Help:After your first article
 | This is an information page. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting. |
After creating your first article, there are still several things you can do to make it even better.
Keep making improvements
[edit]Wikipedia is not finished. Generally, an article is nowhere near being completed the moment it is created. There is a long way to go. In fact, it may take you several edits just to get it started.
If you have so much interest in the article you just created, you may learn more about it in the future, and accordingly, have more to add. This may be later today, tomorrow, or several months from now. Any time – go ahead.
Improve formatting
[edit]To format your article correctly (and expand it, and possibly even make it featured!), see
- Wikipedia:Tutorial to learn how to format your article
- Wikipedia:Writing better articles
- Wikipedia:The perfect article
- Wikipedia:Lead section
Others can freely contribute to the article when it has been saved. The creator does not have special rights to control the later content. See Wikipedia:Ownership of articles.
Also, to avoid getting frustrated or offended about the way others modify or remove your contributions, see Wikipedia:Don't be ashamed.
Integrate into the encyclopedia
[edit]Integrating your article into the encyclopedia involves two things, mainly:
- linking important concepts in your article with a wikilink, so it links to other articles, and:
- finding other, related articles, and linking to your article from them.
Of these two, the second is more important, as it will be harder for other users to find your article, if nobody links to it. This type of article with no in-coming links, is called an orphan.
Adding links to your article from other articles is an important feature of Wikipedia. Internal links bind the project together into an interconnected whole. When your article first reaches main space, it won't have any incoming links to it, or perhaps only a few, if some red links exist already.
De-orphaning
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An orphaned article is an article that has few or no other articles linking to it. The main problem with an orphan is that there is no way to get to it from any other article, meaning readers likely won't be able to find it if it is not de-orphaned.
Make sure there are incoming links to the new article from other Wikipedia articles. (click "What links here" in the toolbox) and that the new article is included in at least one appropriate category (see Help:Category). Otherwise, it will be difficult for readers to find the article.
Most new articles are orphans from the moment they are created, but you can work to change that. This will involve editing one or more other articles. Try searching Wikipedia for other pages referring to the subject of your article, then turn those references into links by adding double brackets to either side: "[[" and "]]". If another article has a word or phrase that has the same meaning as your new article that is not expressed using the exact same words as the title, you can link that word or phrase as follows: [[Title of your new article|word or phrase found in other article]]. In certain cases, you could create that word or phrase as a redirect to your new article.
One of the first things you want to do after creating a new article is to provide links to it so it will not be an orphan. You can do that right away, or, if you find that exhausting, you can wait a while, provided that you keep the task in mind.
See Wikipedia:Drawing attention to new pages to learn how to get others to see your new articles.
Make it easier for readers to find
[edit]There are several ways to get a reader to the page they are interested in quicker, and easier.
Add it to a category
[edit]Add your article to a category. Editors or readers following category links on other pages on a similar topic to your article, will see your article there, if they are in the same category.
Add it to a nav template
[edit]Add your article to a navigation template, sometimes called a nav box. A nav box is a concise grouping of many links to articles related to a particular theme, or topic, like {{Vichy France}}, {{Languages of China}}, or {{Marine aquatic ecosystems}}. Nav boxes are typically found on dozens of articles with something in common with your article topic, and if your article is linked there, readers of the other articles will see a link to your article in the nav box.
Note: as of August 2024, nav boxes are not displayed to users of mobile devices viewing Wikipedia.
Add a hatnote to a similarly named page
[edit]If the title of your article is very similar to another article about something else, consider adding a distinguishing hatnote template to the top of the other article (and to yours), such as {{About}}, {{For}}, or {{Distinguish}}. For a list of many more, see Hatnote templates in the Appendix.
Add to a disambiguation page
[edit]If the term is ambiguous (meaning there are multiple pages using that or a similar title), see if there is a disambiguation page for articles bearing that title. If so, add a link to your article to that page.
Create a redirect
[edit]Some articles have an obvious title which most users will type in order to find it, like Canberra to find Canberra. For other topics a user might be searching for, it isn't always obvious what the article might be called in Wikipedia. For this, Wikipedia uses redirects, to help get users to their desired page as fast as possible. A redirect is like a synonym, or alias, and if the user search matches a redirect title, the user will be taken directly to the desired Wikipedia page, even if it has a different name. If someone would like to read about the capital of Australia but they don't know its name, they might type capital of Australia, and the redirect will take them directly to the Canberra article.
Some other redirects that can help get users quickly to their desired page include:
- typos – for example: the article is Pharaoh, but you can get there from Pharoah, Pharoh, and many other spellings.
- singular vs. plural – Pharaohs will also go to the article; in the other direction, someone typing bagpipe or Anglo-saxon will be taken to the article with an -s on the end.
- inflected forms – forms like pharaonic also go to the article
- foreign terms – the event that kicked off the French Revolution is known in English as Bastille Day, but some users might search for it under its original name, 14 juillet, and the redirect will take you straight to the article. Sometimes it goes the other way: our article about the Académie Française has that name, because most English sources call it by its French name. But not all of them do, and users who type French Academy are taken directly to the right article.
There are many other types of redirects such as acronyms, alternative names, scientific names, and many more, that can help a reader find what they are looking for; see Help:Redirect, and the Rcat functional index below.
Link it to the same topic on other Wikipedias
[edit]Wikidata is a project to create an open, collaborative database. It stores many kinds of data, including interwiki links that link articles in different languages on the same topic. There are Wikipedias in over 300 languages. The list of languages you see at that link articles in other languages to a given article at Wikipedia is stored at Wikidata. If your article is not already linked to articles at other Wikipedias, you should add it; see WP:Wikidata#New articles.
Make it easier for other editors to improve it
[edit]Wikipedia main method to achieve its goal of building an encyclopedia is through collaboration among editors. Even if you created the article essentially alone, no one owns an article at Wikipedia, and attracting other editors is a good way to encourage further improvement of the new article.
Notify WikiProjects
[edit]One way to do this is through a WP:WikiProject, which is a group of volunteers like you who come together to improve Wikipedia in a particular subject area, such as WP:WikiProject Aviation, WP:WikiProject Spain, or WP:WikiProject Law. WikiProjects have Talk pages, just like articles do. Once your article is published, you can add a brief announcement about the new article on the project Talk page. You can use this search box to find WikiProjects related to your topic:
Many articles are of interest to more than one WikiProject, and you are welcome to notify as many WikiProjects on their Talk pages as are relevant to your article topic.
Create a Talk page and add WikiProject templates
[edit]Another way to attract editors to your newly published article, is by creating the associated Talk page, and adding WikiProjects to it. The easiest way to do this, is by adding one or more templates that display a banner about one WikiProject each on the article Talk page, naming the project, and providing a link to it. These templates will automatically populate categories that may attract users interested in the WikiProject related to your topic, who will be able to find your article more easily and contribute to it, if they wish. Some example templates are {{WikiProject Aviation}}, {{WikiProject Spain}}, and {{WikiProject Law}}. To find WikiProjects, you can use the search box just above.
