ExtremeWiki:Complete guide for writing articles

From ExtremeWiki

Welcome to ExtremeWiki! This is a complete guide for writing your first article.

Before you create your first new article, here are some tips that may help you along:

• Try ExtremeWiki:Editing existing articles to get a feel for writing and for using the mark-up language in use at ExtremeWiki.
• Search ExtremeWiki first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject, perhaps under a different title. If the article already exists, feel free to make any constructive edits you feel are necessary.
• ExtremeWiki already has a hundreds of articles. Before creating an article, try to make sure there is not already an article, perhaps under a slightly different name.
• 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 do Redirect. Adding needed redirects is a good way to help ExtremeWiki. Also, remember to check the article's deletion log in order to avoid creating an article that has already been deleted.
• Remember, the article you create will be deleted quickly, if it is badly done or just advertising.

Note: Articles about companies (even about your own) are completely fine, just keep it neutral.

[edit] Article types

• Basics (Info about the sports)
• News
• Location info
• Company/Team/Club/Event info
• Person profiles (goal is to create worlds largest online database of extreme sports athletes in all levels)
• How-to info/tips

[edit] Article

Article can be pretty much about anything

• Basic info about the sport

[edit] News

ExtremeWiki welcomes any news about extreme sports as long as they are globally important. We are planning to introduce local extreme sports news later, but at this point it is important that news are at least in some level interesting for extreme sports enthusiasts worldwide.

If you have news, but for reason or another you cannot update them to ExtremeWiki, you can email them to us and our Editors update them as quickly as they can. Email address for news is news@extremewiki.net

[edit] Linking

Linking ExtremeWiki articles together is very important. These easily created links allow users to access information related to the article they are reading and greatly add to ExtremeWiki's utility.

[edit] When to link

The easiest way to learn when to link is to look at ExtremeWiki articles for examples. If you are trying to decide whether to make a link or not, ask yourself "If I were reading this article, would the link be useful to me?" Usually link the first, and only the first, occurrence of a word/term in the article, that does not have an implicitly understood definition.

[edit] How to link

When you want to make a link to another ExtremeWiki page (called a wiki link) you have to put it in double square brackets, like this:

[[Tony Hawk]] = Tony Hawk

If you want the display text of the link to have a different title, you can do so by adding the pipe "|" divider (SHIFT + BACKSLASH on English-layout and other keyboards) followed by the alternative name. For example:

[[Target page|display text]] = display text

You can make a link to a specific section of a page like so:

[[Target page#Target section|display text]] = display text

If you want the display text of the link to appear in italics or bold, nest the double square brackets for the link within the multiple apostrophes that delimit the italicized or bold text, like this:

''[[War and Peace]]'' = War and Peace

Please check your links to ensure they point to the correct article. For example, Apple points to the article about the fruit, while Apple, Inc. is the title of the article about the computer manufacturer. There are also "disambiguation" pages - these are not articles, but pages which contain links to articles with similar titles. Some, such as Apple (disambiguation) are obvious, while others such as Georgia use generic titles. These differing titles make piped links especially useful, as a link to Georgia (country) is far less readable than a piped link called Georgia.

[edit] Linking dates

Linking dates may not seem useful; however, please link dates since it enables the use of a user preference in how dates are displayed. An unlinked date, like July 13, 2004, will always be displayed in that manner. If you link the date:

[[July 13]], [[2004]]

ExtremeWiki will display it in one of the following ways:

July 13, 2004

13 July 2004

2004 July 13

2004-07-13

-according to the preference set by the individual user. (This feature is only available to logged-in users and only works if the date is linked.)

[edit] Categories

You can also put the article in a category with others in a related topic: Here are the steps:

• Once you have written the article, click save
• After save, you can see category + section in a bottom of the article.
• Click + and start typing the sport/category that article fits and and you see options as you type.
• Pick one or more categories, if you cannot find one, you can create it, just by writing it to text field.

It is very important to put in the correct categories so that other people can easily find your work. The best way to find which categories to put in is to look at pages on similar subjects, and check which categories they use. For example if you write an article about a ski resort, you may look at an article on another resort to see which categories could be appropriate.

[edit] Copyrights, etc.

Be careful about...

• Copying things. Do not violate copyrights.
• To be safe, do not copy more than a couple of sentences of text from anywhere, except Wikipedia, which you can copy as much as you like as long as you mention recourse on References section.
• 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 on References.
• Also note that most Web pages are not in the public domain and 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.
• 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.
• This wiki is about extreme sports. Do not write articles about general stuff, politics, religion, etc. Those can go to Wikipedia.
• 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 do not 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: {{stub}}.

[edit] Incoming links

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.

[edit] How to create a page

Only logged in users can create an article. In the search box below, type the title of your article, then click Go. If the Search page reports "No page with that title exists" then you can click the red "Create the 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.

[edit] And then what?

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

• Wikipedia:Tutorial to learn how to format your article
• Wikipedia:Guide to 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 ExtremeWiki:Ownership of articles.