Most of the first 17 chapters of this book offered you an assortment of how-to advice on improving Wikipedia articles. Now it's time to tie all that advice together, and to fill in some of the gaps.
If you're a less experienced editor, this chapter can serve as a detailed checklist. When you're looking at an article you want to improve, you have a step-by-step process for going from the top to the bottom of that article. For experienced editors, the section headings in this chapter can serve as a reminder of everything that goes into making a good Wikipedia article.
This chapter is particularly intended for articles that are short and/or relatively unsourced. It also contains a lot of advice about minimizing disagreements with other editors—a good idea even if you're working on an article where other editors are scarce to non-existent. Consider the advice about disagreements as safety insurance, in case a cranky fellow editor comes out of the woodwork.
If you want to improve articles on Wikipedia, but don't have any particular article in mind, where do you start? There are many places you can look to find articles in need of improvement.
You don't want to spend time researching and editing an article, and then discover (or be told about) something that sharply reduces the value of much or all of what you've done. Here's a list of questions to ask yourself, to avoid unpleasant surprises:
blue-footed booby site:en.wikipedia.org
Such a search helps you figure out whether it's a duplicate or whether there are other Wikipedia articles that should link to the one you're working on. If so, add the wikilinks.
With over 6,000,000 articles to choose from, you don't have to get stuck working on one that comes with contentious editors. Although Wikipedia needs editors who are willing to work on such articles, constructively working with editors who may not be as open to change as they should be, sometimes you just don't need the stress. You can work on non-controversial articles, avoid frustration and burnout, and still make a valuable contribution to Wikipedia.
There are many relatively dispute-free zones with plenty of articles that need work. Just look back to the previous section on Finding articles to improve, and pick another article to work on.
People have different ideas about what they believe is true. That's a good thing. Discussing controversial issues makes articles—and life—more interesting. It's not your job as a Wikipedia editor to decide the truth about a subject: What's fair, what happened, who's responsible, who's to blame, or whatever. It's your job, however, to let the reader know that a point has been publicly debated, if the debate itself was newsworthy.
The issue of reliable sources is more relevant than ever when controversies are involved. You should ignore, for example, a self-published book attacking the theory of gravity. It isn't citable in and of itself, though you might include it in the biographical article of its author, if the author was notable. On the other hand, if there are a number of major newspaper articles about the book, then the controversy (as reported in the newspapers) is worth mentioning. (See Wikipedia:Fringe theories—shortcut WP:FRINGE—for details.)
When citing controversy or criticism, integrate it into the article. Suppose a politician had a major role in getting a particular controversial policy implemented. If you describe that policy in one section of the article ("Accomplishments") and put criticisms of the policy together with other criticisms of that politician in a separate section, you harm the narrative of the article. It's easy to throw all the negative stuff into one section of an article, or even spin it off as a separate article (see the next box on 'Criticism of' articles), but it's a disservice to the reader.
Wikipedia has about 60 articles whose titles begin "Criticism of." The governing guideline for such articles is Wikipedia:Content forking (shortcut: WP:POVFORK), which states "There is no consensus whether a 'Criticism of...' article is always a POV fork. At least the 'Criticism of...' article should contain rebuttals if available, and the original article should contain a summary of the 'Criticism of...' article."
The existence of these articles shouldn't be taken as justifying a separate "Criticism of" section in an article. Rather, it shows the relatively few times where criticisms have been numerous and varied, and editors have chosen not to include these in the main articles.
Chapter 10: Resolving content disputes was entirely about content disagreements among editors—how to minimize them and how to resolve them. When there are other editors very interested in an article, any major change might be met with skepticism, if not outright opposition. If you're working on a really bad article that needs a major overhauling, you have three choices:
This section discusses the first approach, which is generally quicker to implement, and well-suited for articles without active editors who may oppose a major overhauling. It has the advantage of being easier for other editors (who may just be checking the changes to make sure they're not vandalism) to follow what you're doing, and thus to maintain the assumption of good faith (shortcut: WP:AGF) that you're not trying to slip something by other editors.
The first step in overhauling an article is to move information around so it's better organized. In this step, don't add or delete any text except headings. If that means a section ends up being lengthy because of a lot of redundant information, that's okay at this stage of changing the article. Some specifics:
Among the worst defenders of the status quo are those who believe that consensus needs to be established before any change to an article. That's a total misreading of Wikipedia rules, especially Be bold (shortcut: WP:BB), which encourages editors to make changes whenever there seems to be a good reason to do so.
