 Hi, this is a video just to show you a bit more about how content can be published on Wikipedia the free and open encyclopedia When you create your account you have a username And a talk page where people can leave you messages and The most important one for our purposes is your sandbox Your sandbox is as the name suggests where you draft content It's your personal play area on Wikipedia because although Wikipedia is a work-in-progress And will always be a work-in-progress as we try to document the world's knowledge If it's just half an article or half a paragraph, that's too much. So what we do is we draft content away from the Wikipedia main space in what's called the user space and Here is my username you and vid4 and a sub page of that is My sandbox this title line is always what is searchable in Wikipedia So no one should be able to take any page related to my user account except for myself So I'm I'm gonna be able to draft content here in peace You when you click on the link Your sandbox should open up with these drop-down menus, which are What's called the visual editor interface? There are two ways of editing Wikipedia The source editor is makes use of HTML markup language and is a bit more Cody in nature So it's the older way of editing Wikipedia Most people I think will benefit from using these drop-down menus, which are much more like using Wordpress or Microsoft Word type documents where you can write text on a page and then amend it and add links and Add citations and bullet points, etc. Just by selecting these drop-down menu options So you can use that milk magic pen symbol Which is next to this publish changes button because all on a Wikipedia pages is really about editing Clicking edit to go into any page Clicking on the blue save button to save the edits so that they become live and viewable I should mention at this point that although it says publish It really just means it's saving the page and it's saving it in your user space So I wouldn't worry about of your edits going live in the main Wikipedia article space Okay, so as long as you have these drop-down menus and you are in the visual editor Like I say you can use this pen to make sure you go into visual editor Then you can start adding content by typing text Down below these boxes And paragraph size of writing is the normal size of writing on Wikipedia But we often like to split text up Into headings So you can just highlight text and Change it using the visual editor into headings So what I've got added a bit earlier is just some guidelines because a lot of people Have a go at Wikipedia editing, but they don't know who this sort of behind-the-scenes policies and guidelines that Wikipedia has about making sure that we are adding fact-checked information so you Although Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit what People don't realize is that you have to cite what you write and Wikipedia is not just a telephone book of Listing every single person or every single thing in the world what we're we do have a policy of notability and a policy of verifiability and a policy on reliable sources, so if For any reason you're not Writing based on reliable published secondary sources and The information that you add isn't verifiable From those sources and it's not written from a neutral point of view or it doesn't meet Wikipedia's threshold for Notability then the content will either be removed or the entire article may be nominated for speedy deletion Which can be frustrating. I do understand but That just this is just to let you know what the main Criteria that you should be following when you're writing a page So where the main things to bear in mind when you're writing new articles on Wikipedia is to write in your own words Every page on Wikipedia Has this license at the bottom Where text is available under the creative commons attribution share a light license Now that license permits that information to be shared and reused Elsewhere so copyrighted material cannot be added to Wikipedia So even close paraphrasing counts as copyright violation So even if I copied whole chunks of the Guardian newspaper into this draft space With the idea that I was going to work with it to sort of like craft my article That's still copyright violation this sandbox page It's still part of Wikipedia and still has to abide by the creative commons attribution share a light license It's also why content on Wikipedia spreads across the internet and is used by Facebook YouTube Google Siri Alexa as the largest open education resource in human history Having that free information to be reused and shared is quite a powerful thing So what's right or wrong or missing on Wikipedia really matters? but you do have to write in your own words and The second thing is to avoid peacock to words and peacock is anything that's a bit too Flowery or aggrandizing so talking about a topic as if it's the best Things in sliced bread the most significant the most important the most fabulous We need to strip back your writing to a much more factual pared down encyclopedic style and similarly, we avoid weasel words and and these are things that are unattributed or Too general or too vague in nature where you're mentioning it's widely believed that or Generally, they are regarded as that. Well, that's Contestable because you haven't provided any information about Who states that or what states that so we need to be a bit more specific and Guarded and factual in our language and pair it down to what we can definitely say if you want to add information like that You should really attribute where that Information's coming from or who stated that or what body stated that quotes are fine as long as they're short in nature and attributed So again, right factually and with an encyclopedic style, which is a different style