The most comprehensive place to look for a list of collaborative cleanup projects is [[Wikipedia:Maintenance]] (shortcut WP:MAINT). This page gives an overview of all sorts of cleanup tasks, from the simple to the complex. So many tasks are listed that you might not know where to start. What is WikiProject Red Link Recovery? Well, this project aims to turn redlinks to bluelinks by automating the process of finding close title matches and suggesting redirects.
If you would rather edit by topic, joining a WikiProject may be the best route (see "WikiProjects" on Section 3.1, “WikiProjects”). Alternatively, you can simply scan a list of articles in any topic area to find one that looks interesting and is in need of help. Try [[Category:To do]], which shows articles with to-do lists on their talk pages or [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]] for a selected list of articles that need to be cleaned up, along with brief explanations of what needs to be done. If you can clean up one of these articles completely, simply edit the page to remove it from the list.
Cleanup may be basic Wikipedia work, but it still offers challenges and interesting insights. Sometimes articles will require complete restructuring. Some will need to be rewritten: Refer to "Handling Major Editing Tasks" on Section 1.3, “Handling Major Editing Tasks” for a general approach to handling major edits, and heed the advice in Chapter 6, Good Writing and Research about keeping the material that can be saved and working so cleanup doesn't leave big breaks and surprise diffs in the page history.
Every article in Wikipedia should aspire to elegant and clear prose that explains a topic gracefully and logically. Unfortunately, this aspiration is far from always being realized.
Poor writing creeps into Wikipedia in different ways:
An article may start with a poorly written draft. The original author may not be a proficient writer or English may be his or her second language.
An article may have gradually become unclear. Articles that have been copyedited in pieces over time, improving the wording but neglecting the logical flow, may still need to be thoroughly rewritten. Perhaps small pieces of information have been added over time, but the article now lacks structure.
Finally, an article may be clearly written but have an inappropriate tone or style for an encyclopedia. An article may lack a neutral point of view, demonstrating an editorial bias toward an event, a product, or a person. An article may also read like a press release, a product announcement, or even an advertisement.
Articles that need language help can be flagged in a variety of ways. Additionally, many of the articles flagged with the generic cleanup tag actually need to be rewritten.
Numerous explicit cleanup tags address the question of poor writing. To see articles flagged with any of these templates, you can go to the template page (such as [[Template:Copyedit]]); generally, the categories articles are placed into will be noted here, or you can click What Links Here from the template page. For instance:
{{copyedit}}Addresses any problem with grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling{{advert}}, {{fansite}}, {{gameguide}}, {{likeresume}}, {{newsrelease}}, {{obit}}, {{review}}, {{story}}Address problems with inappropriate tone and style{{abbreviations}}, {{buzzword}}, {{cleanup-jargon}}, {{inappropriate person}}, {{quotefarm}}, {{toospecialized}}Address composition problems{{contradict}}, {{misleading}}, {{unbalanced}}, {{limitedgeographicscope}}, {{weasel}}Address problems with content and presentation
Depending on the level of problems, many approaches to rewriting articles exist. Guidelines for good articles are given in the Manual of Style and a variety of essays on the subject (see Chapter 6, Good Writing and Research), but the most important goal is that information be clearly conveyed to the reader, in line with the content policies. For unclear wording, consider clearer ways to provide explanations without sacrificing facts or ideas. Readers will benefit when you're done. To find other editors interested in writing and copyediting, consider joining the League of Copyeditors WikiProject.
Stub articles are beginning articles that need to be expanded with more information on the topic. Hundreds of thousands of articles have been marked as stubs in all topic areas—so many that stub-sorting by topic is itself a key maintenance task. If you don't want to write an entire article from scratch but enjoy the research and writing process, try expanding one of these articles. Don't forget, however, that new information should be well referenced.
A list of all stub types (which, in turn, links to specific categories for each type) is maintained at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting]]. When working on these articles, review more mature articles in the same topic area. What information is missing? Does an article about an author, for instance, contain a bibliography of the author's work?
Wikipedia has no hard-and-fast rules about how long a stub can get before it is no longer a stub. If an article seems reasonably complete or it seems like a long article, you can probably remove the stub message. If an article seems longer than a stub but still needs to be expanded, flag it with the {{expand}} template.
Wikification is the changing of any text into wikitext, including marking it with wikisyntax, structuring the article into logical sections, and adding internal links. Wikification can easily turn into rewriting and fact-checking because, fundamentally, you are converting ordinary prose into Wikipedia hypertext. Wikification, in this broader sense, means "formatting according to Wikipedia style." Experienced Wikipedia editors probably wikify before serious rewriting for prose style because wikification brings articles closer to encyclopedic considerations and helps flag related material in other articles.
