Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikify/Drives/Instructions

Welcome to this month's Backlog Elimination Drive! The goal is to "wikify" as many articles as you can during the month. Below, you'll find instructions on how to wikify, log your score, and find articles to wikify. Thanks for participating!

Joining the drive

Joining instructions are on the log page in the green box.

How do you wikify an article?

Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify

All articles

31,950

Ten simple steps to thoroughly wikify an article

1. Check for copyright violations. Long segments of text without wikilinks can indicate that the text was illegally copied into Wikipedia. Look for (other red flags). Instructions for reporting violations are at Wikipedia:Copyright problems.
2. Add wikilinks. Where appropriate, make links to other articles by putting "[[" and "]]" on either side of relevant words (see WP:LINK for more information) and check that your links work as expected. 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., "writer"), well-known geographical terms (e.g., "United States"), or everyday items (e.g., "milk").
3. Format the lead. Create or improve the lead paragraph. It should "define the topic, establish context, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and summarize the most important points".
4. Arrange layout. Arrange section headings as described at Wikipedia:Guide to layout. Be sure that any stub template appears after any category links, separated by two blank lines.
5. Replace HTML tags with wiki markup, where available. Use of HTML tags is discouraged where equivalent wiki markup exists: for example, replace <b>bold text</b> with '''bold text'''. However, HTML is permitted where no corresponding wiki markup exists: e.g., H<sub>2</sub>O for subscripts and   for a non-breaking space. See Help:Wikitext examples for a useful list of common wikitext and appropriate HTML markup.
6. Clean up instances of link rot and format the references or footnotes, using citation templates when appropriate.
7. Add an infobox if appropriate. Add an infobox if it is appropriate for the article.
8. For an article about a person, use {{L}} to add a sort key and categories. The three parameters of this template will automatically add a sort key, birth and death categories, and Category:Living people if true. For other articles, use {{DEFAULTSORT:}} to add a sortkey.
9. Add {{coord missing}} if missing. Does an article about a place or building not have the coordinates? Add this template.
10. Remove the tag. This will remove it from the list of tagged pages.
11. 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.

Procedures for the drive

1. Log completed articles on the log page. If you complete a wikification, don't forget to list it so that you can get credit for the edit. Also don't forget to remove the cleanup tag from the article itself.
2. No rubber-stamping of articles. Be thorough and complete in your wikifications, and make sure all the headings are correct and there are no mistakes in the syntax and coding.
3. Have fun. We're here to help bring these articles up to their fullest potential and improve the overall quality of the encyclopedia. Have fun!

Note: Don't forget to update the leaderboard yourself, if you belong on it.

How to find articles to work on

Articles in need of wikification will be tagged with one of the following templates:

• {{wikify}} – now deprecated
• {{underlinked}}
• {{overlinked}}
• {{dead end}}
• {{sections}}
• {{format footnotes}}
• {{cleanup-link rot}}
• {{cleanup-HTML}}
• {{Lead missing}}, {{Lead rewrite}}, {{Lead too short}}, {{Inadequate lead}}, {{Lead too long}}
• {{citation style}}
• {{infobox requested}}

These articles can all be found in Category:Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify. Click here to find a random article from this category.

CatScan

Some people prefer to edit articles in a field they already know about. Such articles can be found using categories:

1. Go to the whimsically named CatScan. Don't be intimidated! It's easy to use.
2. Set the Depth to 5.
3. Write or paste Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify in the box labelled "Categories".
4. Write the name of a category of interest on a separate line in the same box, eg Books.
5. Scroll down and click the button labelled "Do it!"
6. Be patient... For big categories the results might take a little while.

This example will find articles tagged with one of the above cleanup templates in Category:Books, as well as its sub-categories, sub-sub-categories, and so on down to sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-categories.