Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron".

To see the articles currently listed for rescue, see the Rescue category. To add an article to the list, see the instructions section below.

Step up, comrade! Do you know that there is a health crisis on the battlefield? All too often, an article about a perfectly notable topic lies wounded, badly written, unsourced — but should its life be taken at Articles for Deletion? No! Only articles about non-encyclopedic topics should be deleted, not articles that need improvement. Improvement is the opposite of deletion.

Ready and waiting. Add the {{Rescue}} template to any article.

An article should not be deleted just because it's ill-formed. Some writer worked hard on that article. Some reader can use that article. Those writers and readers, if reached out to, can help us man the barricades against the true threats.

Why is it important to read Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion?

Because of entropy: it is easier to delete an article than to create one. Every time an article is deleted, the contributions that were made to it are lost. Wikipedia administrators can access the information in deleted articles, but they are not necessarily experts on the article's topic. Once an article is deleted, its appropriateness can no longer be evaluated by the general public.

A contributor who writes a poor article on a notable topic is likely to be inexperienced. If their first efforts are deleted, they may be discouraged and refrain from creating further articles, or even editing. Everyone starts somewhere.

This makes Articles for Deletion a very important place, one that deserves everyone's attention.

But what can one person do?

One person can't easily sway a dozen. But the Rescue Squadron isn't about writing on talk pages. It's about editing article pages.

If everybody who cares about preserving important topics glances at one deletion discussion per day (or even one per week), reads through the imperiled article, and rewrites it if it's deserving, people will start to think about the differences between unencyclopedic writing and unencyclopedic topics -- and maybe they'll start contemplating improvement before they contemplate deletion.

So the ARS are wild-eyed inclusionists?

No. The Article Rescue Squadron (ARS) is not about casting keep votes or making policy simply to ensure that nothing is deleted. The ARS ensure that articles about notable topics do not get deleted when they can be rescued through normal editing which per WP:AFD means that it was not a good candidate for AfD. The So fix it and so look it up templates are sometimes all that's required for a rescue.

Instructions

What the Rescue template is for

• Articles on notable subjects going through AfD that:

• Need references
• Are written poorly
• Lack information readily available
• Need cleaning up

What the Rescue template is not for

• Articles that are not yet or may never be notable
• Articles that are not in the AfD process. These may, however, be good candidates for help at the Intensive Care Unit

Flag an article for Rescue

If an article has been tagged for deletion (the Afd tag) and you feel it meets the above guidelines then you can flag an article for Rescue by editing it to add the following line of text at the top of the page just under the AfD tag as shown in the example below:

{{Rescue}}

If you are the primary editor of an article tagged for deletion (the Afd tag) or are otherwise unsure if an article is a good candidate for the Article Rescue Squadron then please post a message including the article's title on the Article Rescue Squadron talk page.

Example

You can flag an article for Rescue by editing it to add the bolded text under the AfD tag, but within the two sets of <!-- --> tags, as in the below example using a Robin Sage AfD:

<!-- Please do not remove or change this AfD message until the issue is settled -->

{{AfDM|page=Robin Sage|date=2007 September 11|substed=yes}}

{{Rescue}}

<!-- End of AfD message, feel free to edit beyond this point -->

The article will then appear in this category along with all the others flagged for rescue. Adding it within the two sets of <!-- --> tags will also allow the closing admin to automatically remove the tag when they close the AfD.

General tips

• Browse Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion periodically, and help fix any articles flagged for rescue.
• In general, discuss issues concerning an individual article on that article's talk page, not on this project's talk page.
• Check Wikipedia:Guide to deletion for tips.

Source searches

• Google News
• Google Book Search
• Google Scholar
• NewsLibrary.com
• FindArticles.com
• World Cat

Where do I sign up?

Simply add your name to this list; feel free to add your ideas to the project discussion page as well.

Then place this tag {{User Article Rescue Squadron}} on your user page, and it will display this nifty and eye-catching box:

This user rescues articles for the Article Rescue Squadron.

Selected examples of previous rescues

Please click here to see examples of the Article Rescue Squadron's work.

See also

Efforts

• AfD Patrol - Patrols AfD to moderate the discussions with constructive comments.
• Article rescue contest
• Intensive Care Unit
• WikiProject Trivia and Popular Culture

Essays, etc.

• Articles that have been proposed for deletion but that may concern encyclopedic topics
• Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia
• List of recent deletions and restorations
• Don't Destroy
• Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions
• Don't be an ostrich
• Don't overuse shortcuts to policy and guidelines to win your argument
• Give an article a chance
• The Heymann Standard
• What Isn't Grounds for Article Deletion

External links

• Andrew Lih: Unwanted: New articles in Wikipedia
• Unwiki: See recently deleted articles in real time