Chapter 6. Good Writing and Research

This chapter explains how to take part in the main activities on Wikipedia: writing, researching, and improving encyclopedia articles. It covers how to start articles—a simple matter—and how to write them well—a considerably more difficult one. Good writing comes as a result of practice, as well as having a knack with words, and understanding the style, tone, and referencing of encyclopedia articles.

A good writer will always consider a projected article in a wider context. The sheer scale of Wikipedia has an impact on research work. Existing articles and the research that others have already added to Wikipedia will help inform your choice of topics and will likely give you feedback on the research you intend to do. Reviewing the site to find what has already been written in a subject area is a kind of due diligence: You'll avoid duplicating the efforts of others and save time.

Wikipedia has the added complexity of having been developed by tens of thousands of editors. Learning how to work productively in this collaborative environment can mean acquiring some particular skills. In this chapter, we'll discuss how to write a good article using advice accumulated from Wikipedians who have collectively written hundreds of thousands of articles.

The Wikipedia community greatly values new articles that fill a gap, are well written, and are well referenced. This really is praise from experts! If you have already eased into editing, perhaps by copyediting the work of others, you can certainly consider starting a fresh article.

Anyone with an account can start new articles easily in a couple of seconds. If you don't have a user account, you can still propose articles, as we'll describe in the next section. Before you start typing, though, keep some things in mind. It's as true for Wikipedians as for Boy Scouts: Be prepared! Consider the preliminaries before investing substantial amounts of time in writing. These are the steps involved in writing a new article:

The more flexible, thorough, and resourceful you are in carrying out these steps, the simpler you'll find it to make good additions to the encyclopedia. Research hard, and then write well, whether you're adding one long article about a detailed topic, a short stub, or a group of related articles. The same techniques also hold true if you're rewriting an article or expanding an existing stub article; for many topics these days, you're far more likely to find a poor-quality article in need of cleanup and expansion than no article at all. The challenge for the writer is the same, however.

Is an encyclopedia of two million articles complete? Not at all. If you don't know what to write about, visiting a good library is an easy way to come up with a notable topic. Or, you can investigate some of the many projects that have been set up to gather topics that need to be written about:

[[Category:Wikipedia missing topics]] is the umbrella category that collects lists of potential missing articles. Likely topic areas for missing articles include politicians from anywhere that isn't the United States or Europe; biographies from before the 20th century (check any public-domain biographical dictionary, particularly ones not in English); scientists in a prominent national academy; and so on. Some individual editors' compilations of missing articles can be found at [[Category:Red list]], which collects so-called redlink lists that editors set up as working pages.

If you understand copyright and what's in the public domain, you can use imported material from older sources to start your article. For instance, much of the text of the now-public-domain 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica has been imported into Wikipedia. Other materials from Wikisource, which should be public domain or GFDL, can be reviewed with a view to adapting it. Copy-and-pasting is almost never enough, though; adapting older material requires skilled editorial work to bring both the language and the factual content up to date (for instance, a subpage of the missing encyclopedia articles project works on verifying articles from the 1911 Britannica to ensure these articles are accurate and timely).

Once you've selected a topic, make sure an article about that topic hasn't already been written in Wikipedia. You'll have to search the site thoroughly to avoid creating a duplicate article. This step is important because of the lack of top-down structure on the site: Whereas in a traditional encyclopedia, an editorial committee would assign authors topics, Wikipedia has nothing like this, and authors are responsible for understanding what else exists on their topic and making new articles fit into this structure.

After you search the site for the topic and working article title you have in mind, you'll find one of the following cases is true:

If an article already exists on the topic (but under a different name), simply make your article title into a redirect to that page, as described in Chapter 8. Working on the existing article to improve it is a good next step; very few articles on Wikipedia are comprehensive. At this point in the English-language Wikipedia's history, this outcome is the most common one for people looking to write about a particular topic, considering the vast number of existing articles.

