Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Guide to saving articles

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See also: ARS Tips to help rescue articles on the main ARS page

This page regards content that is in any deletion discussion (XfD), to offer suggestions on finding the best solution that serves both our readers and complies with Wikipedia's policies. As the name implies, the Article Rescue Squadron primarily deals with rescuing articles in Wikipedia's article namespace but the same principles apply to all content. If it meets Wikipedia's policies and is useful to our readers it is more likely to be saved in some form; if not, it is more likely to be removed.

Experienced Wikipedians are familiar with the various discussions for deletion processes whereby content— articles, templates, images, audio, and video files, categories, redirects, and other items— is examined and re-examined to see if it merits inclusion on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia policy alternatives to deletion includes many policy-based options to deletion.

Editors, particularly new editors, often ask the Article Rescue Squadron for help saving an article. This guide is in part intended to instruct editors how to save articles and other content on their own. Since editors who ask for help may know more about the content up for deletion than others, and may be more interested in the subject, it makes sense to inform people how to rescue. These same skills of assessment, sourcing and integration can be applied to almost any area of Wikipedia.

Articles

• For current articles nominated for deletion, see Today's AfD log (from Wikipedia: Articles for deletion).
• For a list of all deletion debates opened on a daily basis, see XfD today
• For a list of deletion discussion pages, see Deletion process
• For a search engine to find deletion discussions by topic, see Search all deletion discussions.
• For a daily bot-generated list of articles at Shortest biographies of living people that are in need of improvement.
• For a general guide to creating articles, see Wikipedia: Your first article.

References

The provision of reliable-source references is the best way to save an article. Finding quality sources and adding them to articles takes time but with practice will likely come easier. For formatting references once you find them, see Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners.

• Wikipedia:Free online resources – offers links to respectable information sources on the web, available free of charge.

Talk page reference templates

Several useful tools have been created to make finding references easier. These resources may be used on article talk pages and user pages. They're not intended to be used directly on article pages themselves.

• Placing {{Talk header}} at the top of a Talk page now includes the "Find Sources".
• {{Findsources}} – provides the following search resources: news · books · scholar · free images
• {{Find sources 2}} – provides: news · books · science · free texts · free images
• {{Find sources 3}} – provides: GBooks · MSBooks · GScholar · MSAcademic · GNews recent · GNews old · NYT recent · NYT old · Wikipedia Reference Search
• {{Find sources notice}} – provides seven parameters to customize searches. This template incorporates the styling of the talk page message box meta-template {{Tmbox}} and the coding of the Find sources template to provide an easy way to tag an article talk page namespace with Google links to potential material for the article.

Web search tips

See also: Source searches on the main ARS page

Wikiprojects sometimes have their own custom Google search, to sort through every website they have agreed is a reliable source. This often shows ample results that a Google news archive search does not. For example, Google Custom Search – Reliable Sources for Video Games is used for the video game Wikiproject. There is also a general purpose search engine, Reliable Sources Search Engine.

When faced with a large number of links to sort through from any search, here's some ways to narrow it down to find what you want.

• For films, add in the name of the director or starring actor.
• For video games, try adding in the name of the company that produced it.
• For companies, try searching for the name of people involved there, to see if they have done any interviews. Adding in the word "interview" can sometimes help to generate more specific results.
• For television shows, try searching for the name of the channel they are on.
• For people: if someone is notable for a certain thing, search for that thing. Example, searching for Tom Forman will result in a large number of results. Not all of the people with that name are the same person of course. If you were looking for Tom Forman (producer) then adding in the word "producer" to the search, or the name of one of the shows he has worked on, would help narrows down the results. When searching for people its a good idea to search for the word "award" to see if they have won any awards, and the word "interview" to see if they have done any interviews.

