About This Document
This document summarises some of the challenges which need to be addressed if you wish to create a new Wikipedia article and provides advice on how to address the challenges.
Note that this document should be read in conjunction with the following documents:
- Editing Wikipedia Articles
- Survey: Wikipedia Articles About Morris and Traditional Dance
- Survey: Searching Wikimedia Commons
Why Create a Wikipedia Article?
A survey of Wikipedia Articles About Morris and Traditional Dance identified the popularity of Wikipedia articles about morris and similar traditional dances (now over 950,000 views of the Morris dance article).
The temptation will be to create an article about your morris side. However once you have signed up for a Wikipedia account and mastered the basics of editing articles (as described in the document on Editing Wikipedia Articles) you are likely to find it difficult to create a new article which is accepted by the Wikipedia community. It can be done – but you will have to overcome the non-technical challenges.
The Non-technical Challenges
The main challenges are:
- Ensuring the content is provided from a neutral point of view.
- Ensuring the content is noteworthy.
As described in the Wikipedia page on “Wikipedia:Neutral point of view“:
“All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias“
Note that NPOV is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia and so this needs to be addressed when new articles are planned.
A Wikipedia page on Wikipedia:Notability expands on the concept of notability:
“Article and list topics must be notable” and “Information on Wikipedia must be verifiable“
Addressing the Challenges
Neutral Point of View
If your side wants to recruit new members and you agree at an AGM to create a Wikipedia article about your side to raise the visibility of your side, clearly this won’t be written from a neutral point of view! It may therefore be better if an article about your side was created by someone who is not a member of the side.
Notability
However there is still an issue about the notability of morris sides. A Wikipedia article on “Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)” explains that:
“Wikipedia bases its decision about whether an organization is notable enough to justify a separate article on the verifiable evidence that the organization or product has attracted the notice of reliable sources unrelated to the organization or product. “
So you will need to find reliable sources of information about your side which will need to be included in an article.
Creating a New Article
You may feel that you are in a position to overcome these non-technical challenges: perhaps you are not an officer of a side and you have found a number of reliable sources of information about the side which address the notability issue. Or maybe you wish to create a new article not about a morris side itself but on a related topic which is not covered by an existing article (perhaps related to morris music; kit or something similar).
Note that another approach would be to split an existing article into additional sections. For example the article on “Joint Morris Organisation” (the JMO) was merged with the “Morris dance” article as on 5 July 2020 it was felt that there was “not enough sourcing for the JMO as a standalone article – makes better sense in the context of UK morris dance organisation“. However if additional references about the JMO are found it might be possible to recreate the “Joint Morris Organisation” article.
When creating a new article you should:
- Have a Wikipedia account.
- Have updated articles, so that you have gained experience in how to edit articles.
Rather than creating an article directly it’s best if you create the article in a ‘sandbox’. To access your sandbox click on the Sandbox link at the top of the window once you are logged in. An edit page will be displayed as shown below.
A Wikipedia page on “Your first article” is recommended reading for those wishing to create a new Wikipedia article. In brief:
- First search for existing articles to ensure you won’t replicate something that is already covered.
- Gather sources of information about the subject of your article, which will help to ensure that the topic is noteworthy.
- Create your article, possibly in your sandbox and possibly using the Wikipedia Article Wizard.
- Review your article.
- Provide a summary about your article in the Talk page.
- Publish your article.
- Accept it if your article is deemed inappropriate and learn from any feedback you receive.
Status of this Document
Document published: 1 Oct 2021
Licence for this Document
This document is available with a Creative Commons Sharealike (CC-BY) licence. In brief, this means you can copy and make changes to this document provided you give acknowledgements to the author/publisher. A suggested wording for acknowledgements is:
This document is based on the "Creating a Wikipedia Article" document by Brian Kelly, Comms and IT volunteer with the Morris Federation. #MorrisFedITResources #MFITResources