In one clear case, changing an article without discussion is inappropriate: when the specific change in question has been fought over previously, and there was either no consensus, or rough consensus against the change. In that case, the edit is either out of ignorance (hence the advice in the section about avoiding surprises to read the talk page of an article before starting to overhaul it) or it's disruptive editing.
If you reorganize an article and another editor then reverts the change because consensus was not established, revert it back (just once) with See talk/discussion page in the edit summary. Then, on the talk/discussion page, restate what you were doing and that you didn't add or delete any text. Also invite editors who have any specific problems with your reorganization to state them, so that a consensus on the organization of the article can be reached. Then wait a day or two, and, if no one speaks up with anything major, proceed to the next step—rewriting (see the next section). (If anyone raises objections, see Chapter 10: Resolving content disputes, which discusses content disputes.)
Once you've got a good organization for an article, even if it's incomplete, you want to switch to editing section by section. Section-by-section editing assuages suspicions by letting other others clearly see what you're doing. Moreover, if someone objects to an edit of one section, that objection doesn't impact the improvements you're making to other sections.
The goal in this second step is to make the best of the text that already exists, and to do so in as non-controversial a manner as possible. Fix one section, publish the edit, go on to another section, publish that edit, and so on—don't do multiple sections in a single edit. Here are some rewriting tips:
After you do rewrites as outlined in this section, you can expect that the only challenges to your edits—other than other editors tinkering with them a bit—is perhaps a complaint or two about removed information. If you were careful to remove only unverifiable, unsourced information, complaints are unlikely. But if other editors object, refer them to WP:V and ask them to explain how the information you removed is consistent with those policies, or just ask them for a good source so you can put the information back.
You've picked an article, started in on it, and discovered that it's getting too long, or one part of it is getting too long. Or, alternatively, you don't believe can build it up into something reasonably good. If so, rethink the article's scope. You don't have to accept what you found, when you started on the article, as the definitive boundaries of the article's scope.
The section about creating daughter articles in Chapter 13 explains how to spin off a section of an article into a new article. That's the way to go when a section becomes too long and is about a subject notable enough for an article of its own. Keep this concept in mind as you work on any article: If a section becomes so long that it unbalances an article, if it's truly notable and not a collection of minor facts—spin it off.
Say that you've started working on the article Thingabobbery, and you notice that another article, Thingabboberists (about the professionals who do thingabobbery for a living), has a lot of overlap in content. Moreover, there aren't a lot of articles about one that don't discuss the other.
Wikipedia has a standard solution for overlapping articles—merge them. Merging is a normal editing action, something any editor can do. You're not required to propose it to other editors, and you don't have to ask an administrator to help you do it. If you think merging something improves Wikipedia, you can be bold and just do it. Still, if you think the merger is going to be controversial, then you should propose it (see the section about proposing mergers) rather than risk starting a fight (and wasting your time) by just going ahead.
Merging is straightforward:
1. Pick one of the two articles to be the survivor.
2. Cut and paste material from the doomed article to the surviving article. In the edit summary, put Moving content from [[Name of other article]], in preparation for merger.
3. Now that you've copied what you need, delete all text from the article that isn't going to survive, and change it to a redirect. Publish changes with an edit summary like Changing to a redirect; article merged into [[Name of surviving article]].
4. Check the talk (discussion) page of the article that's now a redirect. If any sections have active discussions (say, ones with a posting in the past week), copy those sections to the talk page of the surviving article.
After the merger's done, clean up the surviving article. See " Reorganize and edit existing content" earlier in this chapter for tips.
If you don't want to merge two or more articles yourself, propose a merger by placing a merger template at the top of each article. There are different templates depending on whether you propose to:
The page Wikipedia:Merging (shortcut: WP:MERGE) has details.
Any merge templates you add must link to a section of a single article talk page, where you'll start a discussion of the proposed merger. Before you post the templates, start that new section on that talk page, explaining your reasons for suggesting a merger. Also add a listing to the page Wikipedia:Proposed mergers (shortcut: WP:PM).
After that, you wait. If you want to speed up the process, you can post a note on the user talk pages of the major or recent contributors to the articles, noting that a merger has been proposed to an article they've contributed to, with a link to the article talk page where you posted your reasons.
