User:Ian.thomson/Guide

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This page explains a variety of basic principles. If you learn everything on this page and edit patiently, you'll avoid at least 95% of the trouble new users have.

"Getting around the site" provides an analogy to help you try to understand the site's structure. This may help you understand why no one replies when you leave messages on your talk page, or why you get in trouble if you leave messages in articles.

"Things everyone should know (and can get into trouble for rejecting)" explains some social contracts that the Wikipedia community has agreed to. The subsection "Some experienced tips" are things that even some experienced users occasionally forget but are good to try to remember. These notes are just my summary of some different site principles, they are not policy.

"Finding sources" explains how to find sources -- you do not need to be a librarian. If you can find this site, you can usually find some sources for many topics.

"How to write articles that won't be rejected or deleted" explains, well, how to write articles. Ever since I started following these steps, none of my article have even been nominated for deletion.

"Summary of various site policies and guidelines I use selections of when welcoming most new users" summarizes almost every policy and guideline you might ever have trouble with. These policies and guidelines are not magical invocations that will automatically win your argument (no one "wins" here anyway). There are a few, rare assholes users who might use misquote even more obscure guidelines to try and "win" but that approach is not welcome (that said, a reasonable case that reflects policies very well is more likely to win than an emotional case with no connection to policy). This section is just my summary of these policies and guidelines and does not touch the manual of style -- my summary is not binding on anyone.

"Formatting" explains how to use Wiki mark up. Wiki mark up may look intimidating but you do not need to know anything about "programming" or "coding" or other "computer stuff" to learn it. Think of it as just a few extra grammar rules. If you already know anything about HTML (even if you just took an intro course a decade ago), you're in luck -- Wiki mark up is the fetal alcohol syndrome-afflicted, lead paint chip eating, sibling-cousin of HTML. You may want to look at Help:Cheatsheet as well.

The table of contents is automatically generated because there are enough sections to necessitate one.

Getting around the site[edit]

Things everyone should know (and can get into trouble for rejecting)[edit]

Some experienced tips[edit]

Finding sources[edit]

Google is your friend. Don't cite the search page, cite the address for specific results. Google Books, Google scholar, and Google News are especially useful, just make sure that the publisher is reputable.

We try to avoid a definitive list of what sources always are good because it can vary based on the situation. Still, the community is quite clear that some select sources are usually good and some sources are almost always bad.

Sources by accredited academics in a relevant field, published by a university press or by academic publishers (such as ABC-CLIO, Brill Publishers, Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge, Springer Publishing, T&T Clark, Taylor & Francis, Walter de Gruyter, or Wiley-Blackwell) are almost always reliable (unless multiple tertiary sources of comparable weight isolate a particular author's views as not mainstream). Sources by someone with questionable academic qualifications, writing outside of that field, published by popular press are more likely to be unreliable. If we have an article about an author, and their views are described as pseudoscience, pseudohistory, conspiracy theory, outdated, "now rejected," fringe, racist, etc... They're obviously not reliable. You should exercise caution if an author's views are described as "controversial."

Self-published books or books from pay-to-print publishers like Lulu.com are generally rejected, except maybe for statements about the author about themselves, or (perhaps) by recognized authorities within a field (though these sources are a lot weaker than lesser-known academics from reputable publishers).

When it comes to journalism, the Associated Press, the BBC, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Newsweek, the Pew Research Center, PolitiFact, Reuters, Rolling Stone, Snopes.com, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, and Wired are almost always reliable. Someone questioning or doubting the wholesale reliability of those publications (not just questioning individual pieces; but especially the Associated Press, Snopes, or Reuters as institutions) is generally going to be considered way too far off in some biased political extreme to be of much use to the site. However, opinion pieces should be attributed and some of those publications host blogs on their site that are not reliable. For example, Forbes is generally reliable, Forbes.com contributors are not.

WikiLeaks are primary sources that sometimes raise questions of authenticity or provenance, and must be interpreted by secondary or tertiary sources instead. Also, "Wiki" is just a software, we're not affiliated with them.

InfoWars is so obviously a fake news source that defending it can (and probably will) lead to a blocked for "not being here to improve the encyclopedia" or even "lacking competency necessary to improve the encyclopedia." If someone defends InfoWars, feel free to ignore anything else they have to say. Sites that cite InfoWars as authoritative are likewise full of shit.

