User:Anand QED/Todo

Editing, fixing and defending Wikipedia.


 * Where we intend to show the various kinds of activity on which Wikipedia depends.
 * Intended to recruit more Copy-editors, WikiGnomes and Anti-vandals.
 * You can explore the links below to find new things to do and the documentation to help you on your way.

Fixing things big and small - Enter the WikiGnomes
WikiGnomes work behind the scenes of a wiki, tying up little loose ends and making things run more smoothly. Examples of WikiGnome-like behavior include fixing typos, correcting poor grammar, creating redirects, adding categories, and repairing broken links.

They are the wiki version of the mythical Menehunes of Hawai'i - little people who go around and fix things when no-one's looking.

Finding things to fix
The following pages have a huge list of things needing fixing. Use whichever you prefer.
 * Department directory
 * WikiProject Council/Directory/Wikipedia
 * Maintenance
 * Cleanup
 * Community_Portal/Opentask
 * Template:Backlog status
 * Special:GettingStarted - user-friendly interface
 * Special:SpecialPages - automatically generated Maintenance reports
 * Category:Wikipedia backlog - various maintenance categories
 * Or just read the "Active Wiki Fixup Projects" on the right.

Stub tagging and sorting

 * WikiProject Stub sorting
 * Essays by stub theorists :
 * User:Grutness/Stubbing how-to
 * User:Grutness/Croughton-London rule of stubs
 * User:Pegship/The nature of stub sorters

Fixing links

 * Red links - links to Wikipedia pages that don't exist.
 * Link rot - links to the internet that are no longer valid.
 * Orphaned articles - don't have any links to them from other pages.
 * Dead-end pages - don't link to other Wikipedia articles.

Copyright Cleanup

 * WikiProject Copyright Cleanup
 * User:Moonriddengirl/Deletions
 * User:Moonriddengirl

Fixing layout, adding images etc. - touch of a WikiFairy
A great deal of work is in fixing tables, adding hatnotes and footers, adding images and sound files and improving the layout. You can compare an article with a Featured article from the same category to see how it should ideally look.
 * WikiProject Images and Media
 * Extended image syntax
 * Manual of Style/Layout - about article layout, standard appendices and footers, etc.
 * Former featured articles - examples of featured articles sorted by category

Tools for the WikiGnome
There are dozens of tools that you can try out.


 * WPCleaner
 * Wikignome gadget
 * User:Dispenser's tools -
 * Main tools page for User:Dispenser on toolserver.org
 * Reflinks - Edits bare references - adds title/dates etc. to bare references
 * Checklinks - Edit and repair external links
 * Dab solver - Quickly resolve ambiguous links.
 * Peer reviewer - Provides hints and suggestion to improving articles.
 * Magnus' tools, ported form the toolserver to WMF Labs.
 * Innumerable other tools at toolserver.org and |Wikimedia Tool Lab

Copy Editing
Copy editing is the process of making improvements to an article to make it clear, correct, concise, comprehensible, and consistent; make it say what it means, and mean what it says. The Manual of Style is a common reference.


 * Basic copyediting
 * The guild of copy-editors - see their monthly blitzes, backlogs etc. for things to do.
 * WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors - the main copy-editing task force
 * WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/How to - carefully written documents on copy-editing
 * Manual of Style - the Bible of the copy-editor which has detail on various aspects, e.g. Manual of Style/Lead section

Suggestions for you - SuggestBot
SuggestBot can send you a little list of articles to work on. By default it will base its suggestions on your contributions. You can however tell it what categories or articles you would prefer to work on.

Working on specific topics - Wikiprojects

 * Standard topics have a Wikiproject page. They are a good option if only a few topics interest you.
 * See for example the Ancient philosophy wikiproject.
 * Pick up articles to work on from the lists of articles that are stubs, have a low quality rating or otherwise need attention.

