Wikipedia:WikiProject Orphanage

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Welcome to WikiProject Orphanage!

Find a random orphan article

WikiProject Orphanage is dedicated to clearing up the immense backlog of orphaned articles. There are thousands of articles and images on Wikipedia with few or no incoming links to them. The value of this project should not be underestimated as the wikilink is one of the important characteristics of a wiki and is indeed what provides Wikipedia with its ease of quick information retrieval. Plus, if you are new to Wikipedia, de-orphaning articles is a great way to learn a wide variety of useful skills. De-orphaning, when done correctly, will allow you to learn how to navigate within Wikipedia, how to format wikilinks, and how to utilize cleanup tags.

There are 54,353 articles tagged as orphans out of a total 6,991,869 articles on Wikipedia. This is 0.78% of the total articles, and an incredible amount to work on, so we need your help.

While it may seem simple at first, not every article can be de-orphaned, and de-orphaning can be a difficult task, so this project aims to educate and make it easier. But please remember that de-orphaning is about maintaining and improving the quality of individual articles by integrating them with others in a relevant and meaningful way; it's not about keeping score. The value of de-orphaning is not determined by the number of incoming links you added or how many orphan tags you removed, but rather by the quality of integration. Therefore, the primary goal of the Orphanage is to improve Wikipedia by building the web in a way that enhances the quality of all affected articles.

Note that this project deals primarily with articles rather than images. For orphaned images, see Category:Orphaned non-free use Wikipedia files.

Our current aim is to clear the backlog of orphaned articles on Wikipedia, so that all articles can be found by a series of links from the Main Page. Note that an article with categories can be found in this way because it can be reached from other articles that share the category; however, categories currently are not counted in the definition of orphan. The project also aims to make the process of de-orphaning easier. Through collaborating with other projects, providing information, and above all helping editors to cooperate, the Orphanage will make the task of de-orphaning a little less daunting. If you have any ideas or suggestions on how to help us improve in our goal, please feel free to leave a message on the talk page.

Surely you're wondering what you can do to help our cause. With the current backlog all the help that is offered is welcomed. De-orphaning an article is a good way to start.

Suggestions for how to de-orphan an article provides information regarding how to find articles that can be linked to orphans and add them. There is also a host of other relevant information in the main article.

To add yourself to the list of participants, edit this section and add your username to the bottom of the Active list using this format:

{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Orphanage/table|Your Username|Active}}
To receive Backlog drive notifications on your talkpage please add your name here. If you would like a userbox, to proclaim your project participation on your user page, it can be found in the template section below.

These former members haven't been seen around in a while or are unfortunately no longer involved with WikiProject Orphanage. We hope they'll come back and move themselves to the active list!

A progress graph and monthly summary of tagged orphans is at Category:Orphaned articles.

Note that the bot addbot started tagging orphans in February 2009, which accounted for the large number of orphans tagged that month.

For in-depth details, see the Wikipedia:Orphan information page.

• {{Orphan}} – a template to be put directly on the article if it satisfies the orphan criteria. Currently recommended for use only if an article has zero incoming links.
  • {{Orphan|date=May 2025|incat=May 2025}} – if the article has no link and probably never will, but is well categorised.
  • {{Orphan|date=May 2025|att=May 2025}} – once you have unsuccessfully attempted to de-orphan the article. Leave "date" as the date on the original orphan template (if one exists), and set "att" to equal the month and year you attempted to de-orphan the article.
• {{Orphaned essay}} – for essays that are found to be orphaned.
• {{subst:Welcome de-orphaner}} – a welcoming template to encourage new project members.
• {{subst:Welcome de-orphaner2}} – a slightly different welcoming template, to invite de-orphaners to the project.
• {{WikiProject cleanup group|Orphaned articles|WikiProject name}} - add link to orphaned articles by subject.

• This user is a member of WikiProject Orphanage. You can help!

  – {{User Wikipedia Orphan}} – the userbox for this project.

• orp	This user is working to reduce the orphaned pages backlog

  – Custom userbox

• {{WikiProject Orphanage topicon}} topicon for this project.

• List of all subpages of this page

• Help:Drawing attention to new pages
• Wikipedia:Build the web
• Wikipedia:Integrate
• Wikipedia:Walled garden
• WikiProject Abandoned Articles
• WikiProject Council/Proposals/Navbox

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Orphaned articles
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Orphaned articles

These are kept for historical purposes only, they are no longer used:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Orphanage/Articles orphaned without redirects - List of orphans from a 2003 database dump
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Orphanage/Orphaned Articles - List of articles from a 2004 database dump

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