Wikipedia:Article Incubator

"WP:INCUBATOR" redirects here. You may be looking for the Wikimedia Incubator

Article incubation is a process for identifying and improving articles that seem to have potential, but which are currently on track to be deleted or userfied. Articles can be moved, in lieu of deletion, from the main encyclopedia to the article incubator, where they are worked on collaboratively.

Editors who wish to start new articles in the incubator rather than in the main space may also do so. In either case, incubation is intended to be temporary, and to be a more centralized alternative to hosting articles in the user spaces of individual editors.

Why have an article incubator?

Some Wikipedians have noticed that many new and short articles are nominated for deletion before editors have had a chance to develop them into articles that comply with our policies on sourcing and notability. If an article is nominated for deletion — via speedy deletion, proposed deletion or articles for deletion — then those who would improve the article to bring it up to standard find themselves simultaneously defending the article's right to exist to a tight deadline and often with firm opposition. Additionally, when a new user has their first article instantly nominated for deletion, they may feel unwelcome and never return, even if the article isn't actually deleted.

Incubation achieves three goals:

1. Sub-standard articles that are on the road to deletion or userfication are moved rather than deleted.
2. Editors can improve articles collaboratively in a more relaxed setting.
3. New users are given help and guidance improving their articles.

Incubation vs. userfication

Traditionally, the goal of giving authors a chance to work on articles away from the main namespace has been achieved by userfication, in which an article is copied or moved to a subpage of the author's user page. Incubation has many benefits over userfication:

1. Articles in the incubator are centrally located and listed, so that editors may browse among them without having to know whose userspace to look in.
2. Articles that have been in the incubator for some time, with insufficient improvement, can be easily identified as likely candidates for deletion.
3. It is easier to apply uniform standards such as the application of {{NOINDEX}} tags in a centralised location.
4. Articles in incubation get the benefit of collaborative editing which rarely happens to articles in userspace.
5. Many editors are only willing to userfy an article when it is entirely the work of the original author. Incubation is a more natural choice in the case of an article that has been worked on by multiple editors.

What incubation is not

Incubation can be useful in many cases; however, incubation is not:

1. A means of preventing the deletion from Wikipedia of blatantly inappropriate content, such as unambiguous copyright infringement, negative, unsourced biographies of living people, attacking/threatening content, or content deleted by office action;
2. A means of preserving sub-standard content on Wikipedia indefinitely, including content that has been deleted per consensus in a particular content for deletion discussion;
3. A means of removing sub-standard content from the main (article) namespace by sweeping it under the rug; or
4. A means of having articles deleted or undeleted without going through one of the established, consensus-supported deletion processes: speedy deletion, proposed deletion, deletion review, and deletion discussions. Incubated articles will generally be deleted if there is no substantial progress [see below]; Incubation should not be used as a "fix it or else" tactic.

As a rule, do not incubate an article unless you intend to improve it or you reasonably expect that it will be improved by other editors.

How it works

Generally, article incubation process works as follows:

1. An article is identified as not being up to Wikipedia standards, but shows some potential of being able to meet them. This determination could be made as the result of an AfD discussion, an impending speedy deletion, previous userification, or at an editor's discretion. But the following articles are not allowed:

   1. patent nonsense,

   2. pure vandalism and blatant hoaxes,

   3. pages that disparage or threaten their subject, or

   4. unambiguous copyright infringement

2. An editor moves the incubation candidate from the article namespace into the incubator. Articles should be moved to a subpage of this page. For example:

   [[Example article]] would be moved to [[Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Example Article]].

   • Any redirect left in articlespace at [[Example article]] must be tagged for speedy deletion as a cross-namespace redirect using {{db-r2}}.
   • If the article has already been deleted, a request can be made either at WP:REFUND or this project's talk page to have the article undeleted and transferred here.
3. Article is identified as being part of the project by adding {{Article Incubator|status=new}} to the top of the newly incubated article. Please also comment out any mainspace categories that are included in the article.
4. The article is worked on while in the incubator. In general, an article will need to cite at least two reliable sources and be written from a neutral point of view before returning to mainspace. Everyone is welcome to help by editing articles currently in incubation (listed below).
   • Once an article is ready to return to mainspace, its status should be updated to read {{Article Incubator|status=eval}}. An administrator or experienced editor who has not directly worked on the article will then review it and make the move. Once moved to mainspace, {{incu-grad}} should be added to the article's talk page to make note of the fact the article has "graduated" from incubation. Please also remember to restore any categories that were previously commented out.
     • Feel free to assess the newly graduated article by adding a |class= parameter. Guidelines for assessment can be found here.
   • While there are no hard limits, an article will generally be deleted (at administrator discretion) if there is no substantial progress after about a month of incubation. The reviewing administrator may choose to keep the article longer if they feel there is a reasonable chance the article will see future improvement. To suggest the deletion of an article currently in the article incubator, update its status to read {{Article Incubator|status=delete}}.
     • Articles that have been deleted from the incubator may be restored, at administrator discretion, if an editor agrees to work on them.
     • If any article meets any of the excluded categories listed above, please update its status to read {{Article Incubator|status=delete}} no matter how little time it has been here. These sorts of articles are not tolerated and will be eliminated quickly.
   • Sometimes an article that is unlikely to ever meet Wikipedia's notability standards, but is useful to a specialized group of people, will be transwikied to another wiki before deletion.

All incubated pages are noindexed so that they will not be listed by Google or other search engines.

Currently incubated articles

Articles that may benefit from improvement to prevent deletion may be placed in subpages of this page and logged here by adding it to the category. A list of all subpages can be found at Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Article Incubator. A compilation of the talk pages of all the articles in the incubator is at Wikipedia talk:Article Incubator/All talk pages.