Creating articles - filling in the gaps

 * WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles - articles found on other encyclopaedias but not on Wikipedia
 * Most wanted articles
 * Requested articles

Expand or update articles

 * Most wanted stubs - the information is apparently out of date, but it has some usable information
 * WikiProject Computing/Tasks/Expand stubs - per project stub expansion tasks are available
 * Dusty articles - articles that haven't been updated in several years

Translate to and from Wikipedia in other languages

 * Translation
 * Pages needing translation into English - where you can try and rescue pages in the English Wikipedia that are either in a foreign language.
 * Help:Interwikimedia links
 * You can pro-actively translate articles from the Wikipedia of other languages.

Why do we need Good articles or Featured articles?
The idea is not to push an article to Featured Article status, but rather to improve its Quality. See the essay 100,000 feature-quality articles which explains this point of view and gives some ideas on how to do that.

Use the article assessment table or the list of vital articles to find articles to work on.

(Articles assessed as part of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team's Work via WikiProjects scheme. A list of participating projects along with their statistics can be found in the Index of subjects. Article assessments by WikiProject can be found on the corresponding Wikiproject page or on Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments. Articles are assessed by Quality and importance. FYI, the tables of the great Bot WP 1.0 bot can also be found here. )

Writing Good articles

 * Good article criteria
 * What the Good article criteria are not
 * Writing better articles
 * Manual of Style/Layout
 * The perfect article
 * Featured articles
 * User:Giano/A fool's guide to writing a featured article

Nominating and Reviewing Good articles

 * Nominating and reviewing Good articles
 * WikiProject Good articles
 * Good article nominations/Instructions
 * Good Article help/guide
 * Reviewing good articles
 * User:Malkinann/Good article review essay

Patrolling and WikiPolicing

 * A small but significant number of users are trolls and vandals.
 * Defend content from damage - do not waste energy on getting even with trolls and vandals.
 * Silently gnore trolls, revert vandalism and stay out of POV wars.
 * Do not involve admins unless necessary.

Anti-vandalism
Countering vandalism is one of the core tasks of Wikipedia. See links on the right for more details.


 * Vandalism
 * Counter-Vandalism Unit
 * Anti-vandalism tools -
 * Twinkle - simple and best for patrolling - available as a gadget in user Preferences.
 * Huggle - A popular Windows anti-vandal application. Rollback permission is required to use it.
 * Recent_changes_patrol - has a huge set of anti-vandal tools
 * Administrator intervention against vandalism - ask admins to block vandals, if there is no other way.

Page patrolling

 * Patrols - a list of the major Wikipedia patrols.
 * Disambiguation pages with links (members) – Patrols the Special:WhatLinksHere for disambiguation pages having incoming links.
 * New pages patrol (members) – Patrols newly created pages to improve them and provide assistance to new users.
 * New pages patrol/School
 * Special:NewPagesFeed - an excellent report and patrolling tool for new pages.
 * Recent changes patrol (members) – Patrols recent changes to article pages for harmful edits.
 * Special:RecentChanges - a report of the latest edits on Wikipedia. Use the diff links to see what is the latest edit.
 * Twinkle or the other sophisticated tools are the best way to patrol recent changes.
 * Typo Team (members) – Patrols article pages to correct typos and misspellings.
 * WikiProject Categories/uncategorized (members) – Patrols Category:Wikipedia backlog to categorizing articles that are uncategorized.
 * Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright patrol (members) – Patrols pages listed at Category:Possible copyright violations to address raised copyright issues.

Deleting articles

 * Speedy delete only if the article meets the strict criteria for deletion - Criteria for speedy deletion
 * Template:Speedy deletion templates - all the speedy deletion templates
 * Template:Speedy deletion notices - and the corresponding notices to be placed on the talk page of the author
 * Propose for deletion - Proposed deletion - a.k.a PROD - uncontroversial delete that isn't speedy delete.
 * Propose an unsourced BLP for deletion - Proposed deletion of biographies of living people - a.k.a BLPPROD
 * Nominate for deletion - Articles for deletion - if there is any doubt, dispute or need for consensus.
 * The Articles for deletion page also has the 3 step nomination process and also the list of articles thus nominated.
 * Try and mention the specific guideline you are using e.g. WP:COMPOSER for non-notable musical composer.
 * In any case, notify the main author of the nomination for deletion.
 * Twinkle handles the complex delete process very well.

