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 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Wikipedia has a variety of experienced editors with various skillsets. Some of us are good at spotting spam and vandalism, and giving the perpetrators a "whack" as they tell them not let the door hit them on the way out. Some of us are good at fixing spelling errors, typos, or strange bits of grammar. Some are good at identifying copyright violations in both articles and files and rigorously ensuring they don't stay around.
However, you can't make an omelette without eggs, and the "eggs" in this analogy are the people who actually write the encyclopedia.
I find it strange that many experienced editors, including administrators find writing articles and citing sources hard. It really isn't. As long as you remember your factual writing classes at school, and the lesson where the teacher told you about the Dewey decimal system and where you can find information, you should have no problems doing it.
In addition to making our readership happy, you can expect the following benefits:
- An army of talk page stalkers to back you up in discussions
- A group of editors who you can honestly say you get on with and all help each other out
- A magic amulet against any incivility and personal attacks you care to dish out (IMPORTANT: Do NOT rely on this. You might be able to get away with it, but incivility and personal attacks are still against policy. Think of this as the Wikipedia equivalent of Donald Trump not having to pay income tax while you do.)
What you'll need
editTo put together an article, you need three things:
- An idea for a topic that you believe should be in the encyclopedia
- A collection of sources
- A means to refer to those sources in the article
- A sufficient understanding of wikitext to assemble the article and citations together.
- Note, more and more editors, especially newer ones, are using Visual Editor to write content. However, since I'm stuck in the dark ages of when a 300 baud modem with acoustic coupler was a good thing, the examples here will be using the good old-fashioned source editor.
You absolutely have to have to have 1. and 2. in hand before you start, otherwise your new article runs the risk of being deleted pretty quickly by a new page patroller who's quick on the ball.
Worked example
edit(to follow)