User:Warrenking
Hello. Keep it interesting.
Wiki Projects[edit]
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Editing tips for newcomers[edit]
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| Editing tips for new editors |
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Stay polite and reasonable, and if you mess up, let the other person know you're a new editor, so they understand it's not deliberate. Avoid battles and serial reversions or you'll get a block: see WP:3RR. Leave it for a bit and work on something else instead.
See how other people interpret things, and also what other people are doing wrong, so you can avoid it. Check out WP:AN/I and WP:AFD to get an idea of how things are viewed.
Never put your own knowledge, views or analysis in an article. Everything has to come from a sound published source. First of all find a good source—something mainstream, not a blog or a fan site. See what it says and use that information, but paraphrase it: never copy and paste. Then put in a reference to show where the information came from. Referencing is key to good editing. You should be especially careful when adding material about living people.
Some of the coding (mark up) on Wiki is difficult, or other things like categories might not be easy to work out. Find another article similar to the one you're working on, click the edit button, then copy the relevant code, categories, stub notice or whatever, and paste it into your own article, changing the text where necessary. You can also do this for the coding for images (NB no need to specify "right": that's the default). There's a row of useful buttons above the edit box (highlight the text, then click the button) and various options below it.
It is also a very good idea to study existing articles to see how they are written, the tone used, the headings and references etc, but make sure you look at one that's done well. The highest standard is a featured article: check some out.
It's best to get experience before you do this. However, the first thing is to make sure the subject is notable. This means that it has to be written about in existing sources (see "Content" above). To be on the safe side, prepare it in a user sub-page (aka sandbox), where it will be safe, and get an experienced editor to check it out before uploading it to the main encyclopedia (aka article space).
You can create extra pages from your user page. Type:
on your user page or talk page. Then click the red link to start the page. Obviously replace "Tyrenius" with your own user name. You can change "Draft" to any title you prefer. You can create several such pages for different purposes.
Make your own reference store of all the things you find useful—coding, templates, links to useful pages, names of editors you might want to consult etc. You can do this on your user page or create a sub-page for it.
If you want your edits to last and your articles to be kept, the key is to reference them. You can put the guide below on your user or talk page by pasting:
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| This is a Wikipedia user page, not an article. If you find this page on a site other than Wikipedia, be aware that you are viewing a copy of the page on a mirror site, with which the user "Warrenking" is not personally affiliated. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Warrenking. |
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