If there's clear agreement with the proposal by consensus or silence, then you can proceed with the merger. Consensus means that no one, or a small minority, has opposed the merger; silence means you've waited a week and no one has responded. If you get a limited response, with no clear consensus, then consider following the process for content disagreements as laid out in Chapter 10: Resolving content disputes.
Sometimes there just might not be much information about a topic, or a topic is only mentioned in the context of a larger grouping. One example would be an article about a small island that's part of a large, notable chain of islands. If you can find only a couple of newsworthy paragraphs about the small island, or isolated incidents that you really can't tie together, then consider merging the information about this small island into the article on the chain. Moreover, look at any articles about other small islands in the chain, and consider those for merging as well. And where a small island in the chain doesn't have an article, consider creating a redirect for it so that editors, in the future, go to the article on the chain.
Of course, in the future there may be a large, newsworthy resort on the small island, and content about it may be spun off from the article about the chain, into a separate article. In the meantime, however, it does readers no good to have a bunch of short articles scattered throughout Wikipedia, when collecting them together could make a reasonable article. Go where available sources of information lead you—don't create or keep an article just because, sometime in the future, someone may write a book about it and provide content to make it larger.
Chapter 2: Documenting your sources, starting at the section about citing sources, discusses how to properly cite sources, as well as what sources are acceptable. For each existing source in the article, go through a three-step process to determine if it's salvageable and, if so, improve it. This section goes through the three options in detail:
Links go bad: A link that worked on the day it was added to an article may not work a month or a year later. That's why full citations are so critical: If the URL stops working, the citation—to a magazine, newspaper, or other source available offline—is still acceptable, because it's still verifiable.
Unfortunately, you're often looking at a source that consists only of a URL. So your challenge is to find where the content moved to, or to get a copy. Here's a step-by-step process:
You're improving citations to make sure all remaining ones are acceptable per WP:V and WP:RS. So you need to replace each bad source with a good one. If you can't find a good one, you should still delete the bad source. Here are three approaches to finding a replacement:
If you've made a good faith effort to find a replacement for an unacceptable source, and weren't successful, then delete the source, with a brief explanation in the edit summary about what you tried.
Once you have an acceptable source, change whatever was in the article (typically just a URL) to a fully formatted citation—a footnote. Chapter 2: Documenting your sources discusses citations in depth, with instructions on formatting footnotes in the section about creating footnotes.
Since Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, articles don't exist in isolation. By building links into and out of the article you're working on, you not only do a service for readers, but you also increase the chances that other editors will come across the article you're working on, and add their contributions. Wikipedia editors call adding wikilinks building the web.
Here are specific ways for you to build the web:
One of the purposes of building the web is to increase the chances that other editors will come across the article you're working on, and add their contributions. You can also further increase such chances if you make sure that the article talk page has templates that mark the article as of interest to the relevant WikiProjects.
If you find one or more WikiProject templates already on the talk page, no problem—look to see if you can add another. If you see none at all, then go to the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory (shortcut: WP:PROJDIR), find one or more relevant projects (often both a geographical WikiProject and non-geographical one), and add their templates to the article talk page.
Before you start adding sourced content, look for roadmaps to help you decide where to put citations and format text. There are several possibilities:
If an article doesn't have sources, it's pointless to spend a lot of time working on the organization or writing. The article may get deleted for lack of reliable sources, so you may be just rearranging junk in a garage so it looks aesthetically pleasing. Instead, devote your time to finding sources. If an article has little content, you need sources that provide more content. If an article has lots of unsourced statements, you need to find sources to do one of three things:
Chapter 2: Documenting your sources discussed how to add content, and listed a number of places on Wikipedia that can help you find it. Here are some additional considerations to think about as you look for and add content:
If a section, when you're done with it, is clearly superior in terms of the amount of information and the number of sources cited, you're much less likely to run into opposition. Well-documented information is the nirvana of Wikipedia. It's also wonderful point-of-view-repellent when other editors have strong opinions about a subject.
Once you've added a bunch of good stuff—content and sources—then you're in a much better position to remove content that doesn't add materially to the article. Some editors call such useless information cruft, and most readers hate it. Furthermore, per WP:NPOV, giving undue space to any particular aspect of a topic is a violation of the neutral point of view. It may be worth mentioning that someone has eight honorary degrees, but a list of them all is pure cruft.
