Wikipedia:Patrols

For information on the patrolled edit feature of new page patrols, see Wikipedia:New pages patrol/patrolled pages.

Patrols are a specialized type of WikiProject used in the English Wikipedia to watch over a class of pages and take any appropriate actions. Most patrol actions are performed by individual Wikipedians, but some are performed by bots—computer programs or preprogrammed scripts that make automated edits without a need for real time human decision-making.

There is a great need for patrols in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is big. In fact, Wikipedia is huge. To help editors maintain reasonable quality on an encyclopedia this size, that almost anyone can edit, a number of Wikipedia community members have set up long-standing patrols. These patrols focus on various edits and feeds, and their members watch these feeds in the background, or from time to time, or really, whenever they like. Many of the well-known patrols have hundreds of users, and are directly responsible as a first line against vandalism, or other potential problems that may happen.

Why not join in?

Patrols

• AfD Patrol (members) – Patrols AfD (Articles for deletion) to moderate the discussions with constructive comments.
• Article Rescue Squadron (members) – Patrols AfD (Articles for deletion) for articles to rescue by adding referenced material.
• Disambiguation pages with links (members) – Patrols the Special:WhatLinksHere for disambiguation pages having incoming links.
• Help desk patrol (members) – Patrols the help desk and help users who tag their user spaces with {{helpme}}.
• New pages patrol (members) – Patrols newly created pages to improve them and provide assistance to edits made by new users unfamiliar with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines.
• Random page patrol (members) – Patrols article pages randomly accessed through Special:Random.
• Recent changes patrol (members) – Patrols recent changes to article pages for harmful edits.
• Typo Team (members) – Patrols article pages to correct typos and misspellings.
• WikiProject Unreferenced articles (members) – Patrols articles listed at Category:Articles lacking sources.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/uncategorized (members) – Patrols Category:Wikipedia backlog to categorizing articles that are uncategorized.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright patrol (members) – Patrols pages listed at Category:Possible copyright violations to address raised copyright issues.
• WikiProject New Zealand/Vandalism patrol – Patrols Category:New Zealand pages for vandal edits.
• WikiProject proposed deletion patrolling (members) – Patrols articles categorized into all articles proposed for deletion to assist in Wikipedia's proposed deletion process. (Semi-active Project)
• WikiProject Reference Tags (members) – Patrols articles to convert old reference templates into the most current reference templates.

Patrol templates

Code	Result
{{Template:User Unreferenced Articles}}	This user is a member of the Unreferenced articles WikiProject.	Transclusions
{{Template:User wikipedia/NP Patrol}}	This user is a new page patroller.	Transclusions
{{Template:User wikipedia/PROD Patrol}}	This user is a proposed deletion patroller.	Transclusions
{{Template:User wikipedia/RC Patrol}}	This user is a recent changes patroller.	Transclusions
{{Template:User wikipedia/RP Patrol}}	This user is a random page patroller.	Transclusions
{{Template:Uw-patrolled}}	Hi. Thank you for your help with the vital work of patrolling new pages. I noticed that you are not marking some of the pages you've reviewed as patrolled. Please do remember to click the 'mark this page as patrolled' link at the bottom of the new page if you have performed the standard patrolling tasks. Where appropriate, doing so saves time and work by informing fellow patrollers of your review of the page, so that they do not duplicate efforts. Thanks again for volunteering your time at the new pages patrol project.	Transclusions

See also

• Wikipedia:New pages patrol/patrolled pages
• Wikipedians by Wikipedia collaboration
• Wikipedian page patrollers