GeezerVison

If you have a personal or professional relationship with what you want to write about, it is best if you do not create the new article yourself. Editing with a conflict of interest, regardless of whether you feel you can do so neutrally, gives the appearance of bias and undermines public confidence in Wikipedia. If you create an article despite your conflict of interest, you must disclose your relationship and make sure that it is reviewed by another editor by submitting it via Articles for creation. If you have a financial conflict of interest in the topic (for example if you have been paid to edit it) you must make the required paid-contribution disclosure and abide by the community's restrictions on paid editing.

The English Wikipedia already has 7.3 million articles. Before creating a new one, try to make sure there is not already an article (or a Draft in development) on the same topic, perhaps under a different spelling, or even a different name.

If you're sure that there is no article or draft available for your topic, then there is just one big task to do before you start writing your first article: you have to gather sources about the topic to establish its notability.

As described above in § The basics, Wikipedia articles are written based on published sources. If you need some help finding sources, see this helpful guide.

For some common sources, you may find these assessments by the Wikipedia community helpful. Please note these assessments certainly do not list all possible sources: if a source is not listed, that only means the community hasn't evaluated it yet. If a source meets the reliable source criteria, you are welcome to use it. If you have questions, please do ask at the Teahouse.

Your topic must meet Wikipedia's criteria for having an article, which we call "notability". If there are multiple published reliable sources about a topic, then it may be notable. A topic is not notable if there aren't sufficient reliable sources about it. Important: unreliable ones like blogs, social media, and websites anyone can edit don't count! The general notability guideline gives more details on how to tell if a topic is notable or not. If you're not sure if your topic is notable, ask for help at the Teahouse.

A notable topic is one that has multiple reliable sources that each meet all three of the following criteria:

• Secondary. A secondary source provides thought and reflection based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from a topic. It contains analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources.
• Independent of the subject. This means that nobody involved in writing or publishing the source has a financial or other connection to the subject. A source is not independent of the subject if any of the following are true:
  • if the subject paid for it, including all forms of sponsored content,
  • if the content within the source originates from the subject, including most interviews and all press releases, even if published by a third party (sometimes called "churnalism"), or
  • it was published by the subject itself, on behalf of the subject, or by someone related to the subject.
• Significant coverage. The sources must discuss your subject in depth, in multiple paragraphs. Trivial mentions, such as one or two sentences or the appearance of your subject in a table or list, are not enough to help establish notability. The special notability guideline for businesses has lots of good examples of what is considered significant and trivial.

If your topic is not notable, stop here and find a new one. Non-notable topics do not qualify for a separate article. Consider expanding a relevant existing article related to the topic or selecting a new topic. If you are stuck, ask for guidance at the Teahouse.

It's a good idea to look at several existing Wikipedia articles on subjects similar to yours to see how such articles are formatted. The quality of our existing articles varies and lower-quality articles should not be used as a model. The Talk page of the article may have a quality rating in the shaded box at the top. If an article has been assessed as B-class, or as a Good Article or Featured Article, it is safe to use as a template for your article. You can also consult Wikipedia's Manual of Style for guidance on how to structure an article.

Wikipedia provides various editing tools, and you have a choice of what tool best suits your needs:

• Source editor – edits the wikitext of the article, which uses some special characters, like adding [[square brackets]] to create a link to another page, or asterisks to make bullet points.
• Visual Editor – a tool similar to a word processor, for editing articles without the need to understand any special codes or markup.

Visual Editor is the default. To switch your default editing interface, select an option from the "Editing mode" menu in your preferences.

Users of mobile devices are automatically redirected to the official mobile version of Wikipedia. If you don't want to use the mobile version, tap the Desktop link at the bottom of any page to switch to the desktop version.

Where will you develop your draft? You have several options:

• in "Draftspace" – this is a special area of Wikipedia dedicated to creating new articles, and is a good choice because other editors can find your draft here and help out.
• in your sandbox – this is a page you can always easily find, by tapping the user icon in the top right corner to show the menu linking your sandbox. Downside: you can only create one article at a time there, and it's not so easy for other editors to find.
• in other user subpages.

The easiest way is with the Article Wizard, which will create your article in Draft space and guide you through the steps of creating a draft.

Writing a Wikipedia article:

• Summarize the most important things your sources say.
  • Don't copy wording from your sources; instead, summarize the ideas in the source using your own words. Summarization is more than just changing a few words around here and there.
  • Only add information supported by your sources. Don't add from your own knowledge or expertise.
• Make sure you show all major viewpoints fairly. Do not cover fringe views or those held only by a tiny minority.
• Don't take sides or use promotional language.
• Write in a professional tone; avoid loaded language.
• Add citations as you go. This is much easier than writing first and trying to remember later where you found each piece of information.
• You don't have to write the article all at once! Save your progress frequently, with an appropriate edit summary. The Publish changes… button saves your progress.
• You can add images, templates like an infobox and categories at the bottom of your article.
• Don't use large language models ("AI") like ChatGPT to generate article content. These often produce inaccurate text and sometimes make up fake sources and references. It is much better to write the article completely yourself, so that you can be confident in what it says. Remember, you are responsible for the content you add.

Sources are the published books, academic articles, reputable magazines and newspapers, and other locations where you find the information you will be writing about. You will need to find sources before you start writing, because all content in articles at Wikipedia must be verifiable—that is, backed up by reliable sources.

The best way to demonstrate verifiability is by creating a citation to a reliable source that you found, and embedding it in-line as you write your article.

The best sources tend to have some form of editorial oversight and a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Some websites are reliable; many are not. If you're not sure about the reliability of a website, you can read what editors think about them. It's okay to use non-English sources, offline sources, and subscription-only or fee-based sources, as long as they are reliable.

Here are some "Do"s and "Don't"s, to highlight some of the most important points about writing your first article:

Take another look at your draft to see if it meets the criteria required for a Wikipedia article. Make sure that:

• The first sentence defines the article topic, and tells the reader who or what the subject is in plain English.
• There are citations to reliable sources in the article (most reviewers look for at least three sources).
  • Some specific types of information require inline citations, namely: direct quotations, and any contentious material about living persons (negative, positive, or neutral).
• The article is written from a neutral point of view.
• Any controversial claims about living people are impeccably sourced.

Alternatively, ifIf you think your article is ready but would like another editor to check it, you can submit it for review by an experienced editor by clicking the Submit the draft for review! button at the top of your draft. If the button isn't there, you can instead add {{subst:submit}} to the top of the draft. A reviewer will then look at your draft and either publish it or give you feedback on how to improve it. You may continue to edit the page, even while waiting for a review. This may take some time (maybe weeks); please have patience, we are all volunteers.

Congratulations, you've created your first article! We have some suggested next steps at Help:After your first article, but do pat yourself on the back. Not many people have successfully created an article on Wikipedia!