Writing for Wikipedia

Writing for Wikipedia or for the other Wikimedia platforms is a complex activity. You need to master both the content, the writing, and the technology.

But there are tools, first of all the Visual editor.

It can also be useful to choose a simplified interface: e.g. the Timeless skin (via global preferences).

Principles

• Name recognition, notability
• Objective, neutral writing
  • do not take a stand
  • Let all opinions be heard
• Write for your readers:
  • the author's work can be sampled by 1000s of readers
  • Writing is deleting
  • No superfluous words
  • Keep it simple:
    • simple language
    • simple speech
• Write timelessly:
  • no relative time indications

Known problems

Caching anomalies

Wikimedia projects are caching pages at several levels: in the browser, in the Squid cache, and via site replication (Wikimedia has 5 interconnected data centers). In some circumstances you might see out-of-date pages.

You could try to correct this temporary problem by clicking Refresh or pressing F5, Control-Refresh or Control-F5, depending on your browser. In rare cases you might clear the browser cache via Settings. You might also try another browser.

Due to caching information might not be up-to-date, especially when Wikidata sitelinks were added. You can trigger a cache refresh via:

• https://nl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pajotse_boerentram&action=purge