Search parameters

• Using quotation marks in searches (e.g. "Search topic") can narrow search results, in which only results that have the entire term are generated.
• To narrow searches to specific sites, here's something that works in Google searches (be sure to include the topic in quotation marks): "Search topic" site:www.siteexample.com This generates results only from the specified site.
• Sometimes to omit results, adding a minus (-) sign and url addresses for unwanted sites can result in higher-relevance hits (or at least higher relevance hits per Wikipedia's notability standards, to omit sites that aren't valid for demonstrating topic notability) – e.g. "Search topic" -siteexample.com.

Lead paragraph

The lead paragraph is the first paragraph in an article, and it is often the only paragraph a user will actually read. (Many users are either simply trying to verify a fact they already know, or understand why a certain place, person or thing is important.) Sadly, many articles are written with the assumption that the reader already knows why the subject of that article is important. This becomes vital for subjects which are not usually part of the general educational curriculum: for example, while it is widely known that Mao Tse Tung was the ruler of China and head of the Chinese Communist Party, far fewer people know Tekle Giyorgis I was emperor of Ethiopia, let alone that he existed or that there were Emperors of Ethiopia.

If an article does not have an informative lead that quickly asserts the notability of the subject it will likely be targeted for deletion. Writing an informative lead will help to avoid this fate, help our readers understand the subject and may even inspire then to read the rest of the article.

List articles

See also: Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates

Lists are commonly used in Wikipedia to organize information. Redundancy between lists and categories is beneficial because they are synergistic, and is covered in the guideline Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates. Like categories, lists can be used for keeping track of changes in the listed pages, using the Related Changes feature. Unlike a category, a list also allows detection of deletion of its entries, and, more generally, a history of its contents is available; lists also permit more than 200 entries to appear on a single page.

Lists have three main purposes: information, navigation and development. List articles sent to deletion generally need to show they can stand alone as a list article, are maintainable and sourceable.

Article restoration

Further information: Viewing and restoring deleted pages

Article userfication

See also: Userfication essay

• Requests for undeletion – If an article has already been deleted but you intend to improve it, you can request that it be moved into your user namespace at Requests for undeletion. Another option is to ask any of the administrators on this list who will userfy articles for editors.

Other content

Files for discussion

• Files for discussion – Files for deletion (FfD) is for the discussion of images and other media files (such as audio and video files) that are being considered for deletion. Files that have been listed at FfD for more than 7 days are eligible for deletion if either a consensus to do so has been reached or no objections to deletion have been raised.

Categories for discussion

• Categories for discussion – Categories for discussion (Cfd) is where deletion, merging, and renaming of categories is discussed.

Categories are used to organize other pages and aid browsing of related articles. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) for the policies guiding many renaming decisions, and Wikipedia:Category deletion policy for the policy governing this. Categories that have been listed for more than seven days are eligible for deletion, renaming or merging when a rough consensus to do so has been reached or no objections to the nomination have been raised. Unless the change is non-controversial (such as vandalism or a duplicate), please do not remove the category from pages before the community has made a decision.

Categories and WP:Lists often overlap see WP:Categories vs Lists for more on some the differences. Both are valued and both can co-exist offering our readers valuable content. For users new to CfD it may be helpful to review past discussions in the CfD archives of why certain cats are kept, moved or deleted. The goal, as always is not to "win" but get the category in line to serve our readers (and editors) best. Categories often move, are re-organized, split, merge and otherwise change over time whereas an article generally just grows.

Templates for discussion

• Templates for discussion – On this page, deletion or merging of templates is discussed. Stub templates are not covered here, and are discussed at Wikipedia: Stub types for deletion.

Images

• Reviewing free images
• Reviewing non-free images

Redirects for discussion

• Redirects for discussion – Redirects for discussion (RfD) is the place where problematic redirects are discussed.

Miscellany for deletion

• Miscellany for deletion – Miscellany for deletion (MfD) is where discussion occurs for problematic pages in the namespaces outside the main namespace (also called the "article namespace") which aren't covered by other specialized deletion discussion areas.

See also

• Wikipedia:Advanced source searching
• Wikipedia: Your first article
• How to save an article proposed for deletion (essay)