Rule of thumb for notability
The following are nearly always notable. However you may want to be precise - see the subject-specific guidelines on the right.
 * All places - cities, districts, villages, etc.
 * Team sports - all pro athletes, along with their leagues, managers and competitions
 * Individual sports - criteria are very sport specific
 * All educational institutions (except primary schools that don't go up to grade 9 or 10)
 * Commercial film directors, musicians and writers (and all their films and albums and books with at least one review.)
 * Publicly traded companies
 * University professors and academics

Definitely not speedy delete

 * How-to articles
 * Essay articles
 * Expansion of A7 to include books, software, and/or other products
 * Neologisms
 * Unsourced articles

The WereSpielChequers guide to deletion

 * If your boss or client wants to know why I deleted your article, please read NOTADVERTISING and COI.
 * Criteria for speedy deletion
 * Field guide to proper speedy deletion
 * User:I'm Spartacus!/Why I hate Speedy Deleters
 * User:SoWhy/Ten Commandments for Speedy Deletion
 * User:SoWhy/Common A7 mistakes
 * User:I'm Spartacus!/CSD Survey
 * Criteria for speedy deletion/Overturned speedy deletions
 * User:Filll/Encouraging Newbies
 * User:Dlohcierekim/deletion - A useful guide for authors whose article is in the deletion process
 * Deletion policy
 * Article Rescue Squadron
 * Google result counts are a meaningless metric
 * User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage
 * User:WereSpielChequers/Newbie treatment A test I started (and later ended) to see how we treat the authors of new articles.
 * User:Mike Cline/Archimedes was deleted
 * Gwern's excellent report on Deletionism and the damage it does to the Project

Researching and fact checking
For most topics, a Google search throws up a couple of good articles on reliable online news sources. But sometimes you need to dig deeper.


 * List of digital library projects - A large list of online libraries
 * List of online encyclopedias - A large list of free/non-free encyclopaedias covering e.g. biography, pop culture etc.
 * Most copyright-expired works can be found online
 * archive.org -
 * The well known Project Gutenberg
 * Google books
 * Specialized topics need specific resources e.g. jstor.org
 * 1911 Encyclopdia Britannica

Requests for comment and Dispute resolution
Not very interesting, but we should mention the WikiElves who work behind the scenes at Wikipedia on user problems like RfA, RFCN, and AfD. You can hop over to any of the Noticeboards and knock yourself out. Besides this, there is also the administrative work of creating new categories and templates, protecting and unprotecting pages and speedy deletes.

Read the documentation
Wikipedia is extremely well documented, but it is difficult to find the documentation. The documentation given below is a good starting point. You can easily find the necessary document by doing an advanced search in Help space or Wikipedia space or simply a Google search.


 * Starter toolset - a really good set of resources for new Wikipedians
 * Basic stuff
 * Introduction
 * Questions
 * Tutorial
 * Your first article
 * Book:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual - a supposedly complete guide to Wikipedia
 * Editor's index to Wikipedia - a very large list of useful documents
 * How Wikipedia Works - a book on how to use Wikipedia - the right topics in the right sequence

Learn the ropes

 * Learning the ropes
 * Adopt-a-user - where they may use the amazing course made by the user 'Worm That Turned'.
 * User:Worm That Turned/Adopt - which is that course.
 * User:Foxj/Virtual classroom

Still have questions?

 * Teahouse - friendly environment for new users
 * WP:CHAT - this is live IRC chat - note that there are several Wikipedia channels
 * The various Wikiproject talk pages (if they are active enough) can give subject-specific expert advice.