Wikipedia:Articles for creation

Welcome to Articles for creation!

The Articles for creation (AfC) process is designed to assist any editor with creating a new page as a draft article, as well as submitting their draft article for review. This process must be used by new or unregistered editors, as well as editors with a conflict of interest, since they cannot directly create a new page in Wikipedia's mainspace, where all articles reside. Established users are encouraged to create articles on their own if they do not need support from reviewers.

Writing an encyclopedic article from scratch is not easy. It is recommended that you first gain some experience by adding material to pre-existing articles, or by helping out with other tasks. You should read Help:Your first article to avoid common mistakes. To submit redirects and categories, use the Redirect wizard or Category wizard.

Creating an article
Before you start writing, here are some things you should have in mind:


 * Make sure that the topic is notable enough for an article. Is it already covered in an existing article? If not, there is a very good chance that the topic is not notable and will not be accepted as an article.  If yes, have you improved that coverage?  Improving existing content is a much more successful way of contributing to Wikipedia.
 * Articles should reflect only what reliable sources have said about the topic, and all articles need references to reliable sources.
 * If you have a conflict of interest with the topic you are writing about, you should disclose it on the draft's talk page.
 * If you are being paid to contribute to Wikipedia, you must—under the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use—disclose who is paying you, who the client is, and any other relevant affiliation.
 * The draft should not have category declarations on it that cause it to be categorized as a finished article. If and when the page is accepted by a reviewer, it will have categories added to it at that time; however, categories present on the page while it's still in draft form will be either removed or disabled per WP:DRAFTNOCAT.
 * If you have an idea for the title of an article, but no content for the article itself, you can make a suggestion at Requested articles.

Your article title will have "Draft:" in front of it until it is accepted as an article. To start a new draft, click the button below:

Submitting for review
Submit your draft for review by clicking the button "Submit for review". If you don't see this button, you can add the code  to the top of your draft (remember to switch to the source editor first). If you see a yellow box saying "Review waiting, please be patient", you have successfully submitted for review. If you don't see this box, you can ask for help at the Articles for Creation help desk.

Getting a review can take a while, but your draft will be reviewed eventually. Attempting to bypass the process by moving the page, or cutting and pasting it into a new mainspace article, may lead to the page being moved back into draftspace again, speedy-deleted or listed for Articles for Deletion, and repeated attempts may lead to consequences. In the meantime, we hope that you expand some of our already existing articles.

Reviewers may decline or reject your draft submission. If your draft has been declined, you are encouraged to take the reviewer's feedback into account and resubmit your draft using the "submit" button on the AfC template. If your draft has been rejected, you are not encouraged to resubmit and will not see a "submit" button on the template. Reviewers decline drafts if they do not presently meet Wikipedia's guidelines. Reviewers reject drafts only if it is unlikely that they will ever meet those guidelines; for example, if the topic is not relevant for the encyclopedia, or if the draft is spam. A topic that is not notable, however, may later become notable.

Old drafts
Old drafts, drafts that have been unedited for more than six months, are routinely deleted (see WP:CSD). Once deleted, they can be recovered at WP:REFUND/G13. A category listing drafts approaching G13 status can be found at Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions with the oldest drafts at the top of the category. These can be reviewed and nominated for deletion or improved for mainspace.

Some old drafts have been identified as "promising", but without any active editor actually committing to working on them. See Category:Promising draft articles and Category:AfC postponed G13. Consider browsing these drafts for topics that you would like to improve and move to mainspace. If it reasonably appears that Promising draft or Category:AfC postponed G13 are not merited, you may remove them but consider first discussing the matter with the original placer of the template or category.

Reviewers
Experienced editors are always needed to review the AfC submissions! The guide for doing so can be found at WikiProject Articles for creation/Reviewing instructions.

Article submissions

 * There are in Category:Pending AfC submissions. The ages of the various submissions are as follows:


 * Declined submissions can be found in Category:Declined AfC submissions.
 * Archives from before September 2008 can be found here.
 * Submissions are archived by date in Category:AfC submissions by date: