importance or significance (whether it actually is notable is a subject for an AfD discussion, not a speedy deletion). Consider using a Notability tag instead of a speedy delete tag. Also, an article should not be tagged for speedy deletion if it's possible that it might be improved into an article which should be kept. Pay attention to the guideline "Contributors sometimes create articles over several edits, so try to avoid deleting a page too soon after its creation if it appears incomplete." It is not a rule of Wikipedia that an article has to be perfect the instant it's first posted; that's why we have edits.

Unreferenced BLPs New unreferenced Biographies of Living People can be tagged for deletion with {{subst:prod blp}}, which gives ten days to add a reliable source to the article. This is only for literally unsourced articles, not for ones that have a poor source that mentions the subject, nor is it for articles such as rock groups that mention living people, only for biographies of living individual humans. Please remember to inform the author, especially if they are a newbie.

  • Unsuitable pages. Pages about individuals, places, or things which generally don't merit an encyclopedia entry should be tagged with {{subst:prod|Your reason here}} or, if someone could reasonably defend its existence (or if a prod has been added and removed already), listed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. What exactly qualifies as encyclopedic is debatable, though, so it's best to err on the side of caution and not delete or nominate for deletion too hastily.
  • Copyright violations. One way to check for a possible copyright infringement is to do an internet search; however, not all text is on the internet; search engines do not index all the internet's text, and some texts available through search engines are public domain and thus suitable for import into Wikipedia. These public domain texts include the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. You might also like to use this handy tool.
    • Blank the page and replace the text with {{copyvio|url=insert URL here}} ~~~~
    • Go to today's section of the copyvio page and add {{subst:article-cv | PageName}} from [insert URL here] ~~~~ to the bottom of the list. Put the page's name in place of "PageName". If there is no URL, use a description of the source. (The template you used to blank the article will generate this code and the following one in the bottom right hand corner.)
    • Please also add {{subst:uw-copyright| PageName}} to the article creator's talk page.
Blatant copyright infringements may be speedily deleted. If an article and all its revisions are unquestionably copied from a website which does not have a license compatible with Wikipedia, and the uploader does not assert permission, you may use {{db-copyvio|url=url of source}} instead of the standard copyvio notice, and an admin will decide whether or not to immediately delete the article. Notify the creator using {{db-copyvio-notice}} or a similar message.
  • Be hesitant to list articles on Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion if there's a chance they could be improved and made into a meaningful article. Tag them for cleanup instead. Try not to step on people's toes. Users will often start an article as the briefest of stubs, and then expand it over the following hours or days.
Use of the {{prod}} tag may be more suitable in these situations. This tag may be removed by any editor, thereby averting the proposed deletion. This way, if the creator is serious about improving the article to meet Wikipedia's standards for inclusion, s/he may remove the tag and improve the article in the coming days. But if the creator subsequently abandons his/her attempts to construct the article, and it just sits, it will automatically be deleted in seven days. Regardless, it is a good idea to notify the creator of this tag placement, following the instructions on the template itself.
If you believe the article will probably meet Wikipedia standards one day and has a chance of improvement by someone else, you do not want to prod-tag it, but rather place other appropriate improvement templates on the page.
In any case, if you are unsure whether a page will be improved in the coming days, you may want to place it on your watchlist. The {{construction}} tag may be placed on a new page by a creator to inform new page patrollers and other editors that the article is still being constructed, and its early revisions may not meet Wikipedia's standard for inclusion. If the creator has not placed it there him/herself, you may want to place it there yourself. Many editors, especially newbies, are not familiar with this tag. The {{construction}} tag does not make a new page totally immune from deletion; see Wikipedia:Deletion of pages under construction for details on when a page under construction can be deleted.
You may want to contact the creator on his/her talk page to ascertain the creator's intentions regarding future construction of the page prior to taking any such action. If you do so, try to learn from the creator about the purpose of the new page and any sources that may be used to establish notability and verifiability, two of the most important aspects regarding suitability for a page's inclusion. It may be helpful to discuss one-on-one with the creator some possible ways to make the page more worthy of inclusion or otherwise improving it, and if this is not possible, to name one or more articles the topic can be merged or redirected to.
  • Always check the history and the talk page. A new page might be a recreation of a previously deleted article. With other articles, someone may have removed a tag. The talk page may contain a notice that indicates that the article has already survived an AfD.

Tools[edit]

Note: Many of the functions of these tools have been superseded by the New Pages Feed and its Curation toolbar.

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

Manually marking pages as patrolled[edit]

In some editing contexts, editors will see a 'mark this page as patrolled' link. Otherwise, everything editors can do to help out with patrolling is most welcome.

Userboxes[edit]

New Pages Patrol Userboxes

Regular NP patrollers may wish to put one of the NP patrol userboxes on their user page by adding {{User wikipedia/NP Patrol}}:

Edit-find-replace.svg This user is a new page patroller.


{{User wikipedia/NP Patrol2}}

Computer n screen.svg This user is a new page patroller. You can help!

You may also want to add New page patrol; [[WP:NPP|You can help!]] to your edit summary.

Awards[edit]

The New Page Patroller's Barnstar Usage:{{subst:The New Page Patroller's Barnstar|1=Put your message here. ~~~~}} The New Page Patroller's Barnstar

The New Page Patroller's Barnstar may be awarded to users who do great work patrolling new pages. This may be improving, tagging for deletion, tagging for issues etc., but don't dilute the spirit of the barnstar system by handing them out indiscriminately.

Essential further reading[edit]

Related projects[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ WP:OUTCOMES#SCHOOLS – this is not a policy or a guideline; it simply lists current accepted precedents and practices

See also[edit]

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