Welcome!

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Hello, Ashleylouisewilliams3408, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

You may also want to complete the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit the Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Ian.thomson (talk) 02:45, 30 December 2018 (UTC)Reply

Ashleylouisewilliams3408, you are invited to the Teahouse!

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Hi Ashleylouisewilliams3408! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia.
Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from experienced editors like Cullen328 (talk).

We hope to see you there!

Delivered by HostBot on behalf of the Teahouse hosts

16:03, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

How to write articles

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If you're going to write an article about anyone or anything that is not you or something you are connected to, here are the steps you should follow:

1) Choose a topic whose notability is attested by discussions of it in several reliable independent sources.
2) Gather as many professionally-published mainstream academic or journalistic sources you can find. Google Books is a good resource for this. Also, while search engine resutls are tnot sources, they are where you can find sources. Just remember that they need to be professionally-published mainstream academic or journalistic sources.
3) Focus on just the ones that are not dependent upon or affiliated with the subject, but still specifically about the subject and providing in-depth coverage (not passing mentions). If you do not have at least three such sources, the subject is not yet notable and trying to write an article at this point will only fail.
4) Summarize those sources left after step 3, adding citations at the end of them. You'll want to do this in a program with little/no formatting, like Microsoft Notepad or Notepad++, and not in something like Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer. Make sure this summary is just bare statement of facts, phrased in a way that even someone who hates the subject can agree with.
5) Combine overlapping summaries (without arriving at new statements that no individual source supports) where possible, repeating citations as needed.
6) Paraphrase the whole thing just to be extra sure you've avoided any copyright violations or plagiarism.
7) Use the Article wizard to post this draft and wait for approval.
8) Expand the article using sources you put aside in step 3 (but make sure they don't make up more than half the sources for the article, and make sure that affiliated sources don't make up more than half of that).

Doing something besides those steps typically results in the article not being approved, or even in its deletion.

If you are writing about yourself, or someone or something you are connected with (such as a friend, family member, or your business), the following steps are different:

1) If the subject really was notable, you wouldn't need to write the article. Remember that articles are owned by the Wikipedia community as a whole, not the article subject or the article author. If you do not want other people to write about you, then starting an article about yourself is a bad idea.
8a) If the article is accepted, never edit it again. Instead, make edit requests on the article's talk page.
8b) If the article is rejected, there will be a reason given. Read it carefully and closely. If there are links in the reason, open them and read those pages.

Ian.thomson (talk) 02:45, 30 December 2018 (UTC)Reply

Connection to Virgil R. Williams?

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Do you have a paid or unpaid relation to Virgil R. Williams? Both would be considered a conflict of interest that would need to be declared on your User page if you intend to compose an article about him. See WP:PAID and WP:COI. David notMD (talk) 10:32, 30 December 2018 (UTC)Reply

Your thread has been archived

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Hi Ashleylouisewilliams3408! You created a thread called Creating an article at Wikipedia:Teahouse, but it has been archived because there was no discussion for a few days. You can still find the archived discussion here. If you have any additional questions that weren't answered then, please create a new thread.

Archival by Lowercase sigmabot III, notification delivery by Muninnbot, both automated accounts. You can opt out of future notifications by placing {{bots|deny=Muninnbot}} (ban this bot) or {{nobots}} (ban all bots) on your user talk page. Muninnbot (talk) 19:06, 2 January 2019 (UTC)Reply