Lots of Wikipedians are savants, geniuses, boffins. I am not, and I’m a pretty good Wikipedia contributor anyway — and you could be too. The purpose of this post is to show you how.
I usually start writing an article because I stumble across something interesting somewhere and want to find out more about it. If Wikipedia doesn’t already have an article, I’ll start one. That’s how I started the Wikipedia articles on the emo killings in Iraq, American chicklit novelist Laura Zigman, the type of prostitution known as survival sex, the Palestinian journalist Asma al-Ghul, and the healthcare industry practice of balance billing.
Here’s how to do it.
1. Find a topic that interests you and which has either a bad Wikipedia article, or none at all. This is not hard, particularly if you fall outside the typical Wikipedian demographic (male, youngish, well-educated, and living in North America or Europe). There are lots of weak or missing articles on Wikipedia — here are a few: Handbag. The 17th century English Shoplifting Act. French curator Claude d’Anthenaise. American sociologist Rose Weitz. The hair treatment called marcelling. Sonic.net CEO Dane Jasper. The Marathi “bangle protection” ceremony Doha Jeevan. Mourning jewellery. The article on the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature used to be pretty weak, until I fell in love with the museum on a trip to Paris, and then fixed it up.
2. Google it. Wikipedia doesn’t care how smart you are, or how knowledgeable — it wants you to provide a reputable source for every statement you make. So if you say The Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature is housed in the Hôtel de Guénégaud, Wikipedia wants to know how you know that. I found that fact in Let’s Go Paris, the student-traveller guidebook published by Harvard, which I found by searching for the museum’s name in Google Books. In this case, I already knew where the museum was located, but I still needed to support it with a published reference.
Normally, when I’m researching a Wikipedia article, I get my best results from Google Books (preview results not snippet results) or Google Scholar. There are guidelines on Wikipedia about what sources are okay and what aren’t, but you don’t need to obsess over this: mostly, if you let common sense be your guide you’ll do fine. And if you mess up, a Wikipedian will likely fix your mistake.
3. Assemble your facts into a decent article. Most people do this in a text editor, and then dump it into the Wikipedia edit window once they’re nearly done. You get an edit window by typing this into the addressbar of your browser: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=*******&action=edit. Replace the asterisks with your title, in mixed case.
As you’re writing, you can look at other articles on Wikipedia to see how they’re structured (like this or this or this), but you’re free to do it however you like — there are no strict rules, and if you do it badly somebody will usually help make it better. Normally articles will contain some or all of the following sections: Overview, Background or History, the meat of the article which will have a section heading(s) appropriate to the subject-matter, References, Further Reading, and External Links. But an article can be considered complete even if all it contains is a paragraph or two of text, supported by a References section.
When you’re ready, paste your text into the edit window.
4. Add citations. This used to be really fiddly and irritating (and yes, I know, wiki syntax is not at all user-friendly, and yes we are working on it), but recently some lovely person made it easier.
Put your cursor right after the sentence you want to cite, then click cite. That’ll bring up a new set of options. Click templates then select which one you want –- if you’re unsure, choosing “web” is always safe. Fill out the little form that pops up and click insert. That’ll paste the appropriate wiki syntax into your article text. (Here is something I just figured out a few months ago: If you are adding a citation to a book, copy-paste the ISBN into that field first, then click the magnifying glass to its right. The rest of the form will auto-populate, yay!)
5. Make some final tweaks. Bold the first instance of your article title, like this: The Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature is a private museum of hunting and nature located in the IIIe arrondissement at 62, rue des Archives, Paris, France. Add double-square brackets around words you want to link to other pre-existing articles on Wikipedia – usually proper nouns are good candidates for this. Like this: In the Salon of the Dogs, a collection of gold dog collars throughout the ages is displayed alongside 17th-century portraits of [[Louis XIV]]’s pets and a small white version of the Scottie dog sculpture [[Puppy]] by contemporary American ceramic artist [[Jeff Koons]].
Once you’re happy, preview your article by clicking Show Preview at the bottom of the edit window, then fix anything that looks broken.
