Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

Chapter 4. Creating a New Article

Wikipedia needs more articles. Yet of the thousands of articles that are created every day, about half end up being deleted or otherwise removed. Most of the deletions happen within a day of the article’s creation. If you’re thinking about adding an article to Wikipedia, this chapter will help you avoid having that article become instant roadkill. (This chapter also discusses when it’s better not to write the article at all, or write it for another wiki or other Web site besides Wikipedia).

Even if you’re not thinking about creating a new article, this chapter can be useful. You’ll get a much better sense of what articles in Wikipedia should be like, which will help you when you want to improve existing articles. You’ll also have some criteria to use when you come upon an existing article that you suspect might not belong in Wikipedia at all. (Chapter 19 discusses the process for getting an article deleted.)

Up to Speed: Does That Article Already Exist?

Before you even start thinking of writing a new article, you’ll want to make absolutely, positively sure that Wikipedia doesn’t already have an article on the same subject.

Wikipedia’s internal search engine isn’t the greatest, but it’s the easiest place to start. Try searching for just part of what you think the article should be called (two or three words is plenty), and try any likely alternative names and spellings. (The page Wikipedia:Searching—shortcut WP:S—has more details. It also has links to a number of alternative search engines.

After you’ve done a reasonable amount of internal searching of Wikipedia, try an external search engine. For example, to use Google to find all Wikipedia pages with the word “Wyly,” type Wyly site:en.Wikipedia.org into the Google search box. An external search engine could turn up a page that the internal search engine missed, since external search engines can be more tolerant of misspellings than Wikipedia’s.

What Makes a Good Article

If you’re not a registered user (see Chapter 3), you can’t create new articles. (A proposal to allow non-registered users to make new articles, in November 2007, didn’t gain consensus.) Instead, you have to submit a proposed new article for review by other editors, using the Articles for Creation wizard (Figure 4-1). That wizard is a five-step online interview that questions you about three things: the proposed article’s motivation, notability, and sources. This section discusses all three issues, one by one. They’re important for all new articles, no matter who creates them.

Figure 4-1. The Articles for Creation wizard asks a series of questions to determine if your idea for an article is a good one. Registered users normally don’t use this wizard to create articles, but it’s still a good learning tool. To get there, go to the Wikipedia:Articles for Creation page (shortcut: WP:AFC), scroll down until you see the large “Start Here,” and then click that link. Then click “I would like to submit an article without registration”.

Tip

Even as a registered user, it’s worth your time to use the wizard to see if you can get to the final step (being allowed to submit an article) while telling the truth (starting at step 2). If you can’t get all the way through the wizard by responding honestly, then your article will probably be deleted.

Up to Speed: Curb Your Enthusiasm and Expertise

If you really know (and probably really like) an area of knowledge, doing a hit-or-miss search for articles to create probably isn’t the best use of your time. Consider these two options instead:

• On Ideas for New Articles, you’ll find pointers to a number of places where other editors have identified needed (missing) articles. Many of these lists are sorted by topic area, so you can focus on needed articles in your area of interest.

• You can join (formally or informally) an existing collaboration about your area of interest—what Wikipedia calls a WikiProject. Chapter 9 has extensive information on these.

The Right Motivation

The ideal starting point for creating an article is when you’re surprised that Wikipedia doesn’t already have an article on a particular subject. If you believe that the subject is suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia (what Wikipedia calls notability, as described on Notability), and that newspaper stories, magazine articles, publications in scientific journals, or public sources of information specifically focus on this topic, you have every reason to be surprised that no one’s already written an article on the topic.

By contrast, if you’re thinking about writing an article for one of the following reasons, then your chances of having your article deleted are high:

• You’ve developed a new or unusual concept, idea, or invention; or you know something that disproves conventional wisdom on a topic; or you have an unusual theory about the way the world works, or should work. Don’t use Wikipedia to announce these things.

