User:Psubhashish/Mail template - new article creation
This page provides a brief and a simple step-by-step process to create a Wikipedia article. Please note that, to keep the information brief, some of the detailed information might not be included. Please feel free to ask in the discussion page if the given information is not enough. This page provides four simple steps to create a brand new Wikipedia article.
Fact check! Is the person/place/organization/anything else you are creating an article about, notable enough?
[edit]As shared in the section "General notability guideline", there should be a new article candidate should qualify as a notable topic to be eligible for creating a Wikipedia article. And this is done by checking about how widely the subject is covered in the media, publications and any popular portal. A thumb rule to check if a subject is notable or not is a search engine search—for instance you can check here for mentions in relevant current news, or here for mention in books about a subject—to find out the media coverage. But, at times, many places and even historical landmarks are missing from mainstream media or books. In such cases, census website (e.g. Indian census website)or data portal (e.g. data portal for India) can fetch information. Every piece of information should be cited by linking the source inline so that anyone can verify the citation you have provided is authentic or not.
If the topic you are creating an article about fails the notability test, it is better to wait until the subject gets more popularity. It might sound rude, but it's wiser not to waste time creating an article and watching it getting deleted because of lack of reliable sources or notability or poor writing style. Wikipedia has its own Manual of style. It is advisable to go through that before venturing into creating a new article.
Getting ready to create a new article
[edit]Take some time going through a few important aspects of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for creating a new Wikipedia article. Some of the policy-related pages can be overtly long and might not be possible for one to grasp in one go. So, glance over, keep editing, bookmark the policy pages, and learn over time. Wikipedia articles are written by hundreds and thousands of volunteer editors. And trust me, the editors who are respected today were the people who made the most trivial mistakes. So, if the article you created is deleted even though it was notable and you you provided citations, it clearly does not mean that you are a bad writer. Even the best driver of a right-hand traffic country will have issues while changing to a left-hand traffic road!
Grow an article like you'd grow a plant!
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As a new editor of Wikipedia, always create your article inside a Sandbox. You can learn more about the formatting like heading, hyperlinking and making a text bold or italics by simply opening any Wikipedia article, and clicking on the "Edit" button. If you are editing using the classic source editor option (Edit source) and not the VisualEditor, keeping another existing article in the editing mode, and following the formatting side-by-side will be very useful. I would keep the article on Niagara Falls open while creating an article about a known waterfall in my locality. Sandbox is like a draft for editors to develop an article slowly and gradually, and none will delete the sandbox article during its developmental creation. You can always reach out to another active editor or administrator in their talk page and ask questions if you face any problem. Alternatively, there is an interesting place called Teahouse where you can ask a question and someone will surely help out. Make sure you take help and grow your article gradually inside the sandbox rather than being in a hurry to create it.
Publishing your article
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The actual process of publishing an article from a sandbox article is plainly known as moving a sandbox article to an article namespace. The way you move a page is quite simple. As shown in the picture, you can find the "move" option right next to the "Edit" button when you hover your mouse on the arrow.
All the steps that are explained above can be simplified if you are using the Visual Editor that works more or less like your word processor. To put it in simple words, you can select a word and press Ctrl+B (CMD+B in Mac) to make it bold, and so on. When logged in, you can change to visual editor by going to the "preferences" page. You can also translate an existing Wikipedia article from one language to another by using a machine-translation-abled Content Translation tool. However, on English Wikipedia this feature is limited to users who have been registered for more than a month and have made more than 500 edits. A policy like this might vary from one language to another. It might totally blow your mind to know that there are 295 Wikipedias till date that are edited every now and then by hundreds and thousands of volunteer editors across the globe.