Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Archive/Helpful tips

Procedures and tips

Outline creation

This project's main procedure is the creation of outline articles. The creation template is called Template:Topic outline. Instructions on how to use it is included with it. (Another template exists called Template:Topic outline country which was used to create a topic outline for every country of the World (unless we missed some). The country topic outlines are all listed below, further down this page).

If you create a topic outline list in article space, be sure to place a {{under construction}} template at the top of it. Otherwise, you run the risk that someone will come along and nominate the page for deletion after you barely get started. For example, the Outline of Canada was nominated for deletion at AfD when it only included a few links. Someone had to jump in and develop it fast in order to save it. The same thing happened to Outline of mining.

A safer approach is to create new topic outlines in this WikiProject's space, starting the page title with "Wikipedia:WikiProject Topic outline/Drafts/Outline of ". One must have a compelling reason to delete a draft, since it is by definition under development, which means all problems are subject to being discussed on its talk page before it gets moved to article space. There are lists of drafts under development, below.

Outline maintenance

Information may become out of date, and when it does it needs to be updated. For example, the population and area figures presented in the country outlines.

Wikipedia is constantly expanding, and as coverage on a subject expands, so too should its topic outline. For each topic outline, a search for articles on its subject should be conducted periodically, and links to topics added to the outline. If there are too many of a particular type of link, for example, the cities in a particular country, a link should be provided to a list of them rather than listing them all in the outline itself.