• You have intense feelings about something or someone. For example, you may have a strong dislike of something (airplane travel, wiretapping, animal abuse), or a very favorable impression of a Web site, a local band, or a cult YouTube video. Whether it’s good or bad, if you have a strong feeling or opinion about something, you probably think that Wikipedia doesn’t adequately cover it and could use another article or two about it. But other editors may not agree, and in any case it’s going to be very hard for you to write with the required neutral point of view.

• You see Wikipedia as a marketing opportunity for your company, Web site, band, or product. Or worse, for a company, Web site, band, or product that you’re being paid to promote. Even if the marketing or promotion is just to help a friend or relative—no money or direct involvement—it’s still promotion and has no place in an encyclopedia.

It’s possible, of course, that even if you have the wrong motivation, there’s a legitimate need in Wikipedia for the new article you’re thinking about. But if your motivation falls into one of the previous three categories, think twice. If you ignore Wikipedia’s rules and write articles that are only going to get deleted, you’re wasting your time and that of the editors who have to delete them.

Word to the Wise: Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest occur when editors add or delete information from Wikipedia articles with the intention of improving the image, interests, or visibility of the editors, their family members, employers, associates, or business or personal endeavors. Reshaping articles to be more positive about such personal interests stands in direct contradiction to Wikipedia’s neutral point of view policy (shortcut: WP:NPOV).

If you have a possible conflict of interest, you’re not barred from editing articles where such a conflict may exist, but you must be careful that your work maintains a neutral point of view. (Details are at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest; shortcut: WP:COI.) To be really careful, don’t delete anything but obvious vandalism from articles. When you think the article should be changed, post to the article’s talk (discussion) page (see Article Talk (Discussion) Pages), asking other editors to make the changes. (You can add the {{request edit}} template to make sure your request gets attention.)

Creating a new article when you have a potential conflict of interest is particularly tricky. In the tutorial on 9 (step 9), you see how to move your article from your personal space (the draft) to mainspace, where actual articles reside. If there’s any question of a conflict of interest, don’t move your article. Instead, post a comment on the talk page of the most relevant WikiProject (Chapter 9) or at Wikipedia:Editor assistance (shortcut: WP:EA), asking other editors to review your draft, edit it if they want to, and—if they then consider it sufficiently neutral and meeting other criteria for Wikipedia articles—move it to mainspace themselves. Give the process a week or so. If no one moves your article, and no one objects strongly (or you feel you’ve addressed the objections), then move the article yourself.

Notability

Folks new to Wikipedia frequently see it as a place for information on everything. After all (so this mistaken impression goes), Wikipedia’s the first place most people turn to for information on any possible topic, so logically it should have complete coverage of all new and interesting topics. If a topic isn’t yet covered, then that’s an open invitation to write a new article.

In fact, Wikipedia is by design not a publisher of initial reports. As the main notability guideline says: “A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject.” If that sentence sounds familiar, it’s because you read about reliable sources in Chapter 2 (Not All Sources Are Created Equal).

You can find specialized Wikipedia guidelines for a number of areas, including books, music, and organizations and companies, at the main Notability guideline page (shortcut: WP:N). For example, a musical band would qualify as notable if it met any of a dozen different criteria, including, “Has had a record certified gold or higher in at least one country.” Or, for example, a film is notable if it’s been widely distributed and received full-length reviews by two or more nationally known critics.

If you write an article that doesn’t state, at the very beginning, why something is notable, you’ve significantly increased its roadkill potential. And if you also fail to provide any good sources, then you’ve backed other editors into a corner. They’ll use an external search engine to do a quick search of the subject, but it’s a matter of luck whether they’ll find acceptable sources, such as newspaper articles, that indicate that a subject is important. If they don’t, your article is probably toast.

Despite very specific guidelines for notability, many editors think notability is subjective—who’s to say what’s notable? Experienced editors focus on the presence or absence of reliable sources (discussed in the next section). Still, the concept of notability, as defined by Wikipedia’s guidelines, helps ensure that articles are relevant and interesting to a wide audience of readers.

