Wikipedia:List of bad article ideas
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The following is a list of article ideas that show up repeatedly in Articles for deletion (AfD). Please think twice before creating an article about any of the following:
- Yourself or your organization – including a band of which you are a member or employee, even if either is notable! (See: Conflict of interest, Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause, and An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing.)
- A topic on which no published, reliable, third-party sources exist – see Wikipedia:The answer to life, the universe, and everything and Wikipedia:Verifiability.
- A person, place or idea that you or your friends made up.
- Anything about which you are not going to write at least one complete sentence.
- The street you live on (unless it meets accepted standards of "notability").
- A second article on an existing topic; you can just edit the existing article. Use the Search button to find out where it is.
- Your dormitory building (unless it's a heritage-listed building)
- Something that doesn't exist, even as something fictional, legendary, or hypothetical.
- Your club, society, fraternity, sorority, or any other school/college group (unless it's famous and covered by independent sources, but even then see conflict of interest).
- Secret societies that are truly secret, and other secret information that is being revealed for the first time. (See: No original research)
- Extremely specific details which only a dedicated few care about.
- Subjects that cannot be studied, or the knowledge of which amounts only to the fact that it relates to another topic.
- Any article in which you want to present a single point of view on a topic when multiple points of view exist. Expect all points of view, even critical or negative ones, to appear in any article you make! See WP:NPOV
- A new article to supplement an already existing one that you think is not putting your point across forcefully enough.
- Any subject that can be documented only by reference to the original, be it film, recording or picture. An example would be an article about movie characters when the only information about these characters exists in the movie in which they are featured.
- The new great thing you made up in school today.
- Your résumé or a thinly disguised version thereof.
- Any article devoted solely to announcing that someone or something is awesome, beast, the bomb, cool, swag, or the man, the myth, the legend. See WP:PEACOCK.
- Any article devoted solely to announcing that someone is gay, lesbian, a man, a woman, married, divorced or in other words, soap opera of any kind (see Friends of gays should not be allowed to edit articles).
- Any article that calls any Wikipedian the worst ever. See WP:NPA and WP:ATP.
- Any article about another article.
- Any article about a particular millisecond in history. With a few exceptions.
- Any article articulating other articles' articulation when articulating another article.
- Hoax articles. For every one that slips through the cracks, there are 100,000 that get caught. You're not special.
See also
[edit]- Wikipedia:List of really, really, really stupid article ideas that you really, really, really should not create, for a more humorous version of the above
- Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes
- Wikipedia:Deletion policy
- Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion, or, the list of article ideas that are really, really really bad; so bad that administrators are allowed to delete them on the spot.
- Wikipedia:Fart
- Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, list of "prohibited" items
- Wikipedia:Starting an article
- Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Precedents
- Wikipedia:Your first article
- Missing encyclopedic articles, use your time well and effectively
- Wikipedia:Most ideas are bad