of writing to do, you know? news releases or Promotional releases or academic essay work. It does have its own style And what you can do is have a look at existing articles on Wikipedia to try and see how they Use language and pair the writing down Another aspect is that you have to write with a neutral point of view You can cover different schools of thought, but the idea is not to sort of have a An undue bias or Provide too much weight to one particular School of thought although, you know, the eye there would also be the the counter argument about not providing Equivalence if they're like 80% of the world believed A certain school of thought in only 10 to 20% believed another school of thought the idea wouldn't be to provide those ideas with equivalents but What we're looking for is a sort of literature review and an objective point of view and with medical content We are Looking to provide a medical consensus of the health information So there's a stricter policy on Biomedical content where we make use of review literature From the last five years a recent review literature that establishes a medical consensus Before information can be added about health topics Health topics and other topics are it's important that all the topics are written Accessibly so that anyone in any part of the world can understand the article Even if they've got no background or in science or medicine or anything else that you're writing about You shouldn't need to be an expert and to understand a Wikipedia article So you need to structure and split your article into sections into these headings that I've showed you earlier and you can have a look at some other articles on Wikipedia to check what kind of headings they use because depending on what you're writing about there is kind of a set Guide to the types of headings you might want to use whether it's a novel you're writing about it might have a section on our themes or How it was received when it was published or the background to the To the novel or if it's a biography it might have their early life and education first and move into their later career and achievements later life death and legacy and So it's worthwhile having a look at example or articles to give you an idea of how to split it up into section headings Importantly it would do want anyone to understand your article. So if you're going to use any jargon terms it's important to explain what they mean the first time they're used and And Because Wikipedia wants you to jump down the rabbit hole of knowledge and help your understanding If you mention another topic that has an English Wikipedia page it's important to have a little blue wiki link to that page and Links are really easy to add so I can click on that link drop down and It will look for a page with that title and You only need to link something the first time it's mentioned in your article. So if Wikipedia is mentioned multiple times Then you only need to link at the first time and The main body of your article is all about links to other Wikipedia pages We don't add links to external websites in our article But if we did want to we could add the most pertinent external links In their own section at the foot of the page in a short bullet pointed list We don't want Wikipedia to become a link farm. So if you can add five to eight of the most relevant links to external websites in a section called external links at the foot of the page That's normally what we do To cover external links so all their links above that are to Wikipedia pages and Finally the most important thing cite what you write and That's what a lot of people don't understand is although Wikipedia is the website that anyone can edit You have to cite what you write and unreferenced poorly referenced content will be removed So you do have to add citations from reliable published secondary sources So by that we mean information that is published outside of Wikipedia so in books respectable books that have and That are well regarded as and have reputation for fact check your inaccuracy. So books textbooks news from Quality news Organizations and sites. So we're talking like broadsheet news more than tabloids So have a look at the broadsheet news and that sort of sliding scale of trust avoid the sort of yellow press and avoid More of the social media posts avoid sort of Facebook or Twitter As your source of information unless your article is actually referencing something that happened in in the news Related to that those social media posts Blog posts tend to be another thing that we avoid Although that's an evolving relationship. Some university blogs are very high quality and have editorial oversight but generally blog posts are We're slightly more skeptical of those because they can be an unstable link They might be there one day and then go on the next and they might be more opinion based than factual and we do need information to be reasonably consistent in terms of the information being fact checked and Editorial oversight and having a reputation for accuracy So reliable published second resources textbooks books quality news broadsheet news High quality magazines the New Yorker, etc. new scientists and also scholarly journals quite important that in editorial oversight and that we do want experts contributing to Wikipedia So site what you write You make a statement and then you can add a citation after the full stop and if you have a web URL or a DOI or An ISBN number or a PubMed identifier if you have any of those you can use this automatic citation generator So you just place your cursor after the full stop site pasted in and It hit generate and that I'll create a num numbered citation that when you save the page We'll create a reference at the foot of the page And if you don't have any of those four things you can use