Hampedia:Your first article

Welcome to Hampedia! This is a guide to some things you should know before creating your first encyclopedia article. We'll explain some of the DOs and DON'Ts of writing an article, then we'll tell you how to create your article. Before you create your first new article, here are some tips that may help you along:


 * 1) Try editing existing articles to get a feel for writing and for using the mark-up language in use at Hampedia.
 * 2) Search Hampedia first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject, perhaps under a different title.
 * 3) Gather references to reliable published sources. (Did we mention this one already?)
 * 4) Create a new page.
 * 5) List references to your sources. (We really mean it.)

Search for an existing article
Hampedia already has a lot of articles. Before creating an article, try to make sure there isn't already an article, perhaps under a slightly different name; you can search for it here; check the Hampedia naming conventions. If an article on your topic is there, but you think people are likely to look for it under some different name or spelling, learn how to add a redirect with that name; adding needed redirects is a good way to help Hampedia. Also, remember to check the article's deletion log in order to avoid creating an article that has already been deleted.

If a search does not find your article, consider broadening your search to find existing articles that might include the subject of your article. For example, if you want to write an article about a band member, you might search for the band and then add information about your subject to that broader article.

Gathering references
Gather sources to the information for your article. To be worth including in the encyclopedia a subject must be sufficiently notable and that notability must be verifiable through references to reliable sources.

These sources should be reliable; that is they should be sources that exercise some form of editorial control. Print sources (and web-based versions of those sources) tend to be the most reliable, though many web-only sources are also reliable. Some examples include (but are not limited to): books published by major publishing houses, newspapers, magazines, peer-reviewed scholarly journals, websites of any of the above, and other websites that meet the same basic requirements as any print-based source.

In general, sources with NO editorial control are not generally reliable. These include (but are also not limited to): books published by vanity presses, self-published zines, blogs, web forums, usenet discussions, BBSes, fan sites, and the like. Basically, if anyone at all can post information without anyone else checking that information, it is probably not reliable.

To put it simply, if there are reliable sources with enough information to write about a subject, then that subject is notable and those sources can verify the information in the Hampedia article. If you cannot find reliable sources (such as newspapers, journals, or books) that provide information for an article, then the subject is not notable or verifiable and almost certainly will be deleted. So your first job is to go find references.

Things to avoid

 * Copying things. Do not violate copyrights. To be safe, do not copy more than a couple of sentences of text from anywhere, and document any references you do use. You can copy material that you are sure is in the public domain, but even for public domain material you should still document your source. Also note that most Web pages are not in the public domain and most song lyrics are not either. In fact, most things written since January 1, 1978 are automatically under copyright even if they have no copyright notice or © symbol. If you think what you are contributing is in the public domain, say where you got it, either in the article or on the discussion page, and on the discussion page give the reason why you think it is in the public domain (e.g. "It was published in 1895...") If you think you are making "fair use" of copyrighted material, please put a note on the discussion page saying why you think so. For more information: Copyrights.
 * Good research and citing your sources. Articles written out of thin air are better than nothing, but they are hard to verify, which is an important part of building a trusted reference work. Please research with the best sources available and cite them properly. Doing this, along with not copying large amounts of the text, will help avoid any possibility of plagiarism.
 * Advocacy and controversial material. Please do not write articles that advocate one particular viewpoint on politics, religion, or anything else. Understand what we mean by a neutral point of view before tackling this sort of topic.
 * Extremely short articles that are just definitions. Dictionary definitions belong on Wiktionary. Try to write a good short paragraph that says something about the subject. We welcome good short articles, called "stubs", that can serve as launching pads from which others can take off. If you don't have enough material to write a good stub, you probably should not create the article. At the end of a stub, you should include a "stub template" like this:  . (Other Hampedians will appreciate it if you use a more specific stub template, like  .  See the list of stub types for a list of all specific stub templates.)  Stubs help track articles that need expansion.
 * Organization. Make sure there are incoming links to the new article from other Hampedia 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.

How to create a page
If the Search page reports "No page with that title exists" then you can click the "create this page" link to start editing your article.

The very first thing you should write in your article is a list of the source(s) for your information. For now, just enter them like this (and they will automatically turn into links):
 * (1) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12vonnegut.html
 * (2) http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/space/space_shuttle.html

Later, you'll learn how to format them to appear as footnotes.

After you have entered your article, click Show preview to check for errors, then click Save page.

And then what?
To format your article correctly (and expand it, and possibly even make it featured!), see the links below.


 * Hampedia:Tutorial to learn how to format your article
 * Hampedia:Guide to writing better articles
 * Hampedia:The perfect article
 * Hampedia:Lead section