User:Joe Decker/ArticleCreationTips

Wikipedia's bureaucracy can be difficult for new editors to navigate. And yet, boldly and bravely, every day, over 200 new editors attempt to create new articles through Wikipedia's Articles for Creation process.

Over 80% of these attempts fail to ever make it into the main article space of the encyclopedia. This leads to a lot of frustration and alienation. As does the perpetual backlog at AfC, as I write this, there are over 1200 drafts awaiting review, and some of them have been waiting at this point for over three weeks.

So what is a new editor to do? Here are a few targeted suggestions.


 * 1)  Aim small.  You are about to put some work into this process, and you may have quite a bit to write, but your first task for acceptance here is to show the reviewer that there is enough in the way of reliable, arms-length, third-party sourcing that the topic meets our inclusion criteria.  We regularly accept articles that are only a few sentences long, and submitting much longer articles will actually be very likely to delay the review process  Articles are not reviewed in any particular order, and both drafts which obviously meet our criteria and those which obviously do not meet our criteria are often reviewed quickly. It's the ones where the reviewer has to do a lot of work that take time. Consider getting a basic article accepted and then expanding it later.
 * 2) This doesn't just go for text, it goes for references, too.  4-8 solid references which talk about the article in detail, from difference sources, all of which are at arm's length from the subject (not written by the subject, but written from someone completely unrelated to the subject) all of which are from mainstream newspapers, magazines, books or scholarly journals... with a few exceptions that is going to be "obvious" to a reviewer.  And don't ever make the mistake of assuming that the subject's web site, social media, IMDB, or Wikipedia itself are reliable sources for this purpose, they are not.  User:Joe Decker/IsThisNotable may help you make sense of what kinds of sources we are looking for.  To the extent possible, *don't* source things to non-solid references.  Make your solid references stand out where reviewers can see them.
 * 3) Write in your own words, and words you have never used before.  If we find some of the same text in your article somewhere else on the net, it is going to be flagged for copyright investigation. There are ways, if the material on the internet but is yours, to deal with this, but even if that's the case this is going to slow down your process quite a bit, and you may have one or more of your drafts deleted in the meantime. Sure, go ahead and read Wikipedia:Copyright violations to learn why we care even if you did write the content originally, but don't try and work around that, just write it again. Trust me, you'll be happier, and you'll get to a final resolution on your article with less work for everyone, yourself included.
 * 4) If you are the subject, or are in any way affiliated with the subject, please disclose that. That may be required by policy, and reviewers can generally tell in any case. Also, go ahead and read our plain and simple conflict-of-interest guide.
 * 5) This is going to be particularly hard for people in business, marketing, or who are self-employed:  Learn to write in a neutral, arm's-length, dry, objective, boring style.  Skip adjectives that have any "good" or "bad" connotation to them in the article (except within occasional, attributed quotations.)  Include the good and the bad.  Don't say "What would I like to say about this subject?"  Ask yourself, "What would an encyclopedia say?"
 * 6) Get help. Ask questions at the Wikipedia Teahouse before submitting, you'll get answers faster than if you simply guess and wait for a reviewer.