6. Then hit Save Page. And you’re done!
Here’s some further reading……
A much simpler way to start a new article is to search for its name and click the red link that comes up. For example, if you want to create an article called “Oliver West”:
1. Search for “Oliver West”.
2. You’ll see ‘You may create the page “Oliver West”‘, and “Oliver West” will appear as a red link.
3. Click the red link and you’ll get to the page called “Creating Oliver West”.
The rest is the same as you described.
Wikipedia is something I really don’t get- I wrote them recently about an actress Sanny van Heteren- she was a child star at 14 in germany- she has worked in huge movies with Kate Beckinsale, Liam Neeson- yet has no wikipedia- yet you can search other actors that have done nothing and they are in there… how does this work- she even is in wikipedia as daughter of the city she is born in- can anyone explain?
Oh, and I absolutely loved the combination of the post title and the image.
Nice! I sometimes start with a good source and work my way back — e.g. the other day I was looking for an article and found an entire special scholarly journal issue devoted to one guy (a festschrift). That combined with the outline of his bio was a pretty good indication that he was a notable researcher. So I knocked out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Stafford_Norris. (This approach does require some familiarity with the notability policy and the field you’re writing about – and it is a very librarian approach to the world :) ). Seeing if an article exists in another language wikipedia but not yours is another good source of topics!
Some Examples for things happen when people using your “technque”:
I guess en:WP actually has some hundrest of such articles about athletes who compete at the 2012 Olympics in London (btw – why the Foundation not have tried to get photographers there? Only the Foundation is big enough to talk to institutions like the IOC): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Brennauer
And in 4 years, a lot of the will be so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shao_Ning . If there is an article, there will be no longer a bigger interest for authors to write these article. And there will be athletes, who waiting to compete at the 2008 Olympics in Peking!
No, sorry, Sue! Youre technique is not good. This is a big problem. Don’t tell the people, they only need to use Google. Tell the people, that neraly verybody has knowledge, an interest, something to write about. Nerarly everybody is a specialist in something. And we don’t need more Googler. We need theese Specialists! We need the farmer, we need the steel worker, we need the taylor, we need the police man/woman! We need ALL the Knowledge!
But for Google informations, the people should use Google! Authord better should know about the subject, they’re writing!
[shameless plug]
…and if you need help, stop by the Teahouse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse
:)
Fair enough, Marcus.
However, I think the point Sue is making is more about getting started than anything else.
Above all, people who muster the energy to actually contribute, want some instant gratification — something they find less and less, for instance, on German Wikipedia, where the method proposed is more or less forbidden by the strict notability criteria.
Thank you! I actually drafted this post ages ago, and never got around to publishing it. If I’d written it recently, I’d have plugged the Teahouse myself :-)
Phoebe, I do that too. The other day I bought Rachel Shteir’s The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting, which led me into about four hours of editing the Wikipedia article on shoplifting. It feels wrong to me to just strip-mine a book though, so I always find a bunch of additional sources for whatever I’m working on — generally, physical books, Google Books, Google Scholar or news media.
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It’s not easy. You will have someone try to delete it. This is assured. They will decide that your subject is not ‘notable’. You will face an unelected group of people, most of whom will decide to delete whatever you’ve written. You might be lucky at this stage and have some other random souls decide to stay its execution.
Your sources will be ruled unreliable. It does not matter that you are citing the leading newspaper of a country, or the major journal in that subject area. Your article will probably be deleted.
Then, if you are successful in creating your article, you will have to defend it against people with no knowledge of the subject who have decided that their popular conception or prejudice against your subject should shape the facts, and that an English journalist who spent half an afternoon writing an article has a better idea than those who write and practice in that field. The person trying to reshape your article will have better knowledge of Wikipedia’s arcane cultural practices, and that person will win. You will see the article you created forever host to misinterpretations and false facts, and you will regret that you ever wrote the article. You will never create an article again.
I have to understand the way Wikipedia works.
For the time been I will not write any things. When I will start again and I fist try in the draft. I hope that, I will have some interest with Wikipedia.
To come to the right conclusion I have done a colossal research.
On my quote I have many Bible passages to support my thesis.
I didn’t realise that there wasn’t a strict structure for writing articles- it actually encourages me to create my own – Thanks for these tips!
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