From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Essay on editing Wikipedia
| This page in a nutshell:
A little planning and a little effort is all that is needed to prevent an article from being
deleted
.
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- A man tries to build a house. He has a few of his neighbors come to help. They are working with much enthusiasm, but without a plan or any organization.
- Soon, a building inspector comes by. "Those stairs look dangerous," the inspector says, pulling out a tape measure, "and by these measurements, they are not wide enough."
- The builder replies, "Someone else will fix them eventually."
- The inspector moves on. "This wall isn't supported enough!" the inspector says with worry.
- "It doesn't matter," the builder replies, "We're not leaning on it."
- "And look!" the inspector cries, "There is no ceiling! The owners of this house will be angry indeed when they get rained on!"
- "They won't be!" the builder retorts angrily, "It will
obviously
never rain!"
- The inspector ignores him. "This house is no good, builder. it must be torn down." Instead of fixing the problems, the builder then spends the next day setting up an angry protest to prevent the house from being demolished.
There are times when you will walk in on a void in Wikipedia's coverage. A topic nobody has thought of yet, or perhaps one which you know about but few people do. Perhaps you followed a
red link
, and heard the call of a large edit box on your screen.
This is a story lived hundreds of times every day; of an editor writing a few heartfelt lines on a topic they know about?only to have their work put up
for deletion
or
deleted outright
mere minutes after it was started. It's frustrating, and might hurt a little, but the
editors who patrol new pages
are only looking out for our common objective: the encyclopedia.
Like building construction, there are
important rules
to follow. And, also like building construction, you can't expect the inspectors to fix things for you, or to close their eyes and hope the problem will fix itself someday.
The topic of your article is notable?
State so in the article
, don't expect readers to guess or do the research for you. You have been told the article needs
sources
? Don't just complain that there are
plenty out there
,
add them to the article yourself
.
So; how to avoid the frustration? It's actually quite simple:
Above all, don't expect people to just look past the problems just because you say they might be fixed eventually.
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- Adminitis
- Akin's Laws of Article Writing
- Alternatives to edit warring
- ANI flu
- Anti-Wikipedian
- Anti-Wikipedianism
- Articlecountitis
- Asshole John rule
- Assume bad faith
- Assume faith
- Assume good wraith
- Assume stupidity
- Assume that everyone's assuming good faith, assuming that you are assuming good faith
- Avoid using preview button
- Avoid using wikilinks
- Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense
- Barnstaritis
- Before they were notable
- BOLD, revert, revert, revert
- Boston Tea Party
- Butterfly effect
- CaPiTaLiZaTiOn MuCh?
- Complete bollocks
- Counting forks
- Counting juntas
- Crap
- Don't stuff beans up your nose
- Don't-give-a-fuckism
- Don't abbreviate "Wikipedia" as "Wiki"!
- Don't delete the main page
- Editcountitis
- Edits Per Day
- Editsummarisis
- Editing Under the Influence
- Embrace Stop Signs
- Emerson
- Fart
- Five Fs of Wikipedia
- Seven Ages of Editor, by Will E. Spear-Shake
- Go ahead, vandalize
- How many Wikipedians does it take to change a lightbulb?
- How to get away with UPE
- How to put up a straight pole by pushing it at an angle
- How to vandalize correctly
- How to win a citation war
- Ignore all essays
- Ignore every single rule
- Is that even an essay?
- Mess with the templates
- My local pond
- Newcomers are delicious, so go ahead and bite them
- Legal vandalism
- List of jokes about Wikipedia
- LTTAUTMAOK
- No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man
- No one cares about your garage band
- No one really cares
- No, really
- No sorcery threats
- Notability is not eternal
- Oops Defense
- Play the game
- Please be a giant dick, so we can ban you
- Please bite the newbies
- Please do not murder the newcomers
- Pledge of Tranquility
- R-e-s-p-e-c-t
- Requests for medication
- Requirements for adminship
- Rouge admin
- Rouge editor
- Sarcasm is really helpful
- Sausages for tasting
- The Night Before Wikimas
- The first rule of Wikipedia
- The Five Pillars of Untruth
- Things that should not be surprising
- The WikiBible
- Watchlistitis
- Wikipedia is an MMORPG
- WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG!
- What Wikipedia is not/Outtakes
- Why not create an account?
- Yes legal threats
- You don't have to be mad to work here, but
- You should not write meaningless lists
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