Wikipedia:What is an article?
- Basic principles
- Article Relevance criteria
- Writing good articles
- Documents
- Literature
- Illustrate article
- Spelling
- Talk pages
How can you write or edit an article, you will learn in this tutorial.
Minimum requirements
Topic
The topic of an article has to be interesting for larger groups of people. As an encyclopedia to be taken seriously by the general public as a serious reference work, the less known or " less serious" the topic is, the better the starting item should be.
Also, one should ask before creating an article, whether the issue can not be usefully incorporated into a parent item. Otherwise the reader through the atomization of content the relationship no longer recognize, and there are lots of items that are either redundant or very short in many areas. For example, versions are better off to the trouser button in the article as a button in a separate article.
Furthermore, it is not recommended to adjust items about themselves. Wait until someone else writes the article. Even you can not objectively assess the importance of oneself or one's own company. If you still want to dare to try, please read the instructions for self- representation.
Content and form
An article must define the content of his subject. The author should not assume that the reader will already know what the object is - to provide the definition, is the first task of an encyclopedia. So: " Ludwig II was a Bavarian king " instead of " Ludwig II died in the course of a conspiracy " or " Essen is a city in North Rhine -Westphalia ", not " food has nearly 600,000 inhabitants ." On the other hand, the article is however more than just these short definition contained so that it can provide an added value for those who ever heard of the subject.
The inserted into an article statements must be used - either through links under Weblinks, through references in a bibliography, footnotes under a section titled Sources or References or footnotes or notes or documents. In addition, a document in the Summary field and sources should be specified in order to exactly one document can assign a specific change.
Scope
An article is in the first version sometimes a more or less incomplete " building site ", which will take some time to develop. However, each item must already be present from the beginning of the topic is appropriate and balanced in itself. Whether and how quickly evolved an article that can not be predicted and is often followed no discernible logic - it is sufficient if a person is really dealing with the issue. A particularly good example of such a development is the article on Konrad Adenauer, who started very scarce and has evolved into a readable article.
A common mistake made by beginners is to attempt in a short time to create a series of connected short article. However, this almost never works, because such articles often contain only a single definition, which was then adapted for each individual article, individual aspects of each topic with this solution, however, remain on the line. One should rather expand an item until you can find on the subject no more material, and only then put on the next topic. Issues that urgently need an item, have now long a; So it does not matter, as many blue links to get, but rather less, but deliver good products.