the manual citation generator, which will ask you for First name of author last name of author Title etc. etc. Importantly if you're using books, it's important to add the page number and If it does have a DOI number If it is a scholarly journal, for example a digital object identifier number I would use that instead of the URL because DOIs are much more stable a link and much provide a lot more rich metadata and I can add a PubMed identifier here Just to show you how that works It's a PubMed number I know about and it's pulling in some really rich metadata that has a DOI number and The PubMed number I just added and then I can insert And there's a numbered citation and if I save the page or create the reference of the foot of the page So site where you're right really important all the way through your article add citations after the full stop That's what we'll be checking. We don't want and your article will be reviewed before it goes fully live it'll go on to it the Article space, but someone will be in new page patrol will have a look and see if you're Covering all of these five Areas that it's well-cited written excessively neutral point of view avoids peacock words and is written in your own words And then all of this information You can find on Wikipedia pages like our page on notability and this you can find By searching here Behind the scenes it's called a project page because it has that Wikipedia colon information Notability is the one big hurdle. I would say for new editors And it's a test by which editors Reviewing your article going live on a page Decide whether it warrants its place on Wikipedia because like I say we're not supposed to be a yellow pages of Listing everything we're supposed to be listing important Notable significant top topic coverage So it's worthwhile while you're writing your first article to have a look at the general notability guideline the GNG and This is what it says significant coverage so We're looking for a depth and breadth of information out there in the world about your topic So not not just scant mentions But are there is there a depth and breadth of coverage out there in reliable published secondary sources? so and This one is an important one the sources that you consult and cite in your article should be independent of the subject So if it's a writing about a book Often there's a lot of information About the author might have their own website That's not independent They might have their own publisher will have a website again not independent And they might have an agent as well that not independent So those are three sources that while they do provide certain amount of information They are not really independent of the subject So it's better if we can really steer the coverage to news or scholarly articles or Text books or books that talk about the the the book that we're trying to write about So yeah avoid Steer when you're writing about something to Sources that are really truly independent of the subject So worthwhile having a look at the GNG To before you get going There is a page on reliable sources about what constitutes a reliable source, but your your Basic guideline is does it have a reputation of fact-checking and accuracy? Is it considered reliable? Is it published elsewhere and? Either online or in print and does it? Have any editorial oversight that that's often a very useful measure but Does it have that reputation for fact-checking accuracy and is it a secondary source? We don't tend to use reliable Primary sources as sources on Wikipedia. We want we're willing to wait for someone else to write about that primary source So if I go back There is a page on neutral point of view and also a manual of style So manual of style is what you can have a look at again at this WP manual Manual of style shows you about how to write the lead section of an article and Words to watch out for etc. And basically it gives you an idea of how we try and keep pages consistent in terms of dates and numbers abbreviations capital letters but So there it you can definitely have a look at that But what I would also say is you could have a look at an exemplar article Wikipedia's front page is always one click away by clicking on the logo and It always has a featured article on the front page. This changes daily, but the featured article is Always considered one of the best articles on Wikipedia. So today it's megalograptus But you can click on the little star That takes you to all the featured articles on Wikipedia again that is findable by having a look at the top line and Placing it here In the search you can find it there, but this are the six thousand Featured articles a community reviewed That and considered the best of the best quality on Wikipedia So if you're looking for a good example are related to what you want to write about Whether it's in physics or astronomy or food and drink or music or anything else you can have a look into those articles and You if you sort of basically follow How they've laid information out that will keep you right about the kind of headings they use the kind of language they use and How they use links and how they have citations and images all the way through Okay, so featured articles are good examples to follow and if you're not sure how much is needed to write any article because Featured articles tend to be very long and quite well-referenced with Bibliographies as well Then what we tend to say is it can you write 50 words or more to get an article started? draft 50 words or more in your sandbox and Back up the content site what you write with reference to three or four more Reliable published secondary sources, so Just a few sentences in your sandbox and then you can publish it And create new pages like thrown Janet. This was a page that didn't exist on Wikipedia Until