If more than one article has been written about the topic and they seem to duplicate each other, they may need to be merged; see Chapter 8 for directions on merging. You can continue to work on improving the articles in the meantime.

If your topic has been developed in an existing, broader article, you'll probably want to work on that article to improve the existing content. If enough material for a separate article on that specific topic has been written, you'll want to split the content into an article with a new title; see Chapter 8. Be sure to add an appropriate introduction, conclusion, references, and See Also links to the new page.

If a topic is mentioned in other articles but not developed, make sure each mention of the topic is wikilinked to the title of the new article you want to write. This will connect your new article to existing content on Wikipedia. Additionally, checking out these topic mentions could give you research leads. Take note of anything interesting and unexpected and any relevant references you find as you come across them.

If the article title has already been used but the article itself is about a different topic, you'll probably need to move that article to a more precise title, create your article with another precise title, and then create a disambiguation page to direct readers between the articles, as explained in Chapter 8. For example, John Gray is a fairly common name. If you want to write an article on an architect with that name, you may title your article [[John Gray (architect)]] instead of simply [[John Gray]]. If [[John Gray]] already has an article about a physicist, that article could be moved to the title [[John Gray (physicist)]], and the main page [[John Gray]] could be reformatted as a disambiguation page to refer readers to these different articles.

If you don't find any articles or references to your topic on Wikipedia, you should pause before writing. Why is your topic not mentioned anywhere? Is your topic notable (see "Avoiding Treacherous Topics" below)? Have you looked for all the potential alternate names for the article or topic? Perform a thorough search, using all the title variations you can think of. If you decide your topic is notable (and simply missing), make sure you can place it into the context of already-written articles. Generally, you should add redlinks in existing articles to your new proposed article (either in the text or in the See also section) before you begin writing; then when you do create the article, you won't be creating an orphan.

If your intended topic hasn't been written about or mentioned, find out why. Revisit the article inclusion guidelines, mentioned in Chapter 1 ("Other Guidelines"), especially the notability guidelines (shortcut WP:NOTE) and the sidebar on classic topics not to write about (shortcut WP:DUMB).

New authors can fall for a handful of common traps. Perhaps the most dangerous are so-called vanity articles and wishful thinking about notability. Vanity articles are articles that have been written for promotional purposes (usually by the subject of the article) rather than for their encyclopedic value. If you're considering an article about yourself or your company—please don't. Even with the best of intentions, this can be seen as self-promotion and often leads to the article being deleted. Even if this doesn't happen, writing an article about yourself can be a mixed blessing: You don't control the content once the article is posted, and any relevant negative information will be highlighted just as prominently as the good. (Think of it another way: Encyclopaedia Britannica won't publish your résumé, either.)

Wishful thinking about notability can occur in other areas too. Common topics that are often borderline in terms of notability are articles about local bands, living people, and new movies, books, or albums. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Wikipedia has specific notability guidelines for all of these areas. Consider these guidelines and how your article fits in context.

Other treacherous topics are articles that have been deleted in the past. If you begin to write an article on a topic that was been previously created and deleted, you'll get a warning message that reads, Notice: You are re-creating a page that was deleted. In other words, one or more editors decided that the topic was not suitable for Wikipedia. If the article was deleted through the community process, Articles for Deletion (see Chapter 7), a link to the discussion about that article will be included in this warning message. Follow that link and figure out why the page was deleted: Is the topic itself unsuitable for Wikipedia, or was the original article simply flawed in a way that's fixable? If in doubt, an administrator (who can view the deleted version) can probably help.

As a logged-in user, you can choose a title and begin writing. Want to create a new article? Now is the perfect time to choose a Wikipedia username and open an account, as you must be logged in to start a new page. In the meantime, consult [[Wikipedia:Your first article]] (shortcut WP:FIRST) for a concise list of things to do.

The best way to initiate an article is to begin from a redlink on an existing page. Let's say your chosen topic is gingerbread cottage architecture, and you want to write a new article with this title. This term may already be used on some existing Wikipedia page (perhaps the general article about cottage architecture or gingerbread houses), and you can turn it into a redlink. Or, an unsuccessful search could bring up a page with a redlink matching your search term.

