User:Derild4921/Adoption/Part 2 Introduction

This page is an introduction to Part 2 of my adoption program adoptees must take. Part 2 focuses on article writing and the major policies of Wikipedia.

Article writing
Article writing is what should be the bulk of your editing. After all, this is an encyclopedia and everything should be secondary to writing. Article writing can be hard for some people, especially those whose first language is not English. The step is identifying a notable article, either from pre-existing ones or creating a new. However, the new article must comply with the notability guidelines that have been set down. After doing so the article with need to be expanded with reliable sources. However, the new information must not be too similar to the source itself as the article may be a violation of copyright.

So, information has been added with reliable sources with your own words. What next? The next step would be organizing the article into multiple section. Different Wikiprojects have style guides which advise what sections should be in an article within that Wikiproject. Examples Novels guide, films guide, video games guide. It is also very helpful to look at a featured article or good article of similar type and copy the style from that. After expanding the article the best you can it needs a thorough copyedit which you can do yourself or request one from another editor. WP:GOCE is a good choice if no other copyeditors are available. When done, check through the article with the good article criteria. Gernally an article must have good grammar, comply with the Manual of style, have reliable sources and each statement refernced, neutral have correctly licsenced images and captions. If the article meets these criteria nominate it at WP:GAN where a reviewer will sooner or later find and review it.

When the article passes, it may be in your interest to bring the article further up to feature article status. Featured article represent Wikipedia's best work. The main difference between FA and GA is the much higher level of prose, need of higly reliable sources and many editors giving opinions.

Major policies
Wikipedia has sets of policies which editors are expected to follow. There are five core policies called the five pillars. The five are:
 * What Wikipedia is not
 * Neutral point of view
 * Wikipedia is free content so respect copyright laws
 * Behave with other editors in a good manner
 * If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it

Out of these five, the hardest to grasp is the last, ignore all rules. These are some essays out there that help explain this policy. In short, no rules are perfect, if somehow, a rule prevents you from improving the encyclopedia, ignore it. This by no means is equivalent to ignore any rule, it is not a trump card. See Understanding IAR, When IAR is ignored and What "Ignore all rules" means for more information.

There are also three core content policies which editors must follow:
 * WP:NPOV - Make sure the article is neutral in tone and has no bias.
 * WP:OR - Make sure every statement is sourced by reliable and independent sources and not independent research.
 * WP:V - Make sure all statements that can be challenged is sourced.

One of the newer policies that is very important outlines how to write an article on a living person. This policy helps editor apply three core content policies outlined above to living people. It requires every BLP to have a reliable source and all the removal or all "unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material".

Another core policy in Wikipedia is assume good faith. As the nutshell says: AGF must always be applied in any heated debate of conflict.
 * "Unless there is clear evidence to the contrary, assume that people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it."
 * "If criticism is needed, discuss editors' actions, but avoid accusing others of harmful motives without clear evidence."

Others
As outlined in the above section about article writing there are many policies that also apply to articles on neutral POV, reliable sources and being bold. Many of the other important ones can be found here while a full list is found here.