someone sat down and wrote it and that person it was Jill Hamilton at the National Library of Scotland one of our Edinburgh Gothic events So this is a short story written in Scots one of the few written by Robert Louis Stevenson in Scots language and it's a dark tale of satanic possession and Happily it's now got this image that we got was an open licensed image that was found on Flickr Taken from an illustration that was on internet archive. We have the actual text of the story in wiki source Which is our free digital library that has longer text in it? all open Licensed so you can read the whole story on there in percent searchable HTML and Happily it's now a nice link added to this navigation box among all of his other books and stories these are all wiki English Wikipedia links and It thrown Janet's in there, so this is editable as well So it helps curate the whole topic area and allow someone to really find out about that but why I'm mentioning thrown Janet is If you look at the edit history and the edit history just shows you the whole edits that happen to a page over time And they're all set saved in permanent links So no matter what change is made we can undo unhelpful edits or we can compare different page page versions with other Dates and times to see what how the page has changed over time and there's even a page views Option in here that will show you how many people have viewed the page Since it was created 20,000 people 20,000 page views since it was created back in 2016. That's impact but if I go back down to the very first time when Jill wrote the article Click on that 13th November. That's what we're talking about This is enough to get the ball started on wikipedia The title of the page in bold in the first line and a contextual sentence Making it very clear what the article's about and making sure That it really makes its case about why it's notable for inclusion on wikipedia We have links to other english wikipedia pages And importantly we've got our citations after the full stop From reliable published secondary sources that people can then verify After they've read the article or if they read any sentence on the article They can verify where did that information come from? How can I check it because that information you don't cite wikipedia? But you can cite the sources it uses if they're reliable credible sources And it's a good rule of thumb for anything you read on the internet is check Verify the information where are they getting that information from? But that is enough to get an article started Just two or three sentences with Three or more reliable published secondary sources to get the article started And we're looking for that depth and breadth of coverage to demonstrate the topic is remarkable Significant important or notable for inclusion So worth having a look at that notability guideline because that's the main hurdle that you're gonna get Come up against when you're trying to demonstrate that your article belongs on wikipedia One final policy that you should be aware of is The strict conflict of interest policy where editors should not be writing content about themselves Their friends their family members their close colleagues or their employer Anything where your impartiality as an editor could be called into question Even if you think your objective It's better if an independent editor writes the article Especially where there is a very close relationship or a paid relationship involved And any conflict of interest really needs to be disclosed So that the transparency and integrity of wikipedia can be maintained and Also yourself as an editor So often when you have a conflict of interest you can add it as a note on your user page to say I work here I am a member of this And then it's a transparency is key because if it's hidden and discovered later that Leads to problems and can mean certain institutions or ip addresses or Editing accounts are blocked or barred from editing Um So there is a conflict of interest notice board on wikipedia where edits can be suggested to editors who are going to be independent of the subject Alternatively you can curate A list of reliable public secondary sources Maybe in a word document or an excel sheet or google Sheet so that you can provide that to an independent volunteer editor to work with Um, and if your topic isn't one that's going to get Garnered or galvanized and independent volunteer edits to be found Then drafting content is acceptable as a last resort. I would say It really should be an independent editor, but if you can't find one Then the main thing would be that you need to get someone to review your draft Before like you could post a link to your draft on the conflict of interest notice board So that an independent editor can review it before it goes anywhere near the main article space so that Transparency of motive and transparency of intent is really important here So you need to make sure you disclose any potential conflict of interest Um, okay So when you do have your Text your thrown janet sized amount of text or more ready to go What you need to do is migrate Your content Into the wikipedia main space So what I need to do is save the page with added text for a new article here And as a new as I've I'm a new editor. I've only recently created this account I'm not allowed to migrate This content directly into wikipedia's main space Um, what you'll find is that if you create a new account You only have this option this blue button to submit your draft for review So when you've got your content looking like this or Maybe longer like One of these longer featured articles Then you can submit it and someone from the article for creation Q team will have a look at the article and give you feedback about whether it meets The sort of criteria of writing in