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 on 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. Note this is a very involved area. There is much that can be learned about Wikipedia for anyone wishing to accurately engage in this patrol and be willing to master it.
- Random page patrol (members) – Patrols article pages randomly accessed through Special:Random. Venture into the unwatched and underappreciated corners of Wikipedia. Can be a serious engagement or just a fun diversion. Serendipitous discoveries abound!
- Recent changes patrol (members) – Patrols recent changes to article pages for harmful edits. Can be very rewarding! You may find yourself being given thanks and various WikiLove from random strangers.
- 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 categorize 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)