User:JavierCantero/How to write a Wikipedia article

These are my own thoughts about how to write good wikipedia articles.


 * 1) Write it as it's written in solid stone Usually, you don't want to write a piece of text for discarding it later. So don't write about changing events, that forces you to rewrite it when the nature of the event changes, and then to rewrite it again and again when it continues changing. Writing about present events forces you to mantain them, and that's time-consuming. Be smart and wait until the event is in the past. The past can't be changed (at least not until someone builds a time machine), and you only need to write once about the past. A good rule of thumb could be "you don't write about it until you can write about it in past tense". Or "if you can't write it in solid stone —because it's still changing—, you should wait until you can".
 * 2) Reader's time is gold so don't waste it! Examine other related articles, what data it offers, how it's structured, and try to replicate them. The reader tend to look at the same places for the same type of information. A clever writer takes advantage of that and puts the information where the reader expects to find it. For example, if the pages of the same type use a particular template, use it too! If you mix up the expected order, you are forcing the readers to spend time searching for the information they want, so you are wasting their time. And believe me, they are not going to thank you for that.
 * 3) Don't Repeat Yourself If you are writing the same or similar sentences two times, in the same article or in different articles, it's time to reconsider it. Redundancy often is a sign of a bad structured discourse.