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.

Principles

• Lemma 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 read 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 multiple 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 In some circumstances you might see out-of-date pages.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 Purge. You might also try another browser.

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

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

See also

• Visual editor