Breitbart News, the Daily Mail, the National Enquirer, The Sun, TheBlaze, and WorldNetDaily have well-deserved reputations for caring more about sensationalism than accuracy. Sources from the official companies behind them can be reliable for attributed claims about themselves.

Sources that anyone can create or change are never reliable. This especially includes Wikipedia, Wikia, or WikiNews. This includes blogs (except maybe by individuals so recognized as authorities on a subject that we have articles on them), Amazon listings and reviews, Baidu Baike, Ancestry.com entries, Discogs listings, eBay listings, Find a Grave entries, Goodreads, or IMDb. This includes most social media posts (such as Facebook posts, Tweets, or Tumblr posts), except by the subject of an article for an official and uncontested statement about themselves (and even then, it's better to cite a secondary source that puts things into context). The same goes for press releases. Youtube comments are not reliable. Youtube videos are almost never reliable or if they are reliable there's a good chance they're a copyright violation.

If you're making any sort of claim relating to medicine, you need to cite tertiary meta-analysis, not isolated studies or sensationalist news reports on those isolated studies.

How to write articles that won't be rejected or deleted[edit]

I've also tailored a version specifically for editors trying to create pages about their companies at User:Ian.thomson/Company.

If you're going to write an article about anyone or anything that is not you or something you are connected to, here are the steps you should follow:

1) Choose a topic whose notability is attested by discussions of it in several reliable independent sources.
2) Gather as many professionally-published mainstream academic or journalistic sources you can find. Google Books is a good resource for this. Also, while search engine results are not sources, they are where you can find sources. Just remember that they need to be professionally-published mainstream academic or journalistic sources.
3) Focus on just the ones that are not dependent upon or affiliated with the subject, but still specifically about the subject and providing in-depth coverage (not passing mentions). If you do not have at least three such sources, the subject is not yet notable and trying to write an article at this point will only fail.
4) Summarize those sources left after step 3, adding citations at the end of them. You'll want to do this in a program with little/no formatting, like Microsoft Notepad or Notepad++, and not in something like Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer. Make sure this summary is just bare statement of facts, phrased in a way that even someone who hates the subject can agree with.
5) Combine overlapping summaries where possible (without arriving at new statements that no individual source supports), repeating citations as needed.
6) Paraphrase the whole thing just to be extra sure you've avoided any copyright violations or plagiarism.
7) Use the Article wizard to post this draft and wait for approval.
8) Expand the article using sources you put aside in step 3 (but make sure they don't make up more than half the sources for the article, and make sure that affiliated sources don't make up more than half of that).

Doing something besides those steps typically results in the article not being approved, or even in its deletion.

If you are writing about yourself, or someone or something you are connected with (such as a friend, family member, or your business), the following steps are different:

0) If the subject really was notable, you wouldn't need to write the article. Remember that articles are owned by the Wikipedia community as a whole, not the article subject or the article author. If you do not want other people to write about you, then starting an article about yourself is a bad idea.
8a) If the article is accepted, never edit it again. Instead, make edit requests on the article's talk page.
8b) If the article is rejected, there will be a reason given. Read it carefully and closely. If there are links in the reason, open them and read those pages.

Summary of various site policies and guidelines I use selections of when welcoming most new users[edit]

Do not post the whole damn thing on someone's page, FFS

The following are social contracts that members of the site have (directly or indirectly) agreed to prevent larger problems:

Formatting[edit]

Formatting matters. The above section break was created with the following code: = Formatting =

This is how you do a header in wiki-markup[edit]

The above section break was created with the following code: == This is how you do a header in wiki-markup ==

This is a subsection header[edit]

The above section break was created with the following code: === This is a subsection header ===

You can even do subsubsection headers[edit]

The above section break was created with the following code: ==== You can even do subsubsection headers ====

Links, italicizing, bolding, citing, green-text quoting, signing[edit]