your own words avoiding pick up words Need to report a view written excessively citing what you're right, etc um The the downside of this is that this is there is a bit of a backlog to the queue So you might have it might get reviewed quite quickly within a day or two Or you might find that you're waiting 10 days or three weeks to get feedback and If it doesn't immediately meet All of these criteria you might get in the knockback until it's further worked on That's why I would say Have a look at an example or article and make sure your article is pretty well close to One of these existing articles before you submit it so that you're not disappointed Further down the road But When you have had your account for More than four days And made 10 saves or more Then you will get a new menu option that will appear next to the view history And at the moment, I don't have that so if I click on preferences I can see show you how many edits I've made Or how many times I've saved my page six times So I've I've considered a new user and I've only made six saves a page therefore I'm not yet permitted to move my content Directly into the wikipedia main space so four days and 10 edits or more And then you should be what's given what's called confirmed editor status And that Then means you will get the option to move your content into the wikipedia main space So I'm just fast forwarding a bit To show you what happens when you've had your account for more than four days And made 10 or more saves to pages Then what you get is this more menu next to the search bar And this is kind of the recommended way to publish pages on wikipedia While you still get learning the ropes I would recommend you get a bit of feedback on your article by submitting your article to the articles for creation review queue but After that, I would say you can just use this more menu And what you do is you just click you make sure your articles Looks like a wikipedia page. It's got The first the title in bold that it's got some wiki links That it's got a references heading And it's got citations that when you save the page become references automatically At the foot of the page But once you've got all that ready to go then you can use the more menu hit move And basically moving it into the wikipedia article space is just a question of changing these information in these three boxes So at the moment my page is in my personal user space on wikipedia in my sandbox So if I want to move it To the main article space on wikipedia so that others can read it Then I select article And I then have to change the title of the page To what I want the article to be called Now if there is already something on wikipedia with that same title, then I would add a little disambiguation To explain what it was or if it was a person I would explain what their job role was If there was someone else with the same name if there wasn't just go with Their name So you put the title of the page There and the last one is why are you putting a new page in wikipedia because you've researched And written and maybe if you want it reviews, please Can this be reviewed? Yes, and then move and then what happens is it will move The contents of your page into wikipedia Where a new page patroller Will come along and check quite reasonably quite quickly that it it's laid out the way we would expect and follows all of the the maintenance that I've Mentioned here If it doesn't then what you'll either be moved to draft space so that you can work on it or if it's Looks nothing like a wikipedia article or has Lots of significant problems with it, then it'll be nominated for speedy deletion But if it passes all of these tests and looks like a wikipedia article Neutrally written in your own words links to other pages citations all the way through That and it importantly it passes the wikipedia general notability test And that is the main hurdle for most new pages Then it will be a new article that people can read and discover on wikipedia And it's at that point That you just all you need to do then is maybe add some categories at the foot of the page And you can edit to go in it And categories can be added from this three horizontal lines menu next the visual editing bar And you can add more categories here And I would have a look at other pages on wikipedia to see suggested categories if it's black If it comes up as a black link, then it's found it if it comes up as a red link Astronomical Page It's not found it It doesn't exist so I can bin it. I don't need we don't need to add categories that don't exist So categories are only added once you've published a page and The other thing we should probably do is think about other articles that ought to link to our page Because at the moment all your links hit in the article are outwards And they're in order for the article to be truly discoverable. You want all of the most relevant pages To uh link to your page so that there's a two-way linking going on And if you're not sure what that looks like You can or what page is to add links to You can Type the name of your article into This find link tool Edward bets.com find link And It will try And look for pages on wikipedia That mention that page title With the idea being that if other articles on wikipedia are mentioning your page Then they should have a wiki link to your new page as well So you can have a look and see if these are relevant links view article And then make sure there is a You can go into it And check that it's got a blue link We need to Have the link in the main body of the article But if you you can find other links In this using this find link tool because there's loads to check And if we can find it then we can make it super discoverable And add links to and from other pages And there you go. That's how you get a page on wikipedia