Difference between revisions of "How to Write an Awesome Wiki Article"
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======Understand what to avoid====== | ======Understand what to avoid====== | ||
| − | + | Wikipedia has some great advice on [[wikipedia:Help:Your_first_article#Things_to_avoid|what to avoid]] and [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest|what a conflict of interest is]]. Highly recommended. | |
======Understand the basics of editing and the terminology of wikis====== | ======Understand the basics of editing and the terminology of wikis====== | ||
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An awesome article describes one and only one thing - precisely circumscribed by it's title. | An awesome article describes one and only one thing - precisely circumscribed by it's title. | ||
| − | Ideally, if you tell someone the title of your article, there should be no doubt as to it's contents. | + | Ideally, if you tell someone the title of your article, there should be no doubt as to it's contents. There should never be any confusion that the titles of two articles describe the same thing. |
If you are writing about an event, for instance, then name your article unambiguously about that event, so that it can't be confused with a similar event. | If you are writing about an event, for instance, then name your article unambiguously about that event, so that it can't be confused with a similar event. | ||
Latest revision as of 12:02, 14 August 2019
Making the most of your time writing an article requires you to learn a little and that's a good thing :)
Here's what you need to know:
Contents
Understand what to avoid
Wikipedia has some great advice on what to avoid and what a conflict of interest is. Highly recommended.
Understand the basics of editing and the terminology of wikis
Although we have a visual editor installed, it will make your experience much more pleasant if you learn some basic editing functions so that you can format things.
Pages in a wiki are traditionally called articles - especially pages in a wiki based on mediawiki, which refers to them as articles everywhere.
Collaborate before you originate
If there is another article on the same topic, improve that article instead of creating a new one. If necessary, break that article into multiple articles.
If there is no other article on the topic you are interested in, create your article.
Name your article for clarity of purpose
An awesome article describes one and only one thing - precisely circumscribed by it's title.
Ideally, if you tell someone the title of your article, there should be no doubt as to it's contents. There should never be any confusion that the titles of two articles describe the same thing.
If you are writing about an event, for instance, then name your article unambiguously about that event, so that it can't be confused with a similar event.
Add links and references
Never create an article without creating at least one link to it from another page - it's usually fine to have extra links to your page - ideally, cross-link to and from all relevant pages you can find.
People reading this wiki expect some rigor - you cannot be too technical or have too many external references - see the wikipedia citations help page for help adding those.
