Note this is a working draft to see if a guideline for this area can be developed. Feel free to expand and modify this proposal. Significant changes should be aired out on the talk page before changing here. After this has been better developed, a straw poll will be used to see if there is consensus to bring this to the wider community for adoption.
Articles for Improvement (AFI) was where Wikipedians discussed how to improve low quality articles. Articles were listed for at least seven days, after which the nomination may be closed; although they may remain listed for longer provided improvement is being carried out and until consensus on improvement is reached. During the period that articles are listed, users may offer suggestions on how to improve the article, including any possible sources, or may directly edit the article.
The process was designed to support the development and expansion of articles which do not meet the deletion criteria at WP:DEL-REASON, but are in need of care, especially those which have had cleanup and maintenance tags for over a month, yet are still awaiting improvement. The process followed the advice at Wikipedia:Before and the policy notes at WP:DEL-CONTENT to work to improve an article rather than list it at AfD.
Contributing to an AFI discussion
How to contribute
AFIs are a place for rational discussion of how an article could be improved to meet Wikipedia’s article guidelines and policies. To participate, the user just needs to edit the article's entry and provide useful comments on how to improve the article.
There are a few basic practices that most Wikipedians use in AFI discussions:
Start your comments or recommendations by writing Comments and sign them by adding ~~~~ to the end. If you are responding to another editor, put your comment directly below theirs, making sure it is indented (using multiple *s).
Please disclose whether you are the article's creator, a substantial or minor contributor, or if you otherwise have a vested interest in the article; WP:AVOIDCOI.
Please have a look at the article before making a recommendation. Do not base your recommendation solely on the information supplied by the nominator. To understand the situation, it may also help to look at the history of the article. Also, please read the earlier comments and recommendations. They may contain relevant arguments and further useful information.
What must be avoided
The following are practices that should be avoided:
The debate is not a discussion wether the article should be deleted or not, but how it might be improved.
The debate is not a vote; please make recommendations on the course of action to be taken, sustained by arguments.
You can explain your earlier recommendation in response to others, but do not repeat your recommendation on a new bulleted line.
Nomination already implies that the nominator recommends improvement (unless indicated otherwise), and nominators should refrain from repeating this recommendation on a separate bulleted line.
Do not make conflicting recommendations; if you change your mind, modify your original recommendation rather than adding a new one. The recommended way of doing this is to use strike-through by enclosing a retracted statement between <s> and </s> after the *.
Nominate an article
If you want to nominate an article, follow these instructions:
I.
Fill out the below form to request creation of the improvement request subpage.
Fill out the following form (replace "ARTICLENAME" with the name of the article you want improved):
II.
Add the content to the discussion page.
Replace "Reason" with the reason you think the page should be improved and sign it by adding ~~~~ at the end.
III.
Save the page.
Press the "Save page" button at the bottom of the edit window.
Add the template {{AFI|PageName}} on the top of the article.
Note: You may want to leave a note at the related WikiProjects. To do so, use {{subst:AFIWPNote|PageName|WikiProjectName|~~~~}} under a new section on the WikiProject's talk page.
Closing an AFI nomination
Nominations for Articles for Improvement should remain open for at least 7 days, unless there is consensus that improvements have been reached. A nomination older than 7 days with no user feedback may be closed. Nominations that are actively being improved may remain open as long as is necessary to achieve the goal of improvement. An AFI nomination may be closed when participants reach consensus that the article has been improved; this may be reached at any point after the nomination was started.
Close proceeding
To close an AFI nomination, the closing user/admin may follow these steps:
