Wikipedia:How to write a great article
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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Suppose you want to write a first-rate or even perfect Wikipedia article which deserves to be listed on featured articles (those considered by consensus to be Wikipedia's best articles). Consider meeting as many of the featured article criteria as you can. Here's additional guidance on how to do that.
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Research
Once you have decided on a topic, use Wikipedia's search engine to find out what related material we already have. That way, you get a feel for the environment and will later be able to create good links to other relevant articles.
You may think that you know enough about your topic, but chances are that others know more. Do a search on Wikipedias in other languages, on Everything2 [1] (http://www.everything2.com/), look at the first several hits from a search engine such as Google ([2] (http://www.google.com)), and read the relevant articles from an encyclopedia such as http://www.encyclopedia.com (free), http://reference.allrefer.com/ (free), or http://www.eb.com (free in most libraries).
Don't shy away from visiting a good academic or public library to have a look at the standard references. It is generally considered that the best Wikipedia articles should consult and cite the best and most reliable references available for the subject. Those may include books or peer reviewed journal articles. Only by citing the best sources in a field can a Wikipedia article be taken seriously by its critics. More on this at Wikipedia:Verifiability.
If you are creating a brand new article (see m:Help:Starting a new page), there are a couple of naming conventions that you should follow.
Writing
Start your article with a concise paragraph defining the topic at hand and mentioning the most important points. The reader should be able to get a good overview by only reading this first paragraph.
Then start the article properly. See our editing help for the format we use to produce links, emphasize text, lists, headlines etc. Make sure to link to other relevant Wikipedia articles. Also, where appropriate, add links in other articles back to your article.
You cannot simply cut-and-paste from one of the external resources mentioned above. See Copyrights for the details.
It's often a good idea to separate the major sections of your articles with section headlines. For many topics, a history section is very appropriate, outlining how thinking about the concept evolved over time.
If different people have different opinions about your topic, characterize that debate from the Neutral point of view.
Try to get your spelling right. Wikipedia does not yet contain a spell checker, but you can write and spell-check your article first in a word processor or text editor (which is a lot more comfortable than the Wikipedia text-box anyway) and then paste it into said text-box.
Keep the article in an encyclopedic style: add etymology or provenance (when available), look for analogies and eventual comparisons to propose. Be objective: avoid personal comments (or turn them into general statements, but only when they coincide), don't use personal forms (I found that...).
At the end, you should list the references you used and the best available external links about the topic. These references are what will allow Wikipedia to be the most trusted, reliable resource it can be.
Finishing touches
Top it all off with a nice relevant image or graphic. See Graphics tutorials for practical help on drawing diagrams and modifying images. Tons of copyright-free images are listed at our public domain image list. Please do not link to images on other servers; instead use the upload page.
One way to get a good article is to bounce it back and forth between several Wikipedians. Use the Talk pages to refine the topic, ask for their confirmations, note their doubts: it is usually interesting to discover that, perhaps from the other side of the planet, after a while, some other contributors can check other sources, or propose different interpretations. The composition of a commonly agreed interpretation is the most important ingredient of a serious Wikipedia article.
It may also be useful to look up your subject in one of the foreign-language Wikipedias, such as the German or French editions. While the English-language Wikipedia is the biggest one in terms of the total number of articles it contains, you may find that other Wikipedias sometimes contain more in-depth articles, especially if the subject is of local importance. Even if your foreign language skills are not particularly developed, you may still glean important information from those articles, like birth dates, statistics, bibliographies, the names of persons that are linked on the page. If you have incorporated the additional information, please also make the appropriate Interwiki links at the end of your article.
Don't neglect the External links and References sections. The most useful and accurate material you've found by searching http://www.google.com during your research might make good links for a reader too. And sometimes there is a standard work that is mentioned over and over in connection with your topic. Mention it, with its author and publication date. Even better, obtain a copy and use it to check the material in the article.
Later editing
On the Wikipedia, there's a tendency for articles to become somewhat bitty as contributors dip in and out and contribute individual sentences or paragraphs. This can lead to redundancy or a wandering train of thought. Even if you don't contribute new content to an article, it's still helpful to rearrange, rephrase, condense and generally improve the readability of a Wikipedia article. This is especially useful where an article has become somewhat lengthy without being suitably sub-divided into sections.
