Wikipedia:WikiProject Shimer College/Editathon/Suggested procedure

This is a suggested checklist for creating new Wikipedia articles as part of the October 2012 Shimer editathon. (These are only suggestions, and have no official force whatsoever.)

None of the steps are mandatory, but following them will help you stay within Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. (Probably.)

1. Read Wikipedia:Your first article first. (However, do not use the Article Creation Wizard, because it is mostly designed to discourage people from contributing.)
   1. In fact, once you've read that, feel free to follow the suggestions there and ignore the rest of this list.
2. Choose your subject. On the to-do list, red links are articles that don't exist yet; blue links have been created.
3. Search. Check for mentions of the article subject on web search, Google Books, and Google Scholar. Even if you already have sufficient dead-tree information to support an article, this will help you ensure that you haven't missed anything significant about your subject.
   1. Based on the information available to you, check whether the article subject meets the general notability guideline: does she have substantial coverage in multiple secondary or tertiary sources that are reliable and independent of the subject? If not -- or if you aren't confident you can prove this to the satisfaction of a skeptical reader -- it's better to cut your losses and find someone else to write about.
4. Write. You may want to do this in a text editor rather than the web, so as not to lose your work. Press return twice between paragraphs. Do not indent. You can use the content-free example article as a pattern, or one of these actual articles: Frances Oldham Kelsey, Toni Preckwinkle, Rebecca Jarvis (more...)
   1. At the very start of the article, put the article subject's name in boldface (by using three single-quotes at the beginning and end, '''like this'''), and follow it with the dates of birth and death (if known) and a brief description. Like so:

      Frances Ann Wood Shimer (1826–1901) was an American educator.

   2. Summarize the most noteworthy aspects of the subject's life at the beginning of the article, before any headings (this is the "lede section").

      Frances Shimer (1826–1901), born Frances Ann Wood, was an American educator. She was the founder of the Mount Carroll Seminary, which later became Shimer College, in Mount Carroll, Illinois. She was also the sole proprietor of the school from 1870 to her retirement in 1896.

   3. Use headings to break up the body of the article into logical units. To create a heading, type "==Name of heading==" on a new line.
      1. The headers you use in the body of the article will depend on the details of the subject's life, but there should be at least one heading, to separate the body of the article from the lede. If in doubt, you can always use something general like "Biography".
   4. Include a natural number of internal links. One link per sentence is a good average number.
      1. Internal links are created by putting double square-brackets around the name of the article to be linked to ("[[Shimer College]]" --> "Shimer College"). (See the cheatsheet for further details.)
5. Cite. Whenever you assert a specific fact -- for example, the specific date on which something happened -- or make any other potentially controversial statement, you should back it up with a footnote to the most authoritative source available. The basic format for a Wikipedia footnote is this:

   Sentence stating a specific fact.<ref>Source for the statement.</ref>

   1. For the citation itself (the stuff inside the "<ref>" tags), you can use whichever citation format is familiar to you. (However, for extra brownie points, use templated citations; see the examples at Template:Citation for this.)
   2. At the bottom of the article (but above any "External links" section), add the following section. (This is where the footnotes will actually appear. If you're using a model article, this section should already be there):

      ==References==
      
      <references/>

6. Categorize. At the bottom of the article, add one or more categories. These use double square-brackets like regular links, but start with the prefix "Category:", like this: "[[Category:Name of category]]".
   1. The categories you add must already exist. There are Wikipedia categories for almost everything; the only trick is figuring out what they're called. Take a look at existing articles about similar people, and see what categories they're in.
   2. In a pinch, assuming you're working on an article about someone who lived and worked in Chicago, you can just add [[Category:People from Chicago]]. However, it's better to add a more specific category, like Category:Writers from Chicago.
7. Preview. Paste your text into the textbox and press the "preview" button. Odds are, some part of the formatting will not look right. Fiddle around until everything looks more or less OK (footnotes where they should be, no weird gray boxes, etc.). Feel free to ask for help.
8. Create. Take a deep breath and press the "Save" button.
9. Once your article has been created, please also leave a signed message on the talk page (that's the tab that says "Talk", next to the one that says "Article") indicating that it was created as part of this project. Here's an example you can cut and paste:

   This article was created as part of the [http://shimer.edu Shimer College] community's [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Shimer College/October 2012 Editathon|October 2012 editathon]] to improve coverage of women on Wikipedia. -- ~~~~

10. Celebrate. Huzzah! You owe yourself a beer.
11. Ready for another?