What you would type What will show
1. You put in links to articles on the site like [[this]], unless you want [[that|a link that reads different from the article title]]. Links to other sites, like [https://archive.org/ Internet Archive] go in single brackets with the web address first, a space, and then the text for the link.<br/>HTML style line breaks work (or you could just do a carriage return like a normal person). 1. You put in links to articles on the site like this, unless you want a link that reads different from the article title. Links to other sites, like Internet Archive go in single brackets with the web address first, a space, and then the text for the link.
HTML style line breaks work (or you could just do a carriage return like a normal person).
2. You can <i>italicize</i> or <b>bold</b> that way or by using ''two single quotes for italics,'' '''three single quotes for bold''', or '''''five single quotes for bold italics'''''. "Double quotes" just produce regular quotation marks, no matter how many you add. 2. You can italicize or bold that way or by using two single quotes for italics, three single quotes for bold, or five single quotes for bold italics. "Double quotes" just produce regular quotation marks, no matter how many you add.
3. You put references at the end of statements (either sentence fragments, sentences, or even paragraphs) using reference tags.<ref>Author, title, page number, publisher, year published</ref> 3. You put references at the end of statements (either sentence fragments, sentences, or even paragraphs) using reference tags.[1]
4. {{tq|This does green text, which is used for quoting stuff on talk pages}} 4. This does green text, which is used for quoting stuff on talk pages
5. ~~~~ produces a time-stamped signature. Put this at the end of your talk page posts but not your article contributions. 5. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:21, 1 December 2018 (UTC) - A time-stamped signature. Put this at the end of your talk page posts but not your article contributions.
6. ~~~ produces just your signed name. 6. Ian.thomson (talk) - Just a signed name.
7. ~~~~~ produces just the time-stamp for your post. 7. 21:21, 1 December 2018 (UTC) - Just a time stamp.

Bullet points[edit]

* If you put an asterisk at the beginning of a line, you automatically get a bullet point. For example:

  • If you put an asterisk at the beginning of a line, you automatically get a bullet point.

(Indented) numbers[edit]

# If you put a pound sign at the beginning of a line,
# you
# automatically
# get
# numbers. For example:

  1. If you put a pound sign at the beginning of a line,
  2. you
  3. automatically
  4. get
  5. numbers.

Don't put spaces at the beginning of lines[edit]

<-- (This is where the line normally starts)
    putting one or more spaces at the beginning of a line just does some weird formatting that you will almost never need to use. For example:

putting a space at the beginning of a line just does some weird formatting that you will almost never need to use

Indenting and responding[edit]

:If you put a colon at the beginning of a line, it indents everything on the line by one press of tab (even if it wraps around). Indent your responses to someone on a talk page. For example:

If you put a colon at the beginning of a line, it indents everything on the line by one press of tab (even if it wraps around). Indent your responses to someone on a talk page.

::You can put multiple colons to indent even further. Do this when responding to a response on a talk page. For example:

You can put multiple colons to indent even further. Do this when responding to a response on a talk page.

{{od}} draws the above line to signal to talk page reader that the next line is a response to the a previous line that has way too many indents.

(For example, a line like this)

Responses go below the line they are responding to,

don't respond in the middle of people's posts, even if their post is broken up into paragraphs

without breaking the response up.

Sign the end of your response using four tildes (~~~~ as shown above). Don't preface your post with the signature, don't title the section with your signature, don't type out your signature before your signature -- just sign with four tildes at the end of your signature. Don't sign every single line or paragraph in your post (unless you are posting multiple responses to different posts in different parts of page), just sign each response once.

Linking within this project[edit]

Use two brackets to link to a page on this site. [[Example]] produces Example.

Use pipe links when you need to text to link to an article. [[Example|this]] produces this. Don't do this to hide Easter eggs.

When using a shortcut, such as MOS:LINK, do not pipelink the the full article name (e.g. [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking|MOS:LINK]]) -- that defeats the entire point of shortcuts. If you are linking to another page on en.wikipedia, just link to the page name and do not include the full web address. <nowiki>[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page|Main page]] will act like an external link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page|Main.

You don't need to link to a user's page or talk page every time you mention them. You can use {{u|Example}} to produce Example the first time you mention them.

Linking to other projects[edit]

[[:wikt:name|Name]] links to Name. Replace "wikt" with other project codes (which you can find at Help:Interwikimedia links and meta:List of Wikipedias for appropriate codes) to link to different projects.

Linking to other websites[edit]

[https://about:blank] produces the link like [1].

[https://about:blank this] produces a link like this.

Listing references[edit]

When you have references somewhere in the page, you need to put {{reflist}} somewhere toward the bottom, to show this:

  1. ^ Author, title, page number, publisher, year published
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