Jasondaly724

Jasondaly724, you are invited to the Teahouse!

Hi Jasondaly724! 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 Cordless Larry (talk). Visit the Teahouse We hope to see you there! Delivered by HostBot on behalf of the Teahouse hosts 16:03, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

How to edit

OK, this will get you oriented to how this place works, and to the key policies and guidelines. It is as brief as I can make it... Spending a bit of time reviewing this, will help you spend your time more productively; I cannot imagine that you have a lot of time to waste. Sorry for not giving this to you earlier. My bad.

The first thing, is that our mission is to produce articles that provide readers with encyclopedia content that summarize accepted knowledge, and to do that as a community that anyone can be a part of. That's the mission. As you can imagine, if this place had no norms, it would be a Mad Max kind of world interpersonally, and content would be a slag heap (the quality is really bad in parts, despite our best efforts). But over the past 15 years the community has developed a whole slew of norms, via lots of discussion. One of the first, is that we decide things by consensus. That decision itself, is recorded here: WP:CONSENSUS, which is one of our "policies". And when we decide things by consensus, that is not just local in space and time, but includes meta-discussions that have happened in the past. The results of those past meta-discussions are the norms that we follow now. We call them policies and guidelines - and these documents all reside in "Wikipedia space" (There is a whole forest of documents in "Wikipedia space" - pages in Wikipedia that start with "Wikipedia:AAAA" or for short, "WP:AAAA". WP:CONSENSUS is different from Consensus.)

People have tried to define Wikipedia - is it a democracy, an anarchy, secret cabal? In fact it is a clue-ocracy (that link is to a very short and important text).

There are policies and guidelines that govern content, and separate ones that govern behavior. Here is a very quick rundown:

Content policies and guidelines

• WP:NOT (what WP is, and is not -- this is where you'll find the "accepted knowledge" thing. You will also find discussion of how WP is not a catalog, not a how-to manual, not a vehicle for promotion, etc)
• WP:OR - no original research is allowed here, instead
• WP:VERIFY - everything has to be cited to a reliable source (so everything in WP comes down to the sources you bring!)
• WP:RS is the guideline defining what a "reliable source" is for general content and WP:MEDRS defines what reliable sourcing is for content about health
• WP:NPOV and the content that gets written, needs to be "neutral" (as we define that here, which doesn't mean what most folks think -- it doesn't mean "fair and balanced" - it means that the language has to be neutral, and that topics in a given article are given appropriate "weight" (space and emphasis). An article about a drug that was 90% about side effects, would generally give what we call "undue weight" to the side effects. Of course if that drug was important because it killed a lot of people, not having 90% of it be about the side effects would not be neutral) We determine weight by seeing what the reliable sources say - we follow them in this too. So again, you can see how everything comes down to references.
• WP:BLP - this is a policy specifically covering discussion about living people anywhere in WP. We are very careful about such content (which means enforcing the policies and guidelines above rigorously), since issues of legal liability can arise for WP, and people have very strong feelings about other people, and about public descriptions of themselves.
• WP:NOTABILITY - this is a policy that defines whether or not an article about X, should exist. What this comes down to is defined in WP:Golden rule - which is basically, are there enough independent sources about X, with which to build a decent article.
• WP:DELETION discusses how we get rid of articles that fail notability.

In terms of behavior, the key norms are:

• WP:CONSENSUS - already discussed
• WP:CIVIL - basically, be nice. This is not about being nicey nice, it is really about not being a jerk and having that get in the way of getting things done. We want to get things done here - get content written and maintained and not get hung up on interpersonal disputes. So just try to avoid doing things that create unproductive friction.
• WP:AGF - assume good faith about other editors. Try to focus on content, not contributor. Don't personalize it when content disputes arise. (the anonymity here can breed all kinds of paranoia)
• WP:HARASSMENT - really, don't be a jerk and follow people around, bothering them. And do not try to figure out who people are in the real world. Privacy is strictly protected by the WP:OUTING part of this policy.
• WP:DR - if you get into an content dispute with someone, try to work it out on the article Talk page. Don't WP:EDITWAR. If you cannot work it out locally, then use one of the methods here to get wider input. There are many - it never has to come down to two people arguing. There are instructions here too, about what to do if someone is behaving badly, in your view. Try to keep content disputes separate from behavior disputes. Many of the big messes that happen in Wikipedia arise from these getting mixed up.
• WP:COI and WP:PAID which I discussed way above already. This is about preserving the integrity of WP. A closely related issue is WP:ADVOCACY; COI is just a subset of advocacy.
• WP:TPG - this is about how to talk to other editors on Talk pages, like this one, or say [[Talk:TechnologyOne]. At article talk pages, basically be concise, discuss content not contributors, and base discussion on the sources in light of policies and guidelines, not just your opinions or feelings. At user talk pages things are more open, but that is the relevant place to go if you want to discuss someone's behavior or talk about general WP stuff - like this whole post.

If you can get all that (the content and behavior policies and guidelines) under your belt, you will become truly "clueful", as we say. If that is where you want to go, of course. I know that was a lot of information, but hopefully it is digestable enough.

If at some point you want to create an article, here is what to do.

1. look for independent sources that comply with WP:MEDRS for anything related to health, and WP:RS for everything else, that give serious discussion to the topic, not just passing mentions. Start with great sources.
2. Look at the sources you found, and see if you have enough per WP:Golden rule to even go forward. If you don't, you can stop right there.
3. Read the sources you found, and identify the main and minor themes to guide you with regard to WP:WEIGHT - be wary of distortions in weight due to WP:RECENTISM
4. Go look at manual of style guideline created by the relevant WikiProject, to guide the sectioning and other style matters (you can look at articles on similar topics but be ginger b/c WP has lots of bad content) - create an outline. (For example, for biographies, the relevant project is WP:WikiProject Biography) (For example, for companies, the relevant project is Wikipedia:WikiProject_Companies/Guidelines)
5. Create the article following the process described at articles for creation for your first few articles.
6. Start writing the body, based only on what is in the sources you have, and provide an inline citation for each sentence as you go.
7. Make sure you write in neutral language. The most rigorous way to do this is to use no adjectives at your first go-round and add them back only as needed.
8. When you are done, write the lead and add infobox, external links, categories, etc
9. Consider adding banners to the Talk page, joining the draft article to relevant Wikiprojects, which will help attract editors who are interested and knowledgeable to help work on the article. If you have a COI for the article, note it there.
10. The completed work should have nothing unsourced (because the sources drove everything you wrote, not prior knowledge or personal experiences or what the client wanted; there is no original research nor WP:PROMO in it.
11. Submit your article for review by clicking the "submit your draft" button that was set up when you created the article. You will get responses from reviewers, and you can work with them to do whatever is needed to get the article ready to be published.

There you go! Let me know if you have questions about any of that

Again that was a lot, but the goal is to get you somewhat oriented. Jytdog (talk) 03:13, 24 June 2016 (UTC)