Hello! If you believe I made a mistake, have questions about a message I left you or editing Wikipedia in general, please leave a civil message on my talk page.

New to Wikipedia and trying to create your first article?

• First, read What Wikipedia is not which is a core Wikipedia policy. If your article fails what is referred to as NOT, it will at least be declined if not deleted.
• Read Your first article along with this essay about sources.
  • If you are basing your article on an existing article, be aware an existing article may not meet today's criteria. Wikipedia's policies and guidelines have generally become more stringent overtime so an article written ten years ago may not meet community standards today. There are likely hundreds of thousands that do not and even today there are articles that get by the vetting processes. It is best to use articles that have met Good article status as a guide as they have at least been through a nomination and structured review.
  • If the subject is a living person, please also read Wikipedia's Biographies of living people policy.
  • I prefer this guide for adding citations over the "official" Wikipedia guide.
  • This essay, while written from the point of view of articles that have been nominated for deletion, is also generally what reviewers are looking for as well. Reviewers are generally trying to assess whether an article would 1) have reason to be nominated for deletion and 2) if so, the likelihood it would be kept.
• Keep it simple, less is more. All you need to do is meet the relevant notability guideline.
  • The notability guidelines for companies, groups and organizations are more stringent especially the sourcing criteria, so if the subject you are writing about falls within this topic area, you need to thoroughly read the guidelines.
  • If you are citing more than ten sources, you are likely overdoing it. Do not commit citation overkill.
• If you have a conflict of interest, declare it! Having a COI does not preclude you from submitting a draft but there some additional rules you must follow which are relatively simple. Editors are quite keen at snuffing out COIs and some are dogged about it so best to be upfront. In general, the community is much more tolerant of those who are transparent so just declare.
• If you meet the criteria of the paid policy you MUST declare as that is a stipulation of the Terms of use you agreed to when you created an account. Being paid includes employees, owners and others with a financial interest even if one is not specifically being paid to edit/create an article which also includes unpaid interns. Similar to COI, meeting the paid criteria does not preclude you from submitting a draft.
• Be mindful we are all volunteers so if you leave a message to a specific editor, it may take a few days for a response.
• If you find creating articles is not your "thing" (at least not yet), check out the Task Center. There is plenty of other stuff you can do to contribute to Wikipedia.
• If you have questions or need help, you can ask at the Teahouse.

Level 2: High level of vandalism. Time to start patrolling Special:RecentChanges very carefully.

,