When you wikify, be alert to other issues:
If the article is a dead-end article with no wikilinks leading from it, check What Links Here to make sure the article isn't also an orphan article without incoming links. These two problems often occur in the same article. Part of wikifying may be adding appropriate links to the article from other pages.
You may need to add sections to the text or rewrite the lead topic sentence to be more encyclopedic. If the whole logical flow of an article is wrong, give that the highest priority of all.
Poorly formatted content should usually also be examined for compliance with notability standards and factual accuracy as well; poor formatting is often a sign that the content was added by someone unfamiliar with Wikipedia.
Wrong tone can be a clue to copyright issues; see "Copyright Violations" on Section 2.4.2, “Copyright Violations”.
Flag articles that need to be wikified by using the {{wikify}} template (Figure 7.2, “Wikify template message”). The article will then be added to [[Category:Articles that need to be wikified]]. The Wikification effort is supported by [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikify]] (shortcut WP:WWF). A related cleanup tag is {{sections}}, which places articles in [[Category:Articles needing sections]].
Good sources boost the quality of articles. Sources give the reader a place to find more information when they have finished reading the Wikipedia article, as well helping to ensure stated facts are accurate. Verifiability and Reliable Sources (shortcuts WP:V and WP:RS) are key content policies, as discussed in Chapter 1, What's in Wikipedia?. However, verifiability, which means the ability to verify something in principle, differs from actually providing verifiable sources. Many Wikipedia articles fall a little short here. Older articles from the more free-wheeling days on Wikipedia may not cite sources at all, whereas other articles may cite sources for only a few of the ideas in the text or not contain footnotes in the text itself.
Sourcing is an ongoing process: Compiling a good bibliography for any topic, even a small one, is a big task. For some topics, you may have trouble finding any reliable sources, and accurate referencing work in these instances is particularly valuable. When original authors do not source their facts, various fact-checking projects perform this work.
Wikipedia has several templates that alert both editors and readers that citations are needed in an article:
{{unreferenced}}This template places articles in [[Category:Articles lacking sources]]. Use when an article doesn't cite any sources at all.{{refimprove}}This template places articles in [[Category:Articles lacking reliable references]]. Use when some sources exist but more are needed.{{citeneeded}}The more usual{{citeneeded}}or{{fact}}both place an article in [[Category:All articles with unsourced statements]]. Unlike the first two templates, add these templates inline in the article text wherever the problem occurs (Figure 7.3, “The inline Citation Needed tag”). For instance, if an article contains a questionable or controversial statement that needs a reference, you can insert the{{fact}}template at the end of the sentence in question.
Sourcing can be time-consuming, but you can add sources to articles gradually. If you can find an outside, reliable source for just one fact mentioned in an article, adding a footnote with this source is quite helpful. If you have a more general source for the article's subject but haven't used it as a source for specific facts in the article, consider starting a Further reading or External links section and listing the source as a place for readers to get more information. For instance, you may want to list definitive biographies for articles on noteworthy people in Further reading or add links to online primary source documents for historical articles in External links. Every article should be as well sourced as possible.
If you are knowledgeable about a particular topic area and want to concentrate on finding sources for that area, joining a WikiProject (as described in "Projects: Working to Improve Content" on Section 3, “Projects: Working to Improve Content”) is the easiest way to find articles on that topic that need to be improved.
Wikipedia does not want articles to include mistaken statements, particularly those damaging to people or commercial ventures. On the other hand, Wikipedia content is not determined by outside pressures; neutrality is a key principle, and Wikipedia is not a mechanism for promotion. Therefore, inaccurate information and unfair criticism without a factual basis should not appear in Wikipedia articles; but fair criticism, properly sourced and presented in a balanced way, is not going to be removed from Wikipedia just because the subject or anyone else wants it removed.
If an article about you or your company is factually incorrect, you have several options, but you should first assess the best way to get corrections made.
You can often spot copyright violations on Wikipedia simply by their tone. Material from another source usually doesn't read like an encyclopedia article. Most copyright violations are caused by people cutting and pasting material from other sites into an article, which you can detect by searching the Web for the passage. Be sure to search for selected phrases from middle or particular unlikely sounding sentences; editors tend to change introductory and concluding sentences.
If you locate a probable source for some article text, the next question is how much text was copied. If only a sentence or two was copied and the source is simply unattributed, then rewriting and citing the source may solve the problem. If, however, an entire article or most of it has been copied from a single source (as is more common with cut-and-paste violations), then a copyright violation has occurred. Be aware, though, that Wikipedia does include, legitimately, much public domain text and that other sites mirror Wikipedia content—double-check that the other website is not copying Wikipedia, rather than the other way around!
