User:Philcha/Essays/Advice for new Wikipedia editors

Wikipedia, or WP for short, is an encyclopedia created entirely by the public. WP's contributors are called "editors". As editors, most of you start by working on Wikipedia's main entries, which are called "articles". Many of you continue to work mainly on articles, while others later prefer other types of work on Wikipedia.

You and WP want to work together, but WP's rules and standards usually look complex to new editors. Fortunately in the great majority of situations the rules and standards can be applied in simple ways, some simple techniques can make your work much easier, and it's fairly easy to see where this approach is enough and when you need some help in more complex situations.

Preparation
You'll find that going directly to improving or creating articles is less efficient than doing some small preparatory jobs first:
 * It's best to register immediately rather than write as an anonymous editor, as many useful tools work only for registered editors.
 * Use the Sandbox to experiment with Wiki markup (the techniques for formatting article, discuions, etc.) and any other techniques. The Wikipedia Sandbox is cleared out from time to time, so mistakes are not a problem.
 * If your work does not comply with WP's policies, it can be undone instantly. Section Updating existing articles explains simply how avoid such problems.
 * You'll need places to store information that you expect to use later. You could think of these storage places as like bookcases that you set up before you get a lot of books. If your register and logged on, you can use User Sub-pages for this, as described further down this page.

Updating existing articles
If you simply want to experiment, use the Sandbox.

You can improve an existing article in several ways, including:
 * Spelling and/or grammar.
 * Writing - making it clearer, more concise and smoother.
 * Information - adding, correcting, or if it is obvious nonsense, removing it.

When you are improving information, the policies that always apply are:
 * "No original research", in other words you cannot add your original ideas. Wikipedia has found this the only defense against spam and other commercial promotions, political and religious dogma, hate, and several other dangers. This principle is used so often that it is usually abbreviated as WP:NOR. If you are unsure about specific cases, you can get advice at No original research/Noticeboard.
 * "Verifiability", which says that a statement for which a good source cannot be found can be undone by anyone. This may sound harsh, but is essential to enforcing the principle of "No original research". "Verifiability" is usually abbreviated as WP:V. You can advice at Verifiability/Noticeboard.
 * "Neutral point of view", which requires that you must present in a disinterested tone all majority views and significant minority views, and in rough proportion to how much they are represented in good sources. "Neutral point of view" is usually abbreviated as WP:NPOV. You can advice at Neutral point of view/Noticeboard.

Every paragraph needs at least one citation, and citations are also needed for every set of statistics, every direct quotation, and every unusual claim. In each case, you must support it by information from reliable sources:
 * The supporting information must be accurate and follow the intention of the source. For example do not use an idea out of context, as this might give the opposite meaning of what the source intended.
 * It must be provided by a reliable publication, in other words, a source that has a good reputation in the field and is independent of the author. For example: academic journals and books; magazines and books about business and politics from top-quality publishers, although even these sometimes have bias.
 * In almost all cases you cannot directly use self-published sources, where the authors are also the publishers. The exceptions are so rare that you should avoid them. Self-published sources include forums, bulletin boards, blogs, and self-published magazines and books.
 * Although self-published sources cannot be used directly, sometimes they may give details of sources that can be used. For example Darren Naish runs a blog at Tetrapod Zoology and his entry Gekkota part II: loud voices, hard eggshells and giant calcium-filled neck pouches ends with a list of articles and books that could be used on Wikipedia.

Two other policies are enforced rigidly to minimise the risk that WP may be sued:
 * Biographies of living persons, or WP:BLP for short, restricts such biographical addition to articles and in some cases prevents creation of biographical articles. If you want to create or modify an article about a living subject, you must read WP:BLP.
 * Copyright violation, usually shortened to WP:COPYVIO, says, "material copied from sources that are not public domain or compatibly licensed without the permission of the copyright holder (unless brief quotation used in accordance with non-free content policy and guideline) is likely to be a copyright violation" - in other words, you can use brief quotations provided you specify the author's name. Copyright problems gives some advice.

Those are the main principles. To follow them when improving articles, you need to add supporting information in the form of citations. While citations don't provide the information, they provide where the information can be found, so that other editors can also read it - as WP:V requires. A good citation requires quite a lot of items, but simple techniques to build them will make the job much easier the majority of the time.

