Wikipedia:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/Cleanup
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Welcome to the cleanup department of the Dungeons & Dragons WikiProject. This is where we work together to cleanup all of the articles within the project's scope. This department is not designed to help create new articles or expand existing ones; rather, it should be consulted when an article needs cleanup such as a rewrite to be out-of-universe, additional references, or categorization. Additionally, this department is responsible for merging, redirecting, or deleting articles which lack notability and have proven that their notability cannot be established.
A listing of most of the project's article which need cleanup, as well as what types of cleanup they need, can be found here.
Statistics[edit]
The following chart is updated daily to track our progress. It can be edited here, although it shouldn't normally need to be edited by a non-bot user.
| Category | Backlog |
|---|---|
| Immediate attention | 0 |
| Comment | 1 |
| Banner consolidation | 293 |
| Unassessed articles | 0 |
| Unknown-importance | 424 |
| Improve references | 49 |
| Rewrite | 317 |
| General cleanup | 5 |
Basic cleanup[edit]
There are three "basic" cleanup tasks currently associated with this department: improving references, rewriting so that an article is out-of-universe, and general cleanup. The other cleanup tasks in the backlog are associated with the assessment department, or aren't affiliated with any department.
Improve references[edit]
Articles tagged on their talk page with the refs=yes parameter of the {{D&D}} template are added to Category:Dungeons & Dragons articles needing improved references. These articles are in need of references, reliable secondary sources, and footnotes. For a guide to references within the D&D project, see the references department.
Rewrite in-universe content[edit]
It is important that articles about fictional elements of the game be written from an out-of-universe perspective. Articles in Category:Dungeons & Dragons articles that need to differentiate between fact and fiction need such a rewrite. For an example of how articles need to be rewritten, look at Luke Skywalker (a predominantly in-universe article) and Palpatine (a featured and mostly out-of-universe article).
General cleanup[edit]
Other things, such as the need for more context or wikifying, call for general cleanup. Articles tagged with the cleanup=yes parameter of the {{D&D}} template need general cleanup like this, and are categorized into Category:Dungeons & Dragons articles needing general cleanup.
What if something's not notable?[edit]
There are many, many, non-notable D&D articles at this time, such as Aarakocra (as of this revision) and Bucknard (as of this revision). There is a common procedure which the project uses:
- Tag it with {{Notability}} should be used whenever an article is probably not notable or is probably notable but does not indicate it at the time.
- Look for sources yourself. Before proposing a redirection, deletion, or merger due to non-notability, someone must have tried and failed to establish the notability, per Wikipedia:Notability#Articles not satisfying the notability guidelines. Consider looking at our references department for help finding sources.
- If you have tried and failed to establish notability, there are a few courses of action which you can take:
- Merge. Articles such as List of minor Dragonlance characters and List of Forgotten Realms characters exist as locations to merge many less-notable articles into, so that the content is saved even though it is not notable enough to establish its own article.
- Redirect. If a merge wouldn't make sense for the article, consider redirecting it to an article of a larger scope. For example, a non-notable demon lord could be redirected to Demon lord (Dungeons & Dragons). This preserves the article's edit history, so that the content can still be accessed if someone else believes that they can establish notability. The {{D&D}} template should be updated to indicate that the article's class is Redirect, so that it is grouped with similar articles that are redirected but have edit histories.
- Deletion. Deletion should always be a last resort, since it removes the content from Wikipedia entirely and a request would have to be made to restore it so that notability might be established. Redirection is almost always a better action if the content cannot be merged, unless the article appears to contain a copyright violation.
Deleted pages[edit]
Articles get deleted, but just because an article or page has been previously deleted doesn't mean that it's previous content can't be restored for cleanup or merging. This is an (incomplete) list of deleted D&D articles and pages. Please do not use this list to find deleted articles and request that they be restored unless you intend to effect immediate cleanup or merging; the articles were deleted for a reason, and they should be restored only if that reason can be made invalid after cleanup. Note that articles deleted via WP:CSD should not be listed here.