How to create a Wikipedia page

 

Wikipedia has become one of the largest and most popular websites in the world, offering accurate and up-to-date information on almost any topic you can imagine. It is the seventh most used website in the world with 325 million readers. Google loves Wikipedia and as such ranks it high in search results. Wikipedia is also the first place people go to when they Google your name.

 

The information on Wikipedia is all crowdsourced, meaning that anyone can contribute by editing, updating, or writing articles. But creating a Wikipedia page isn’t as straight forward as it might initially sound - the fact that anybody can in essence do it, does not mean you can write whatever you want about any given topic. Here is Wikiexpert’s guide to writing your own Wikipedia page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Create an account

 

To create contributions on Wikipedia , you need a user account, which can be created quickly and simply. Open the homepage and click on “create user account”in the upper right corner. Wikipedia simply requires a user name and a password of your choice to register. Then enter the text presented to you by the security check, and select “create user account” to complete the registration.

 

Your account has been created and you can now begin participating in the Wikipedia community.

At first you will only have the ability to make edits to existing articles. Start by making small edits to articles on subjects you're very familiar with and knowledgable about, and then build up to more extensive updates. After a few days of editing articles, you'll access the power to create new articles.

 

2. Familiarise yourself with Wikipedia’s style

 

At this point, Wikipedia has its own useful tutorial page, which can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial. This offers offer guidance on the style and content of Wikipedia articles, and explains the Wikipedia community and important policies and conventions. In short, the goal of a Wikipedia article is to create a comprehensive and neutrally written summary of existing mainstream knowledge about a topic. Take time to read through the extensive information available on those pages, it provides an excellent grounding for when you progress through the stages of writing your Wikipedia page. It also includes the logistical information you will require on issues such as formatting, editing and citing sources.

 

3. Research your topic’s credibility and notability

 

The first thing to do is make sure that your planned Wikipedia article does not already exist on the site, a simply process which can be done using the search bar in the top right hand corner of the page.

 

Then you need to make sure that your planned subject is relevant, something that falls under the term “notability” for Wikipedia. Wikipedia has developed a detailed and precise criteria on determining when a topic is notable, and when it is not. A fundamental way of looking at it is whether the topic is significant for the public over a period of time. There is a hugely useful page on the term at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability. Familiarising yourself with that will be a big advantage when you start to write your page.

 

Also included here are the defined notability guidelines for companies -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(organizations_and_companies) - which are directly relevant if you want to write a page about a particular business.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Research your page content and references

 

Making sure that your article is sufficiently referenced is absolutely integral to its chances of being published. Take time to look at other Wikipedia pages on similar topics, how they are referenced and what kind of outlets are used as references. Again, Wikipedia has its own useful guides for how this works. The starting point should be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Referencing_for_beginners, with further reading found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources.

 

References, or reliable sources, on Wikipedia, are important to verify article content and to inform the reader where that content came from. Any editor can remove unsupported statements if they cannot be verified by means of a reference to a reliable source. Unsubstantiated articles may themselves be deleted if no reliable sources can be found. When adding content to an article, cite your sources to help readers verify facts or find more details. It is also helpful to update or improve existing references.

 

Having reputable and detailed sources is a vital part of publishing a Wikipedia page. Ideally all information should cite reliable sources, such as published books, mainstream press publications, and reliable websites. Wikipedia is not interested in links to articles that provide passing mentions or minimal information on the subject involved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Write your Wikipedia page

 

Again, a solid first reference point can be found within Wikipedia itself at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Your_first_article. The main thing to be mindful of is that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and its mission is to share reliable knowledge to benefit people who want to learn. Wikipedia is not a social media site or a place to promote a company or product or person, or a place to advocate for or against anyone or anything. Keep those factors in mind at all times when writing your page. Also note the structural guidelines under “structure of the article”, which give a good overview of the appropriate tone on Wikipedia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Publish your article

 

Wikipedia has a useful tool called an Article Wizard that allows you to create a draft of your article, and which can also be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Your_first_article. Following that process is certainly helpful.

 

When you feel that the article is ready, you can submit it for review by an experienced editor, using the ‘submit for review’ button on the Article Wizard. A reviewer will then look at your draft and move it to the main article space or give you feedback on how to improve it. You can always edit the page, even while waiting for a review.

 

Wikipedia again has its own reference page on the logistics of creating a page, which is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_create_a_page.

 

7. What to avoid

 

Throughout the whole process it is important to keep in mind the fact that Wikipedia lists six key things to avoid when writing your page. They are:

 

* Articles about yourself, your family or friends, your website, a band you're in, your teacher, a word you made up, or a story you wrote

 

* Advertising - promoting products or businesses is strictly forbidden.

 

* Attacks on a person or organisation - unsourced negative information, especially in articles about living people, is quickly removed, and attack pages may be deleted immediately.

 

* Personal essays or original research - Wikipedia surveys existing human knowledge; it is not a place to publish new work.

 

* Non-notable topics - Wikipedia is not a directory of everything in existence, subjects have to be notable enough to be included in an encyclopedia.

 

* A single sentence or only a website link - articles need to have real content of their own.