It's best to store citations or even first drafts of new articles in a sub-page of your User page.

Some of you may also have limited or no experience of writing using a web browser, and getting to know the basic edit facilities will help you.

You should be aware of events that affect articles in which you have an interest.

Creating new articles
New articles face both the requirements for existing articles and a further requirement. Wikipedia's Notability guideline (WP:N) decides whether a topic merits its own article. If an article has little chance of being significant and distinctive, it can be deleted, or merged into another article. "Significant and distinctive" depends on the text, but WP:V says the text can be undone if it is not supported by information from reliable sources. So "Significant and distinctive" depends on how much is supported. In the worst case, the text could all be removed and the article deleted in minutes.

That means you need to have one or preferably more sources ready before writing the first version of the article. It may take time to collect some sources, and in the meantime you needs somewhere to store the citations - and perhaps summarise sources you have collected, for example: For example as of March 2011 Dead Clade Walking has 3 citations: 1 about the concept; and 2 examples of how the term has become common in paleontology.
 * Example A - Web page. Supports point 1
 * Example B - Book (need Title, Author(s), date, publisher, ISBN). Supports points 2, 3

It's best to store citations or even first drafts of new articles in a sub-page of your User page.

You should be aware of events that affect articles in which the editors have an interest.

Basic edit facilities


Help:Edit shows the "edit box", where you type in the text.

Help:Wiki markup summarises the "codes" that can be inserted in text to layout the text.

You often need to copy or move text from one place to another. Cut, copy, and paste facilities are almost essential, but the edit box does not provide these. You can avoid this limitation by using the cut, copy, and paste shortcuts provided by the operating system to manipulate the text used in the edit box. Wikipedia has a list of the cut, copy, and paste codes for the most common operating systems.

The text manipulation shortcuts for cut and paste work only in the edit boxes - for example text boxes or combo boxes. But the operation system's copy can also copy from other sources such as on a web page or wikipedia article, for example in this section. The copied text can then be pasted into the edit box of any Wikipedia page. Use the mouse or cursor keys to select the text, use the copy shortcut to copy the text into the clipboard, move the cursor into the edit box of the desired page, and finally press the paste code.

Wikipedia's Sandbox allows you to experiment with techniques.

Each registered editor can also have personal User Sub-pages, whose uses can include experiments, notes, and drafts of articles and other texts.

User sub-pages
If you've registered as a user, any Wikipedia page will show one of the bars along the top with your user name, which is a link to your User page. This would be in red font to indicate that it is yet to be created. Once created, the tab name would be in blue font henceforth. There would be another tab named "My Talk" in a red font, which links to your User page's Talk page. You will have to create your User page and talk page yourself. This is easily done by editing (writing) in the blank edit box and saving your work. Once created, you can edit your user page or talk page any time you want. You are at liberty to write or store anything on your user page which is not objectional under wikipedia policy; examples of objectionable material being an attack on another editor, or a violation of biographies of living persons (WP:BLP).

You can also create additional user pages, usually called as "user sub-pages". A typical reason for adding a new user sub-page is to store some material or references to support your creation of a new article. Alternatively, you may accumulate quite a collection of sources which you may want handy at all times but which you do not want to clutter your User page or Talk page with. You can create a user sub-page for this information.

To create a User sub-page, make a link on your User page, for example User:your name /Sources, and save it. The link would initially be red as it is yet to be created. Click that link, edit and save. Voila, your user sub-page is created.

You can use User sub-pages for other uses as well, such as saving drafts for new articles. You are likely to have several sub-pages as time passes. Before creating any User sub-pages, think about how to index them so that you can find them easily. You may like to first create just one User sub-page, to be used as a Master Index, and create second-level sub-pages from links which you add in the Master Index.

Eventually, you may no longer need one of your sub-pages. If you type at the top of it, it will be deleted in a few minutes.

Wikipedia will prevent the creations of sub-pages under articles and a few other types of pages. It is also unusual to create sub-pages under the other types that can be created (outside of User pages), and you should be very cautious - discuss the idea at the relevant Talk page, wait until you see a few responses, and see if these suggest other approaches that can do the job.

Building citations
In guidelines and discussions on Wikipedia, "citation" has a few meanings:
 * Verifiability requires the use of inline citations, which "labels" sources immediately after the text that needs support.
 * Identification of a source, for example an article in a journal or a section of a book.
 * The relevant content from the source, which must match the text in the corresponding text in the Wikipedia article.