You can set also set up a redlink to [[Gingerbread cottage architecture]] on your user page, thus starting your braglist. Describing your new articles in this way is perfectly acceptable and will undoubtedly be of interest to Wikipedians checking out what articles you've started.

Clicking the redlink will bring up an empty editing window with the heading Editing Gingerbread cottage architecture, as shown in Figure 6-1. Start typing! Or, if you're more prepared, paste in text that you've already written (see "Drafting the Article" on Drafting the Article).

Preview your work, correct the formatting, punctuation, and typos, and save the new article. Add a short edit summary indicating that this page is the first version. If you've followed these instructions, the new page will not be an orphan (not quite anyway) because at least the page with the once-redlink now has a bluelink to your article. And clicking What Links Here in the sidebar on [[Gingerbread cottage architecture]] will reveal those unexpected pages that already link to your article (for example, if this article is on another editor's to-do list).


Typos in the title require page moves to correct them because titles are not directly editable. One good reason to start with a redlink is that you are less likely to make a mistake in the title itself.

For maximum user-friendliness, you can visit [[Help:Starting a new page]] for further help in creating a page. Enter your article title in the search box at the top. If it does not already exist, you'll be walked through the process of creating the page.

The most basic (but also the most primitive) way to start an article is simply to type the article's name into the browser as a URL. For instance, you can start your article titled [[Gingerbread cottage architecture]] by sending your browser to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gingerbread_cottage_architecture.

Once you have sent your browser to a nonexistent Wikipedia page, you'll see some text telling you the page doesn't currently exist, which you should already know, along with a link to start the article, which will work if you're logged in. While starting an article this way is very quick, finding a page where you can first create a wikilink to your topic is the best method since you shouldn't ever create orphan articles. Using the browser method also increases the possibility of accidentally creating duplicate articles or articles with misspelled titles or other typos.

Wikipedia has some title conventions you should respect when starting a new article. When you're searching, these conventions work for you by making it more likely that you can infer the exact title of a topic. This is (naturally) why respect for conventions is more than pedantry; consistent titling is a usability issue. In a given area, the titles of existing articles offer good clues to the conventions in force. The most basic convention is to always use singular forms: [[Siberian Tiger]], not [[Siberian Tigers]]. But exceptions are made for plural nouns; the article about stilts is at [[Stilts]] (as a single stilt is something you'd probably want to trade for a [[Pogo stick]] and, in any case, a [[Stilt]] is a bird).

Titling an article about a person can be particularly confusing. Articles about people should generally be in the form of first name last name. This convention can be hard to follow for articles about nobility, ancient Romans, people with multiple surnames, and any other special case. An article about someone called Raymond, Count of Provence might be under Raymond of Provence because nobility titles are often omitted. What if more than one such historical figure existed—for instance, Raymond II of Provence with Roman numerals (not "Raymond the Second")? But how is the name spelled? Raymond, Raymund, Raimund … ? What if of should be the French de? The article is actually located at [[Ramon Berenguer II, Count of Provence]], using the Catalan spelling for Ramon. If redirects have been set up to this article from possible name variations, using Google is probably the quickest method for finding the article by searching for the words Raymond, Count, and Provence. Detailed case studies for naming articles about people are covered in [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)]].

Here are more examples. The article about Saint Francis of Assisi is [[Francis of Assisi]], not [[Saint Francis of Assisi]], although the latter is a redirect. You can find specific advice for naming articles about saints on the Saints WikiProject at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Saints]], where editors have developed special style guidelines for these particular articles. Even though the most commonly used and recognized name is preferred, the article on Madame Mao is under [[Jiang Qing]], not [[Madame Mao]], though again the latter name is a redirect. Initial articles are not included in page titles: [[Statue of Liberty]], not [[The Statue of Liberty]]. Only proper names are capitalized: [[Pythagorean theorem]], not [[Pythagorean Theorem]]. If several possible articles could have the same title, Wikipedia has a wide variety of disambiguation schemes depending on the topic. The most common is to add a qualifier in parenthesis to the article name, such as in the previous example of [[John Gray (architect)]]. General guidelines on how to disambiguate page titles are on the main disambiguation page (shortcut WP:DAB#NAME).

