Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikify/Old

Welcome to WikiProject Wikify! This project focuses on improving the layout and formatting of articles that have been tagged with the {{Wikify}} template. Articles need to be wikified if they contain few or no links to other articles ("wikilinks"), if they contain obsolete html tags that need to be replaced with wiki markup, or if they simply need general formatting improvements to conform with Wikipedia's formatting guidelines. An overview on how to wikify articles is given in the How to help section below.

This WikiProject is one of several maintenance and cleanup projects on Wikipedia. The wikification drive was established to deal with the increasing backlog of articles in need of wikification. Users who are interested in joining the wikification drive are welcome to add themselves to the participants list. For queries about the WikiProject or for help on wikifying articles, please visit the project discussion page.

Scope and goals

Currently, of the 6,822,942 English Wikipedia articles, 39,627 are listed as good articles (about 1 in 172), and 6,492 are listed as featured articles (about 1 in 1,050). Many of the remainder are poorly written, badly linked, and in need of care and attention. WikiProject Wikify aims to improve the layout and presentation of such articles.

The wikification process is simple, and we welcome input from any editors who would like to help out. It should be relatively easy to wikify an article even if you are not familiar with the subject. You may also contribute to the project by inviting members, as this helps build support and ensures that there are people to clear the backlog.

Which articles need wikification?

An article needs wikification if it has any of the following issues:

• No specific lead paragraph and/or has no section headings;
• Little or no internal linking (wiki-links);
• Contains outdated html tags that need replacing with wiki markup;
• No infobox or templating and may require it;
• In need of other general formatting fixes.

An article should not be tagged for wikification if it:

• May be a copyright violation—tag it for speedy deletion;
• Is uncategorized – tag it with {{uncat}};
• Has basic wiki formatting and headings but contains poor prose or has bad grammar – that needs tagging for cleanup.

Articles that require wikification are tagged with the {{Wikify}} template. To list an article for wikification, simply add {{Wikify}} to the top of the article. If only a part of an article needs to be wikified, add {{Wikify section}} to the top of the relevant section.

How to help

Finding articles

1. Find an article to work on. Category:All articles that need to be wikified contains all the articles in the wikification backlog. Many editors choose to work on the oldest articles in the monthly listings first, so that none of them sit around for too long waiting for attention. Some WikiProjects also have dedicated cleanup listings, which list articles for wikification that lie within their scope: see Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions for a list of participating WikiProjects. Dead-end pages almost always also need to be wikified.
2. Check if the article is a copyright violation. There are a few red flags that indicate text was probably illegally copied into Wikipedia. User:Kjkolb/Copyvio has a quick guide. Instructions for reporting violations are at Wikipedia:Copyright problems.
3. Check if another article already exists on this subject. Use the search button at the left of the screen to check for duplicate articles, and create a redirect if necessary.

Wikification

1. Add wikilinks. Where appropriate, make links to other articles by putting "[[" and "]]" on either side of relevant words (see WP:LINK for more information). . Note that dates should not be linked purely for the purpose of autoformatting; in general, consensus is that there are very limited instances where linking of dates is desirable. Please do not link terms that most readers are familiar with, including common occupations (e.g. "actor/actress", "writer" and "politician"), well-known geographical terms (e.g. "United States", "Britain", "China", "Australia", "New York City" and "Los Angeles"), and everyday items (e.g. "milk", "glass", "house" and "road").
2. Format the lead. Create or improve the lead paragraph.
3. Arrange section headers. Arrange section headers as described at Wikipedia:Guide to layout.
4. Replace html tags with wiki markup, where appropriate. The use of many html tags is discouraged where wiki markup equivalents are available: for example, replace <b>bold text</b> with '''bold text'''. However, this does not apply for all html tags: e.g., H<sub>2</sub>O. See Help:Wikitext examples for a useful list of common wikitext and non-deprecated html tags.
5. Add an infobox if applicable. Add an infobox if it is appropriate for the article.

Final checks

1. Add other maintenance tags. If the article needs any other work, add the corresponding tag(s) from Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup.
2. Remove the {{wikify}} tag. This will remove it from the list.
3. Enhance your edit summary. You can encourage others to help with the wikification backlog by using something like the following as your edit summary when you save your changes:  Wikified as part of the [[WP:WWF|Wikification WikiProject]]!
4. Save your changes!

Articles that can't be wikified

In some cases, articles cannot be wikified. In these cases, you can do one of the following:

• Nominate the article for deletion, if appropriate. Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion is a good guide. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion if you think discussion is warranted or you aren't sure whether the article should be deleted.
• Tag for other problems. If you happen to notice that an article has problems beyond simple formatting and you can't fix it yourself, please add the appropriate tag from Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup to the article itself.

Participants

All editors are welcome to join the WikiProject – there are no membership requirements. To add yourself to the project, insert your name at the list of participants page. Members are encouraged to put the project page on their watchlist to keep up to date with developments.

Invite new users

To invite new users, you may add {{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikify/Invite a member}} to the user's talk page, which gives the following banner:

Monthly tasks and progress

Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify

All articles

31,423

The task box below contains selected articles from the wikification backlog, covering different fields of interest. The panel to the right shows the number of articles remaining in the wikification backlog, sorted by month.

Awards

Barnstars can be given by any user to any other editor. For outstanding work in wikifying articles, The Working Man's Barnstar can be used.

Image	Code (and link)	Notes
	{{subst:The Working Man's Barnstar|message ~~~~|gender}}	The Working Man's Barnstar Usually awarded to those who work tirelessly and endlessly on the more laborious or repetitive of Wikipedia tasks. Awarders enter customized messages in place of "message", and should remember to include their signature. The barnstar can also be gender-specific, by supplying "m" for Man's, "w" for Woman's or "n" for Wikipedian's, in place of the gender option. Leaving this option blank will use the award's default state of Wikipedian's.