Wikipedia has a very large number of rules about wording, including spelling. Here's the quick summary:
Looks count. They don't count nearly as much as good text, but readers do notice when an article looks boring or has odd formatting. Here are some suggestions for making an article look better, keeping in mind that looks are no more important than the content issues discussed in the rest of this chapter.
When you've spent time improving an article, and aren't sure what to focus on next, one option is to submit the article for review by other editors. Chapter 12: Lending other editors a hand has an entire section, " Reviewing articles", which lists places at Wikipedia where you can do so. Read the instructions to see what articles are appropriate for submission. Don't start, for example, by asking for it to be considered for a Featured Article designation. And don't submit an article to more than one place simultaneously, which causes more work for other editors. Fix the problems identified by one set of reviewers before you ask others to look at it.
If you're comfortable with JavaScript (see Chapter 21), then you have another option—an automated review of an article you've worked on. The page User:AndyZ/peerreviewer provides the details of how to install the user script that generates such a review.
Most of the first 17 chapters of this book offered you an assortment of how-to advice on improving Wikipedia articles. Now it's time to tie all that advice together, and to fill in some of the gaps.
If you're a less experienced editor, this chapter can serve as a detailed checklist. When you're looking at an article you want to improve, you have a step-by-step process for going from the top to the bottom of that article. For experienced editors, the section headings in this chapter can serve as a reminder of everything that goes into making a good Wikipedia article.
This chapter is particularly intended for articles that are short and/or relatively unsourced. It also contains a lot of advice about minimizing disagreements with other editors—a good idea even if you're working on an article where other editors are scarce to non-existent. Consider the advice about disagreements as safety insurance, in case a cranky fellow editor comes out of the woodwork.
If you want to improve articles on Wikipedia, but don't have any particular article in mind, where do you start? There are many places you can look to find articles in need of improvement.
You don't want to spend time researching and editing an article, and then discover (or be told about) something that sharply reduces the value of much or all of what you've done. Here's a list of questions to ask yourself, to avoid unpleasant surprises:
blue-footed booby site:en.wikipedia.org
Such a search helps you figure out whether it's a duplicate or whether there are other Wikipedia articles that should link to the one you're working on. If so, add the wikilinks.
With over 6,000,000 articles to choose from, you don't have to get stuck working on one that comes with contentious editors. Although Wikipedia needs editors who are willing to work on such articles, constructively working with editors who may not be as open to change as they should be, sometimes you just don't need the stress. You can work on non-controversial articles, avoid frustration and burnout, and still make a valuable contribution to Wikipedia.
There are many relatively dispute-free zones with plenty of articles that need work. Just look back to the previous section on Finding articles to improve, and pick another article to work on.
People have different ideas about what they believe is true. That's a good thing. Discussing controversial issues makes articles—and life—more interesting. It's not your job as a Wikipedia editor to decide the truth about a subject: What's fair, what happened, who's responsible, who's to blame, or whatever. It's your job, however, to let the reader know that a point has been publicly debated, if the debate itself was newsworthy.
The issue of reliable sources is more relevant than ever when controversies are involved. You should ignore, for example, a self-published book attacking the theory of gravity. It isn't citable in and of itself, though you might include it in the biographical article of its author, if the author was notable. On the other hand, if there are a number of major newspaper articles about the book, then the controversy (as reported in the newspapers) is worth mentioning. (See Wikipedia:Fringe theories—shortcut WP:FRINGE—for details.)
When citing controversy or criticism, integrate it into the article. Suppose a politician had a major role in getting a particular controversial policy implemented. If you describe that policy in one section of the article ("Accomplishments") and put criticisms of the policy together with other criticisms of that politician in a separate section, you harm the narrative of the article. It's easy to throw all the negative stuff into one section of an article, or even spin it off as a separate article (see the next box on 'Criticism of' articles), but it's a disservice to the reader.
Wikipedia has about 60 articles whose titles begin "Criticism of." The governing guideline for such articles is Wikipedia:Content forking (shortcut: WP:POVFORK), which states "There is no consensus whether a 'Criticism of...' article is always a POV fork. At least the 'Criticism of...' article should contain rebuttals if available, and the original article should contain a summary of the 'Criticism of...' article."
The existence of these articles shouldn't be taken as justifying a separate "Criticism of" section in an article. Rather, it shows the relatively few times where criticisms have been numerous and varied, and editors have chosen not to include these in the main articles.