Depending on what area interests you, looking at similar articles may save you time in figuring out a good title. These matters are all documented: For ample detail, see [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions]] (shortcut page WP:NAME), which is an official policy and includes information on naming conventions for many specific topic areas. Also see [[Category:Wikipedia naming conventions]].

A few characters are forbidden in page names, including

# < > [ ] | { }

and some others that are problematic. Full details can be found at WP:NAME.

As we mentioned in Chapter 5, the first letter of a title is always capitalized by the MediaWiki software, but otherwise titles are case sensitive: Capital letters in multiword titles, such as names, must be treated with care. [[Thomas Jefferson]] is not the same as [[Thomas jefferson]]. For titles that really should have a lowercase first letter, like [[iPod]] or [[e (mathematical constant)]], there is a special workaround: the template {{lowercase}}. This template displays the title of the article with a lowercase first letter (though the article name is still automatically capitalized in the URL). As for the famous case of [[E. E. Cummings]], the article explains it, so we don't need to.

Once you've selected a topic and picked out a title, you need to actually write the article. Making several drafts is often needed to produce good writing. Drafting a new article somewhere else first before posting it to the site is often best. Drafting allows you to note ideas, gather sources, and leave unfinished sentences and comments to yourself while you figure out what you want to say—without the risk of adding "bad" content to the encyclopedia.

You can draft articles in three possible places. You can draft in the article itself or in your user space. You can also work offline in a text editor. Drafting in live articles is not recommended for newcomers, as an article may be severely edited or nominated for deletion while you are still working on it. For a quieter experience, work in your user space, where other editors are unlikely to edit what you've written; to start out, draft on your user page, and create subpages for drafts when you become more ambitious.

You can create a subpage in your user space—your user page and any subpages under it (see Chapter 11). For instance, if your username is Ydobon, your user page will be at [[User:Ydobon]], and you can create a subpage in your user space by simply starting a new page with a forward slash in between your user page name and the new page name, such as [[User:Ydobon/Draft1]]. Simply create the redlink by typing [[/Draft1]] on your user page and then click it to begin writing. Subpages link back automatically to their main page. Constructing subpages with the forward slash works elsewhere but is not allowed in the article namespace. Subpages are widely used in project space, especially on process pages (described in Chapter 7) where every discussion is on a separate page. See [[Wikipedia:Subpages]] for more information.

You can also work entirely offline in a word processor, and then paste the content into the article when you are done. This method has some advantages. Printing the draft article to review it can often reveal inconsistencies and awkward phrasing and flow. Working in a word processor also makes it easy to spellcheck and restructure.

The user space method of drafting has the "what you see is what you get" advantage: You'll see the draft formatted exactly as it will appear in the article. Drafting in user space is thus a good method if you want to test out or perfect the wikisyntax formatting. Perhaps the best method is to start writing offline and then copy the work in progress to your user space when adding wikisyntax. User space is a public space to which you can invite other editors for feedback. But by convention no one else should edit a draft there, unless asked to directly.

Once an article is posted in the main article space, you no longer control it. If you are still doing major drafting while working in article space, you may want to add the anti-hassle template {{inprogress}} at the top. This template will fend off almost all intruders, reduce edit conflicts, show you know what you're doing, and probably deflect any early deletion proposals. Leaving the template up for a long time is not okay (and not a way to keep others from editing your work). In the same way, if you add hidden comments as a way of drafting, remove them when you're done.

Articles are not signed. When you create a new article, provide a descriptive edit summary, perhaps summarizing the topic in a few words. Finally, once you click Save, you don't control the content. Perfect strangers—out of the hundreds of millions online—can now edit it.