Frequently Asked Question: Where Original Writing Is Welcome

I know everything there is to know about custom golf clubs, a subject that’s woefully neglected on Wikipedia. But since I’ve come up with a lot of the innovations myself, I can’t provide sources that Wikipedia considers reliable. Isn’t there some way I can share what I know?

Sure there is. First of all, if you have a conflict of interest (for example, you have your own custom golf club business), see the box on The Right Motivation. You can enlist other editors’ help in publishing your article.

But any time Wikipedia’s rules don’t allow the type of new article that you have in mind, remember you don’t have to fight the system. Instead, find a place elsewhere that’s more welcoming.

Wikipedia is nothing more than a wiki—a collection of pages written by a group, collaboratively. But it’s hardly the only wiki out there. If you’ve written something uniquely your own (a theory, an argument, a how-to) another wiki might be the perfect fit. Not surprisingly, Wikipedia has a page about alternatives to Wikipedia (the shortcut is WP:NOTWP). Another good place to check is http://wikiindex.org/, which has thousands of pages about wikis that aren’t—let’s face it—as obsessive-compulsive as Wikipedia about keeping out original writing.

Reliable Sources

Just as you must cite reliable sources when you add text to an article, as discussed in depth in Chapter 2 (and at WP:RS), you must fully document new articles you write. For new articles, here are the general guidelines:

• Try to cite at least couple of independent, reliable sources in your article, regardless of the article’s length. If you don’t, it’s just your claim, as the author, that the subject is notable. While you may be the most honest and trustworthy person on the planet, other editors don’t know that, and they may delete your article because they can’t easily find reliable sources for it.

• Include any relevant links to Web sites created or owned by the subject of the article. For example, articles about musicians usually contain links to their own Web sites. However, although these “official” links help other editors examining the article, they don’t count as independent sources.

It may seem counterintuitive, but good sources are more important than the words in your article. Yes, you want to write an article that has all the right parts (see 6) and reads well. But if you include reliable sources in your new article, particularly online sources (in English), other editors will find it credible, no matter how poorly written. By contrast, if you write an article that doesn’t cite independent sources, it doesn’t matter that what you’ve written is elegant, thoughtful, and interesting. If other editors judge your article to be original research or about a non-notable subject, they’ll just delete it.

Ideally, when you write a new Wikipedia article, you footnote every sentence (or paragraph, if the entire paragraph is from one source). It sounds like a lot of work, and it is, if you’re looking for sources for an article you’ve already written. A better approach: Start by finding reliable sources for the article you want to write, and then write the article from those sources.

Up to Speed: Stubs

A stub is an article containing only a few sentences of text. A stub is usually long enough to serve as a quick definition, but too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject (see Figure 4-2). Stubs are common. The last time someone counted, Wikipedia had roughly a hundred thousand articles with fewer than 200 characters. The most important thing to know about stubs: Don’t contribute new ones. If you have a good idea, but only a little material, create a user subpage (Personal Subpages) and work on the article until it’s ready for prime time.

One of the most common complaints from authors of just-deleted stubs is that they expected their article to be left in place for a while, so that other editors could contribute to it, eventually expanding it into a real article. In fact, there’s no such policy of mercy for new stubs: The stubbier a new article is, the more likely it is to be deleted. If you think a topic is important enough to deserve a new article, then you should be willing to spend enough time finding information—from reliable sources—so that the article doesn’t begin life as a stub. Otherwise, the article will quite possibly reach the end of its short life being a stub, and you’ll have wasted your time and the time of the editors who deleted it.

Figure 4-2. When an article is a stub, it says so, as shown at the very bottom of this example. Stubs usually have just a sentence or two about their subject, and sometimes links to related, longer articles. Wikipedia’s administrators are quick to delete stubs, so work on articles in your user space until they’re long enough for prime time.