Chapter 10: Resolving content disputes was entirely about content disagreements among editors—how to minimize them and how to resolve them. When there are other editors very interested in an article, any major change might be met with skepticism, if not outright opposition. If you're working on a really bad article that needs a major overhauling, you have three choices:
This section discusses the first approach, which is generally quicker to implement, and well-suited for articles without active editors who may oppose a major overhauling. It has the advantage of being easier for other editors (who may just be checking the changes to make sure they're not vandalism) to follow what you're doing, and thus to maintain the assumption of good faith (shortcut: WP:AGF) that you're not trying to slip something by other editors.
The first step in overhauling an article is to move information around so it's better organized. In this step, don't add or delete any text except headings. If that means a section ends up being lengthy because of a lot of redundant information, that's okay at this stage of changing the article. Some specifics:
Among the worst defenders of the status quo are those who believe that consensus needs to be established before any change to an article. That's a total misreading of Wikipedia rules, especially Be bold (shortcut: WP:BB), which encourages editors to make changes whenever there seems to be a good reason to do so.
In one clear case, changing an article without discussion is inappropriate: when the specific change in question has been fought over previously, and there was either no consensus, or rough consensus against the change. In that case, the edit is either out of ignorance (hence the advice in the section about avoiding surprises to read the talk page of an article before starting to overhaul it) or it's disruptive editing.
If you reorganize an article and another editor then reverts the change because consensus was not established, revert it back (just once) with See talk/discussion page in the edit summary. Then, on the talk/discussion page, restate what you were doing and that you didn't add or delete any text. Also invite editors who have any specific problems with your reorganization to state them, so that a consensus on the organization of the article can be reached. Then wait a day or two, and, if no one speaks up with anything major, proceed to the next step—rewriting (see the next section). (If anyone raises objections, see Chapter 10: Resolving content disputes, which discusses content disputes.)
Once you've got a good organization for an article, even if it's incomplete, you want to switch to editing section by section. Section-by-section editing assuages suspicions by letting other others clearly see what you're doing. Moreover, if someone objects to an edit of one section, that objection doesn't impact the improvements you're making to other sections.
The goal in this second step is to make the best of the text that already exists, and to do so in as non-controversial a manner as possible. Fix one section, publish the edit, go on to another section, publish that edit, and so on—don't do multiple sections in a single edit. Here are some rewriting tips:
After you do rewrites as outlined in this section, you can expect that the only challenges to your edits—other than other editors tinkering with them a bit—is perhaps a complaint or two about removed information. If you were careful to remove only unverifiable, unsourced information, complaints are unlikely. But if other editors object, refer them to WP:V and ask them to explain how the information you removed is consistent with those policies, or just ask them for a good source so you can put the information back.
You've picked an article, started in on it, and discovered that it's getting too long, or one part of it is getting too long. Or, alternatively, you don't believe can build it up into something reasonably good. If so, rethink the article's scope. You don't have to accept what you found, when you started on the article, as the definitive boundaries of the article's scope.
The section about creating daughter articles in Chapter 13 explains how to spin off a section of an article into a new article. That's the way to go when a section becomes too long and is about a subject notable enough for an article of its own. Keep this concept in mind as you work on any article: If a section becomes so long that it unbalances an article, if it's truly notable and not a collection of minor facts—spin it off.
Say that you've started working on the article Thingabobbery, and you notice that another article, Thingabboberists (about the professionals who do thingabobbery for a living), has a lot of overlap in content. Moreover, there aren't a lot of articles about one that don't discuss the other.
Wikipedia has a standard solution for overlapping articles—merge them. Merging is a normal editing action, something any editor can do. You're not required to propose it to other editors, and you don't have to ask an administrator to help you do it. If you think merging something improves Wikipedia, you can be bold and just do it. Still, if you think the merger is going to be controversial, then you should propose it (see the section about proposing mergers) rather than risk starting a fight (and wasting your time) by just going ahead.
Merging is straightforward:
1. Pick one of the two articles to be the survivor.
2. Cut and paste material from the doomed article to the surviving article. In the edit summary, put Moving content from [[Name of other article]], in preparation for merger.
3. Now that you've copied what you need, delete all text from the article that isn't going to survive, and change it to a redirect. Publish changes with an edit summary like Changing to a redirect; article merged into [[Name of surviving article]].
4. Check the talk (discussion) page of the article that's now a redirect. If any sections have active discussions (say, ones with a posting in the past week), copy those sections to the talk page of the surviving article.
After the merger's done, clean up the surviving article. See " Reorganize and edit existing content" earlier in this chapter for tips.
