Contribute/Edit Articles

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Contributing New Articles

Welcome to the SLDI Knowledge Project!

This is a guide to some things you should know before creating your first article. We'll explain some of the DOs and DO NOTs of contributing an article, then we'll tell you how to create your article. Before you create your first new article, here are some tips that may help you along:


  1. Try editing existing articles to get a feel for writing and for using the FCK Editor
  2. in use at the Knowledge Project. Also, review a number of articles to get a sense of the appropriate style.
  3. Search the Knowledge Project first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject, perhaps under a different title. If you find an existing article on your subject, it is best to redirect the name you were thinking of onto the existing article.
  4. Gather references to show notability and as source(s) of your information. Articles that do not meet notability by citing reliable published sources are likely to be deleted.
  5. Please do not create pages about yourself, pages that advertise, personal essays or other articles you would not find in an encyclopedia.
  6. Be careful about the following: copying things, controversial material, extremely short articles, and local-interest articles.
  7. Gather references to reliable published sources.
  8. Create a new page.
  9. List references to your sources and show notability.
     

Search for an existing article

The SLDI Knowledge Project already has a lot of articles. Before creating an article, try to make sure there is not already an article, perhaps under a slightly different name. If an article on your topic is there, but you think people are likely to look for it under some different name or spelling, learn how to add a redirect with that name; adding needed redirects is a good way to help the Knowledge Project. Also, remember to check the article's deletion log in order to avoid creating an article that has already been deleted.

If a search does not find your article, consider broadening your search to find existing articles that might include the subject of your article. For example, if you want to write an article about an industry leader, you might search for the organization he/she is affiliated with and then add information about your subject to that broader article.

Gathering references

Gather sources to the information for your article. To be worth including in the encyclopedia a subject must be sufficiently notable and that notability must be verifiable through references to reliable sources.

These sources should be reliable; that is, they should be sources that exercise some form of editorial control. Print sources (and web-based versions of those sources) tend to be the most reliable, though many web-only sources are also reliable. Some examples include (but are not limited to): books published by major publishing houses, newspapers, magazines, peer-reviewed scholarly journals, websites of any of the above, and other websites that meet the same basic requirements as any print-based source.

In general, sources with NO editorial control are not generally reliable. These include (but are also not limited to): books published by vanity presses, self-published zines, blogs, web forums, usenet discussions, BBSes, and the like. Basically, if anyone at all can post information without anyone else checking that information, it is probably not reliable.

To put it simply, if there are reliable sources with enough information to write about a subject, then that subject is notable and those sources can verify the information in the Knowledge Project article. If you cannot find reliable sources (such as newspapers, journals, or books) that provide information for an article, then the subject is not notable or verifiable and almost certainly will be deleted. So your first job is to go find references.

Once you have references for your article, you can learn to place the references into the article by reading Wikipedia:Citing sources. But do not worry too much about formatting them properly. It would be great if you do that, but the main thing is to get references into the article even if they are not well formatted.

Things to avoid

  • Articles about yourself, your friends, your website, a band you're in, your teacher, a word you made up, or a story you wrote
If you are worthy of inclusion in the encyclopedia, let someone else add an article for you. Putting your friends in an encyclopedia may seem like a nice surprise or an amusing joke, but articles like this are likely to be removed. In this process, feelings may be hurt, which can be avoided by a little forethought on your part. So, just do not do it, please. The article might remain if you have enough humility to make it neutral and you really are notable, but even then it's best to submit a draft for approval and consensus of the community instead of just posting it up as unconscious biases may still exist of which you may not be aware.
  • Non-notable topics
People frequently add pages to Wikipedia without considering whether the topic is really notable enough to go into an encyclopedia. Because Wikipedia does not have the space limitations of paper-based encyclopedias, our notability policies and guidelines allow a wide range of articles - however, they do not allow every topic to be included. A particularly common special case of this is pages about people, companies or groups of people that do not assert the notability or importance of their subject, so we have decided that such pages may be speedily deleted under our WP:SPEEDY policy. This can offend - so please consider whether your chosen topic is notable enough for Wikipedia, and assert (or preferably show!) the notability or importance of your article's subject if you decide it is notable enough. Wikipedia is not a directory of everything in existence.
  • Advertising
Please do not try to promote your product or business. Please do not insert external links to your commercial website unless a neutral party would judge that the link truly belongs in the article; if you are writing about a product or business be sure you write from a neutral point of view, that you have no conflict of interest, and that you are able to find references in reliable sources that are independent from the subject you are writing about.
  • A single sentence or only a website link
Articles need to have real content of their own. 

And be careful about...

