With people from all over the world contributing to thousands of articles at the same time, it is inevitable that not all of them are of top quality. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because "perfection is not required". Don't let these remarks stop you from writing a short, incomplete article about a topic – other contributors will collaborate with you and add their own ideas to enhance the article.
However, we also strive to build the best and most complete encyclopedia about Star Trek, and one of our long-term goals is to complete all unfinished articles. This means that, sometimes, it is necessary to make other contributors and readers aware of articles that are incomplete, poorly formatted, or which contain erroneous assumptions about a topic.
This page serves as a hub for all these attempts by making available tools to mark articles as a "page needing attention" as well as lists of articles that other contributors marked as such. You can use both to help enhance Memory Alpha.
- Articles that
- are inaccurate
- have an inaccurate POV
- are incomplete
- are unformatted
Pages needing attention
If you think that an article needs attention of some sort and you can't take care of it yourself, your first step should be to inform other contributors about it. Connected to each article is a discussion page – just click on the link "discussion" and edit the page to add a comment. Make sure to give this new section a good title and fill in the edit summary field.
Sometimes, this is all you have to do, especially if there are only minor objections to the article. Many contributors are checking the list of recent changes regularly and will eventually take care of the problem. In all other cases, you can use one of the following message templates. Just make sure to follow these two steps:
- Add a comment on the discussion page, informing other contributors of what you think needs to be changed.
- Add the appropriate message template (for example, {{pna-incomplete}}) at the top of the article. If only one section of an article requires attention, add the template to the top of that section.
This is really everything you have to do – the article in question will be added to one of the lists automatically, and everyone interested in helping out can just check the discussion page.
Removing articles from the lists
If you have taken care of all the problems with one of the articles listed, you can and should remove it from the list. This is important, because we don't want the articles to pile up on those lists. Removing articles is as easy as adding them:
- Reply to the comment on the discussion page, informing everyone which problems you have taken care of
- If all problems are solved, remove the message template from the article
As above, removal from the lists will happen automatically.
Message templates
Each of the following message templates corresponds to one of the automatically generated lists and takes care of one type of problems. If an article needs attention in more than one way, you can either use the generic message template or choose the problem category that you think is more important at the moment.
...for general purpose
Use this message template by adding {{pna}} at the top of an article. It corresponds to the list "Memory Alpha pages needing attention".
As explained above, you can use this message for articles that contain more than one problem, for problems that don't have a separate template, or if you are simply unsure which one of the specific templates below would be the correct one. Additionally, you can use this message for articles that are too short even to qualify as a stub, or if you are unsure if an article might need to be deleted.
...for pages missing citations
If an article lacks one or more citations for data within, the more specific tag {{pna-cite}} can be used, with a boilerplate to find sources for the data. Alternatively, to flag a single statement or paragraph that needs a citation, the inline tag {{incite}} may be used at the end of the statement or paragraph in question. See cite your sources for information on how to reference sources.
...for inaccurate articles
Use this message template by adding {{pna-inaccurate}} at the top of an article. It corresponds to the list "Memory Alpha inaccurate articles".
This message should be used if you think that an article contains erroneous information, for example by including fan-made assumptions or by presenting real world information as in-universe.
...for incomplete articles
Use this message template by adding {{pna-incomplete}} at the top of an article. It automatically add the article to the list "Memory Alpha incomplete articles".
This message should be used if an article is seriously incomplete, for example, if information of a complete episode is missing. If an article only lacks minor data points, a comment on the discussion page without using this template might suffice. If the article is a stub as defined here, use the template {{stub}} instead. In this case, a comment on the discussion page is unnecessary - but keep in mind that stub messages should be removed if an article is no longer a stub!
...for incomplete summaries
Use this message template by adding {{pna-episode}} in the summary section of an article. It automatically adds the article to the list "Memory Alpha incomplete articles".
This message should be used if an episode or film summary is seriously incomplete or missing. If a summary only lacks minor data points, a comment on the discussion page without using this template might suffice. If the whole article is a stub as defined here, use the template {{stub}} instead. In this case, a comment on the discussion page is unnecessary – but keep in mind that stub messages should be removed if an article is no longer a stub.
...for unformatted articles
Use this message template by adding {{pna-unformatted}} at the top of an article. It corresponds to the list "Memory Alpha unformatted articles".
This message should be used if an article desperately needs to be formatted, for example, because it doesn't adhere to the manual of style. This also includes pages that need to be "wikified", which means that links to other articles on this site have to be added. If the bad formatting of an article is really obvious (for example on dead-end pages), a comment on the discussion page may be omitted.
...for pages written from the wrong point of view
Use this message template by adding {{pna-pov}} at the top of an article. It corresponds to the list "Memory Alpha inaccurate POV articles".
This message should be used if an article is written from the wrong point of view. Problems could include in-universe material being written in an out-of-universe style, material written in an incorrect tense, or failure to properly distinguish alternate timelines. See point of view for more information.