An inline citation appears as a [ number ] at the end of a sentence or clause, and links to the identification of the source, like this. The simplest and most common way to generate an inline citation is to type   at the end of the sentence or clause, where "..." indentifies a source. Many inline citations are used more than once in an article about different aspects of the same topic like this:
 * The first use gives the  
 * Other uses of the same inline citation have the form  . This form must have: / immediately before &gt;, otherwise an error message will show; and must have no details of the source and no final  , otherwise there will be less severe but visible errors.

This sentence ends with an inline citation that needs a very complex identification of the source, one of a set of articles in a book compiled by an editor. In this example the minimum information needed to identify this source is: First and last names of the author's chapter; Title of the chapter; Title of the book; Name of the editor; Date of publication; Publisher; and ISBN. However, you should include every item that is present, for example, if there's a Web page URL, you will also type in the date on which you read the Web page.

The example shows a common convention for layout and typography to identify each part of the the citation. Typing all this by hand would be difficult even for most experienced editors. Magnus' makeref for building citations covers a wide types of source - book, academic article, Web page, etc. When you've completed all the fields, click the tool's button to make it draft the citation in the box at the bottom, then you copy the citation into a ref in the article. It's easier to use 3 tabs in your browser, preferably arranged next to each other. This will seem complex at first, but in a week or so you will do it automatically.

The makeref can format a wide range of citations: books; articles in academic, business and other fields; Web pages; news reports; press releases; encyclopedias; and maps.

Watch what is going on
Several types of events can affect articles in which you have an interest:
 * Edits by other editors. These can range from improvements to fixing vandalism (WP:VANDAL). Need advice re vandals and reversion
 * New and updated discussions on articles' Talk pages.
 * Wikiprojects.
 * Policies and guidelines, and their Talk pages. Some apply to work on all articles, while others apply to specific articles (e.g. WP:BLP) or other content (e.g. WP:COPYVIO).

A new editor's own Talk page is usually unknown to other editors, and you should make yourself known to other editors. Promising places are the Talk pages of articles in which you are interested, and the Talk pages of WikiProjects where other editors collaborate on similar articles. You may be able to offer incentives including: knowledge or experience in some fields, but remember WP:V, etc.; access to sources that are hard to find, especially if they can be shared, but without breaking WP:COPYVIO. If another editor has written to your Talk page, you will get a notice about it the next time you display another Wikipedia.

The facilities mentioned below in this section require Registration.

Each registered editor can access a personal "watch page", via a link that shows on the top bar of each page. The watch page may be the most important source of information about events, as it shows recent changes in articles at other pages to which you have written, including Talk pages. You can also add or remove pages from their watch pages, by going to the target page and clicking the "watch"/"unwatch" link in the bar along the top. For example, if you had an interest in improving an article about a species of shark, you should monitor that article and its Talk page to see what changes and discussions happen.

The User contributions, which also appear on the top bar of each page, lists the pages which you have written. This reminder can very useful if you have been distracted by Talk discussions, reading related WP articles or just WILFing ("what was I looking for?").

If you registered as an editor, you can set your Preferences.

Registration as a user
Help:Registration explains the advantages. It takes only a few minutes to complete the form, and the whole process takes less than 20 minutes, including an email that Wikipedia sends to confirm that all is well.

When you get the confirmation, you must login to start using your new identity. WP will occasionally log you out and require you to re-login, which may seem a pain, but reduces the risk that someone else may use your id for mischief. You should log out if you stop using WP on a public computer such as a library.

When you login, a horizontal line of links appears near the top of the page. From the left:
 * Your id links to your User page. The first time you do this, your page is empty and WP automatically opens a edit box, so that you can start the page. The easier start is usually to list your interests, as that may attract other users to discuss some of them with you. It's not necessary to start a User page, unless you want to create sub-pages.
 * "My Talk" links to your personal discussion page. It will also be empty initially, and there's no point in creating this page - someone else will do this when they want to add a comment, advice, question, etc.
 * "My preferences" links to a form with several tabs, which you can customise the way WP behaves for you. If you think you've a mistake in your preferences, a link at the bottom of the first tab can reset everything.
 * "My Watchlist" and "My Contribution" are described in Watch what is going on.