User:Cloveapple/Letter to a connected contributor

Hi there,

I see you're writing about yourself or somebody close to you. Lots of people and guidelines will tell you that this isn't a good idea. Since it looks like you've already made the decision to edit Wikipedia I won't try to talk you out of it. Instead I'll give you some pointers for how to work with us Wikipedians with the least amount of fuss and trouble.

The first thing to know is that even though you can edit an article about yourself (or a subject close to you) by just going to the article and clicking on the "edit" tab it's probably not a good idea. In fact it's a really really bad idea to just jump right into editing the article. Instead I'm going to suggest a few tips and techniques that might look like more work, but will be less stressful in the long run.

First pull together some sources that write about the subject of the article. That means that before you do anything else you need to find newspapers, magazines, or books that talk about your subject. Even if you are the subject of the article you are still going to need sources to get anything done on Wikipedia. Saying "I was there. I know what happened." won't work. You must must must have other sources. Wikipedia is picky about what sources it uses so it might be good to find more sources than you think you'll need. Every point that you hope to put in the article must be in one of those sources.

Ok, you've found sources. Now can you edit the article? Still a bad idea. Instead do at least one of these things:

Find a sponsor
Make an edit request
If there's something you think is libelous or slanderous a private discussion might be best. You can talk to an OTRS volunteer.
Articles for creation
Ask for help on the COI board