A list of all current & former articles is located at Wikipedia:Article Incubator/History. The page contains a brief description of each article and other useful information to help editors find articles of interest to them.

Category Category:Articles in the Article Incubator not found

Who can help?

Anyone! The articles are listed in the category above and anyone is free to edit them to make improvements according to Wikipedia's standards of quality and inclusion.

If you wish, you may advertise the incubator by displaying an Article Incubator userbox. Simply add {{Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Userbox}} to your userpage to get the userbox below.

This user edits and assesses articles
in the Article Incubator.

Helpful templates

Template - Purpose	Usage	Example output
Incubated article templates
{{Article Incubator}} - Clearly identify articles that are currently in incubation	Add {{Article Incubator|status=TheStatus}} to the top of the article where status is one of the following: status=new - has been moved into the incubator, but improvement has not yet begun status=start - improvement has begun, but the article still needs work status=eval - thought to be ready for mainspace and is waiting evaluation from an uninvolved editor status=delete - has been stagnant for at least a month; or, is in an excluded type & needs removed	Template:Article Incubator
{{Incu-grad}} - Clearly identify articles that were developed in the incubator and are now back in mainspace	Add {{Incu-grad|class=AssessedClass}} to the talk page of the article where class is an optional parameter assessing the article as explained here.
User talk page templates
{{Incu-notify}} - Inform a user that an article they created has been incubated. Use if they didn't received prior notification about possible deletion.	{{subst:Incu-notify | article=TheArticle | reason=TheReason}} where "TheArticle" is the mainspace name of the article moved and "TheReason" is an optional parameter to specific the reason (A7, G10) it wasn't mainspace ready. See Template:Incu-notify for full documentation.	Hello Example, Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. Your efforts here are appreciated, but unfortunately it appears an article you created - Cat - wasn't quite up to our standards. However, I decided the article has potential and have moved it into the article incubator to help it develop. The incubator is designed to help articles develop in an environment that is free from the pressures of impending deletion. To continue working on your article, please visit Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Cat. If you have any questions or need help, feel free to ask and I will be glad to help. Example2 (talk) 15:23, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
{{Incu-notify-del}} - Inform a user that an article they created has been incubated. Use if they previously received a templated notice about possible deletion.	Place {{subst:Incu-notify-del | TheArticle}} directly a prior deletion notice. "TheArticle" is the mainspace name of the article incubated.	Good news Hello Example, Instead of being deleted, the article Cat has been moved into the article incubator. The incubator is a collaborative environment aimed at helping new articles be brought up to Wikipedia's standards in an environment that is free from the pressures of impending deletion. To continue working on your article, please visit Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Cat. If you have any questions or need help, feel free to ask and I will be glad to help. Example2 (talk) 16:21, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
{{Incubate from userfied}} Where an article has already been userfied, use this to tell the user that you propose to move the article from their userspace to the incubator.	{{subst:Incubate from userfied | TheArticle | TheUser}} where "TheArticle" is the name of a sub-page in TheUser's userspace (e.g. "Cool article" would refer to the page "User:TheUser/Cool article". If the second parameter is omitted the template will use the userspace it is placed in its place.	Hi. I notice that the article, TheArticle was moved out of the encyclopedia and into your user space. If you don't object, I would like to move this article to the Wikipedia:Article Incubator, a new project that helps develop articles up to Wikipedia standards without the articles being threatened by deletion. What I'm proposing is this: I will move User:TheUser/TheArticle to Wikipedia:Article Incubator/TheArticle. In that location, it will be brought to the attention of many editors who can help improve it so that we'll be able to move it back into the proper encyclopedia soon. Please let me know if you object to this for any reason, or if you have any questions or concerns. In the mean time, I am going to go ahead and move your user space article to the incubator. Thanks for your contributions. Example (talk) 23:50, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Deletion discussion templates
{{suggest incubation}} - Suggest incubation instead of userification during an AfD discussion	{{subst:suggest incubation | somebody}} where "somebody" is an optional parameter to indicate who suggested userification	Comment - If userfying is being considered, as was suggested above by User:somebody, I submit that it might be better to move this article to WP:INCUBATOR, a new project that is essentially the same as the userfy option, except it's in a central area, in the project namespace. The advantages of incubation over userfication are that more eyes will see the article, and that it won't sit there indefinitely out of sight if no improvement occurs. I should clarify that we are only interested in articles that are otherwise certain to be deleted or userfied. We're not really interested in taking on articles that have a chance of being improved in the mainspace. Thanks for your consideration. Example (talk) 22:47, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Userpage boxes & awards
{{Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Userbox}} - Adding a userbox to one's own userpage	Add {{Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Userbox}} to your userpage where you'd like the box displayed.	This user edits and assesses articles in the Article Incubator.
{{User Incubator Graduate}} - for giving a user credit for bringing an article up to standard & thus allowing it to graduate from the article incubator.	Place {{User Incubator Graduate|TheArticle}} on user's talk page (or userpage) where "TheArticle" is the mainspace name of the article they worked on.	This user played a significant role in helping Example graduate from incubation.
{{Incu}} - Adding an incubation medal to someone's userpage	{{Incu|article}} where "article" is the mainspace name of the article they improved during incubation. See Template:Incu-userpage for multiple award instructions & full documentation.

See also

• Wikipedia:Article wizard 2.0
• Wikipedia:Deletion policy
• Wikipedia:Editors are not mindreaders: an essay explaining how difficult it is for editors to understand what articles should be kept.
• Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron: a project to improve articles under discussion at WP:AFD.