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:

Your article title will have "Draft:" in front of it until it is accepted.


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 {{subst:submit}} 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

Drafts that have not been edited for more than six months are routinely deleted (see WP:CSD#G13). Once deleted, they can be recovered upon request 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 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 encouraged to become AfC reviewers! The guide for doing so can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Reviewing instructions. Apply at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants.

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