  • Copying things. Do not violate copyrights
To be safe, do not copy more than a couple of sentences of text from anywhere, and document any references you do use. You can copy material that you are sure is in the public domain, but even for public domain material you should still document your source. Also note that most Web pages are not in the public domain and most song lyrics are not either. In fact, most things written since January 1, 1978 are automatically under copyright even if they have no copyright notice or © symbol. If you think what you are contributing is in the public domain, say where you got it, either in the article or on the discussion page, and on the discussion page give the reason why you think it is in the public domain (e.g. "It was published in 1895...") If you think you are making "fair use" of copyrighted material, please put a note on the discussion page saying why you think so.
  • Good research and citing your sources
Articles written out of thin air are better than nothing, but they are hard to verify, which is an important part of building a trusted reference work. Please research with the best sources available and cite them properly. Doing this, along with not copying large amounts of the text, will help avoid any possibility of plagiarism.
  • Advocacy and controversial material
Please do not write articles that advocate one particular viewpoint on politics, religion, or anything else. Understand what we mean by a neutral point of view before tackling this sort of topic.
  • Extremely short articles that are just definitions
Dictionary definitions belong on Wiktionary. Try to write a good short paragraph that says something about the subject. We welcome good short articles, called "stubs", that can serve as launching pads from which others can take off. If you do not have enough material to write a good stub, you probably should not create the article. At the end of a stub, you should include a "stub template" like this: Template:Stub. (Other Wikipedians will appreciate it if you use a more specific stub template, like Template:Art-stub. See the list of stub types for a list of all specific stub templates.) Stubs help track articles that need expansion.
  • Organization
Make sure there are incoming links to the new article from other Wikipedia articles (click "What links here" in the toolbox) and that the new article is included in at least one appropriate category (see help:category). Otherwise it will be difficult for readers to find the article.
  • Local-interest articles
These are articles about places like schools, or streets that are of interest to a relatively small number of people such as alumni or people who live nearby. There is no consensus about such articles, but some will challenge them if they include nothing that shows how the place is special and different from tens of thousands of similar places. Photographs add interest. Try to give local-interest articles local colour. Third-party references are very useful to prove that the subject you are writing about is notable.

How to create a page

Only logged in users can create an article.

In the search box to the left, type the title of your article, then click Go. If the Search page reports "No page with that title exists" then you can click the red "Create the page" link to start editing your article.

The very first thing you should write in your article is a list of the source(s) for your information. For now, just enter them like this (and they will automatically turn into links):

(1) [1]

(2) [2]

Later, you'll learn how to format them to appear as footnotes.

If you know that it will take you a few edits to properly list references, put the template Template:Underconstruction on top of the page to signify to other editors that you are working on it, so they do not tag it for deletion yet. Even better is to create your article in a subpage of your user page, take as long as you need to make it a good article, then move it to the main article space.

After you have entered your article, click "Show preview" below to check for errors, then click "Save page."

And then what?

To format your article correctly (and expand it), see the links below.

Others can freely contribute to the article when it has been saved. The creator does not have special rights to control the later content. See Wikipedia:Ownership of articles.


Editing Articles

The SLDI Knowledge Project is a wiki, meaning that anyone can easily edit any unprotected page, and save those changes immediately to that page. After your first edit, you will be a Knowledge Project editor!

Introduction

Editing most Knowledge Project pages is easy. Simply click on the "edit" tab at the top of a page (or on a section-edit link). This will bring you to a new page with a text box containing the editable text of the original page. If you add information to a page, please provide references, as unreferenced facts are subject to removal. When you are finished with an edit, you should write a short edit summary in the small field below the edit-box. You may use shorthand to describe your changes, as described in the legend, and you will see the differences between the page with your edits and the previous version of the page by pressing the "Show changes" button. If you're satisfied with what you see, be bold and press the "Save page" button. Your changes will immediately be visible to all users.

You can also click on the "Discussion" tab to see the corresponding talk page, which contains comments about the page from other users. Click on the "new section" tab to start a new section, or edit the page in the same way as an article page.

You should also remember to sign your messages on talk pages and some special-purpose project pages, but you should not sign edits you make to regular articles. In page histories, the MediaWiki software keeps track of which user makes each change.

Minor Edits

A check to the "minor edit" box signifies that only superficial differences exist between the version with your edit and the previous version: typo corrections, formatting and presentational changes, rearranging of text without modifying content, etc. A minor edit is a version that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. The "minor edit" option is one of several options available only to registered users.

Major Edits

All editors are encouraged to be bold, but there are several things that a user can do to ensure that major edits are performed smoothly. Before engaging in a major edit, a user should consider discussing proposed changes on the article discussion/talk page. During the edit, if doing so over an extended period, the Template:Inuse tag can reduce the likelihood of an edit conflict. Once the edit has been completed, the inclusion of an edit summary will assist in documenting the changes. These steps will all help to ensure that major edits are well received by the Knowledge Project community.

A major edit should be reviewed to confirm that it is consensual to all concerned editors. Therefore, any change that affects the meaning of an article is major (not minor), even if the edit is a single word.

There are no necessary terms to which you have to agree when doing major edits, but the recommendations above have become best practice. If you do it your own way, the likelihood of your edits being reedited may be higher.

FCKeditor 

The FCKeditor is the WYSIWYG editing tool that is embedded into the Knowledge Project. It is designed to be as easy to use and intuitive as possible by resembling the major functions of the major word processing applications. Click here to access the Users' Guide for more information on using the FCK Editor.

Images

Only images that have been uploaded to the Knowledge Project can be used. To upload images, use the upload page by clicking on the "Upload file" link to the left. You can find the uploaded image on the image list. After uploading the image, you can then embed it into your article by using the "Insert/Edit Image" command in the FCK Editor.

For guidelines on using images on the Knowledge Project, see Wikipedia's image use policy.

More information on editing pages

You may also want to learn about:

Preferred layout of your article, at Guide to layout 
General policies in Wikipedia: Policies and guidelines 




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