Wikipedia:WikiProject MIT/PSet Alpha

Editing PSet: PS A · PS B · PS Γ   +/-

Creating your first article

A fountain pen is always a handy tool.

It's best to work up to drafting an article by editing other articles and topics first, and becoming familiar with citing and uploading technique.

1. Customize your account.
   • Add a sentence to your userpage with as much or as little information about yourself as you wish. Embed an Image you like.
   • Add your name to the participants list. Sign with ~~~~
   • Visit your sandbox and make a test edit there. You'll use this again later.
2. Be bold.
   • Sourcing: Visit WikiGrabber and enter the topic you chose to write about. Choose one of those articles, search for "citation needed" on that page, and replace that link with a cited source.
   • Image uploading: Find an image that you have taken that could illustrate an article (ideally in your topic area) and upload it.
   • Image embedding: Find a relevant article that has no images, and add the image to it.
3. Create a list.
   • Find a topic you know something about, with a partial list of concepts, products, people, or organizations. In your Sandbox, expand this list (or create a new one, if none exists). You can also use the list of "external links", a common final section in articles, essentially a curated bibliography for further reading.
   • Search for "list of <foo>" (Ex: List of lists of lists) to see what full-page examples of lists can look like.
4. Draft a one-paragraph summary.
   • In your sandbox, create a new section and write a one-paragraph summary of your topic. Include at least two citations. Find a related image (CC Search, WM Commons search) to include.
   • Find an existing article where your summary might fit. Compare your summary to the lede section.
5. Be bold. Update an existing article.
   • Browse categories related to your topic. Read the articles about concepts & entities in your space, and find a page where your topic would fit as a section or subsection. Check the page for obvious gaps or needed copyedits, and replace citation needed tags with cites.
   • Add a short section on your subtopic. You may need to refactor the page to shift some of the current material into your new section.
   • Update the article with recent external links or images. Check for recent news on the topic and add a detail from the past few months.
   • Leave me a message on my talk page to let me know you're working on an article for the first time, and ask for feedback.
   • Check the edit history for the article (via the "view history" tab at its top) and look for a recent contributor who made significant changes. Leave them a note telling them that you're working on the article, inviting their thoughts or input.
6. Draft a new article
   • In your sandbox, start another section for a full article about a new topic, entity, or person: include an infobox and image, at least three sections (look at similar articles for example structure), and a number of relevant categories.
   • Leave a note in the Teahouse to let them know you're working on an article and ask for feedback. You can also write on the WikiProject talk page to let us know what you're working on.

In PSet Beta we'll review articles and help move them to the main articlespace.

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