You have a few options for removing copyright violations:
First, the text can be reverted to a good version. Check the page history to see if a clean version exists; if so, simply revert to this good version, adding an appropriate edit summary.
If you're having trouble figuring out if a good version exists, you can always rewrite the text yourself. Be careful that you aren't simply paraphrasing. Strip out most of the detail and start over, citing each fact to a source as you reinsert it. Be sure to add a note to the talk page explaining why you cut article text.
If you are unable to revert or rewrite, flag confirmed copyright violations using the
{{copyvio}}tag, which will place the article in a category of possible copyright violations for experienced editors to check.If you aren't certain that a copyright violation has occurred, use
{{copyvio|url=}}, which will trigger a more measured deletion process. After the equal sign, paste in the URL from which you think the material may have been copied. Detailed instructions can be found at [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems]] (shortcut WP:CP).If you are sure the article violates copyright and that the text or topic doesn't seem to have any redeeming value, you may want to use the speedy delete tag
{{db-copyvio}}, which will ensure rapid administrator attention (see "Deletion Processes" on Section 4.2.1, “Deletion Processes”).
See [[Wikipedia:Spotting possible copyright violations]] (shortcut WP:SPCP) for more information. If your copyright is being infringed in an article, see [[Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Copyright]]; several experienced editors work on resolving copyright issues.
Vandalism patrolling, though formally neither a project nor a process, is some of the most important ongoing work on Wikipedia. Vandalism is, by definition, a change made to Wikipedia with the malicious intention of having a negative effect on the content. Disputes over content may lead to accusations of vandalism, but no editor should ever use the word lightly—always assume good faith unless you have very good reason not to. Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. See [[Wikipedia:Vandalism]] (shortcut WP:VAN) for a general perspective on the topic and [[Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism]] (shortcut WP:AIV) for a place to file reports against the most problematic editors.
Anyone can just revert obvious vandalism that they see, of course; check the history page and then edit or use the undo version if you're logged in to revert an article to a version before the vandalism occurred, as explained in Chapter 5, Basic Editing. (With either method, check the diff of the current version with the version you are reverting to make sure you're only undoing vandalism, and then add an edit summary: rvv vandalism is common.) Many editors use their watchlists for just this purpose, scanning the list of changes on a regular basis to check for suspect edits that might be vandalism. Others devote substantial time to watching Recent Changes and other logs. Most vandalism is obvious: cutting content for no reason or inserting obscenities, crude humor, or nonsense. If you find a vandalized page, you should spend a couple of minutes reviewing the page history; vandal edits tend to be clustered, and you may have to revert several edits to find the "latest good version" or a version of the page that hasn't been vandalized at all (see "Fixing Mistakes and Other Reasons to Revert" on Section 1.4, “Fixing Mistakes and Other Reasons to Revert”).
If you can't tell whether an edit is vandalism, check the diff of the edit along with the editing history of the user who made the edit to make a final determination. If an edit seems potentially realistic but is unsourced and uncommented, you can always tag it appropriately (with the Citation Needed template, for instance), leave a comment on the talk page, or revert it but copy the text of the edit to the talk page for others to verify one way or the other.
Most vandalism follows a pattern. The soft security concept, which will be discussed again in Chapter 12, Community and Communication, is worth mentioning here. Wikipedia is open to everyone, so bad edits will happen. As noted in Chapter 4, Understanding and Evaluating an Article, however, most of these edits are caught quickly. The offenders are often young, and most vandalism is juvenile. Some persistent or more subtle vandals can succeed for a while. But Wikipedia defends in depth, not just with one front line. Wikipedia works by self-healing.
Many tools and systems have been developed to detect (and sometimes automatically correct) vandal edits; the Counter-Vandalism Unit, found at [[Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit]] (shortcut WP:CVU), is a collection of editors interested in this work (Figure 7.4, “Counter-Vandalism Unit logo” shows its logo).
Besides vandalism repair, many cleanup editing tasks (such as correcting spelling or fixing typos) are repetitive, and for these you can use editing tools. These tools help power editors get dull tasks done quickly (though editors are always responsible for the edits they make, regardless of whether they used an automated tool or not).
One popular application is the AutoWiki Browser. Here is a description from its page at [[Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser]] (shortcut WP:AWB):
The AutoWikiBrowser is a semi-automated Wikipedia editor for Microsoft Windows 2000/XP (or newer) designed to make tedious repetitive tasks quicker and easier. It is essentially a browser that automatically opens up a new page when the last is saved. When set to do so, it suggests some changes (typically formatting) that are generally meant to be incidental to the main change.
This tool and other automated tools are meant for experienced editors only; learn the ropes by editing by hand. You can find many other tools, including tools for editing quickly, at [[Wikipedia:Tools]].