If you don't want to merge two or more articles yourself, propose a merger by placing a merger template at the top of each article. There are different templates depending on whether you propose to:
The page Wikipedia:Merging (shortcut: WP:MERGE) has details.
Any merge templates you add must link to a section of a single article talk page, where you'll start a discussion of the proposed merger. Before you post the templates, start that new section on that talk page, explaining your reasons for suggesting a merger. Also add a listing to the page Wikipedia:Proposed mergers (shortcut: WP:PM).
After that, you wait. If you want to speed up the process, you can post a note on the user talk pages of the major or recent contributors to the articles, noting that a merger has been proposed to an article they've contributed to, with a link to the article talk page where you posted your reasons.
If there's clear agreement with the proposal by consensus or silence, then you can proceed with the merger. Consensus means that no one, or a small minority, has opposed the merger; silence means you've waited a week and no one has responded. If you get a limited response, with no clear consensus, then consider following the process for content disagreements as laid out in Chapter 10: Resolving content disputes.
Sometimes there just might not be much information about a topic, or a topic is only mentioned in the context of a larger grouping. One example would be an article about a small island that's part of a large, notable chain of islands. If you can find only a couple of newsworthy paragraphs about the small island, or isolated incidents that you really can't tie together, then consider merging the information about this small island into the article on the chain. Moreover, look at any articles about other small islands in the chain, and consider those for merging as well. And where a small island in the chain doesn't have an article, consider creating a redirect for it so that editors, in the future, go to the article on the chain.
Of course, in the future there may be a large, newsworthy resort on the small island, and content about it may be spun off from the article about the chain, into a separate article. In the meantime, however, it does readers no good to have a bunch of short articles scattered throughout Wikipedia, when collecting them together could make a reasonable article. Go where available sources of information lead you—don't create or keep an article just because, sometime in the future, someone may write a book about it and provide content to make it larger.
Chapter 2: Documenting your sources, starting at the section about citing sources, discusses how to properly cite sources, as well as what sources are acceptable. For each existing source in the article, go through a three-step process to determine if it's salvageable and, if so, improve it. This section goes through the three options in detail:
Links go bad: A link that worked on the day it was added to an article may not work a month or a year later. That's why full citations are so critical: If the URL stops working, the citation—to a magazine, newspaper, or other source available offline—is still acceptable, because it's still verifiable.
Unfortunately, you're often looking at a source that consists only of a URL. So your challenge is to find where the content moved to, or to get a copy. Here's a step-by-step process:
You're improving citations to make sure all remaining ones are acceptable per WP:V and WP:RS. So you need to replace each bad source with a good one. If you can't find a good one, you should still delete the bad source. Here are three approaches to finding a replacement:
If you've made a good faith effort to find a replacement for an unacceptable source, and weren't successful, then delete the source, with a brief explanation in the edit summary about what you tried.
Once you have an acceptable source, change whatever was in the article (typically just a URL) to a fully formatted citation—a footnote. Chapter 2: Documenting your sources discusses citations in depth, with instructions on formatting footnotes in the section about creating footnotes.
Since Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, articles don't exist in isolation. By building links into and out of the article you're working on, you not only do a service for readers, but you also increase the chances that other editors will come across the article you're working on, and add their contributions. Wikipedia editors call adding wikilinks building the web.
Here are specific ways for you to build the web:
One of the purposes of building the web is to increase the chances that other editors will come across the article you're working on, and add their contributions. You can also further increase such chances if you make sure that the article talk page has templates that mark the article as of interest to the relevant WikiProjects.
If you find one or more WikiProject templates already on the talk page, no problem—look to see if you can add another. If you see none at all, then go to the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory (shortcut: WP:PROJDIR), find one or more relevant projects (often both a geographical WikiProject and non-geographical one), and add their templates to the article talk page.
Before you start adding sourced content, look for roadmaps to help you decide where to put citations and format text. There are several possibilities:
If an article doesn't have sources, it's pointless to spend a lot of time working on the organization or writing. The article may get deleted for lack of reliable sources, so you may be just rearranging junk in a garage so it looks aesthetically pleasing. Instead, devote your time to finding sources. If an article has little content, you need sources that provide more content. If an article has lots of unsourced statements, you need to find sources to do one of three things:
Chapter 2: Documenting your sources discussed how to add content, and listed a number of places on Wikipedia that can help you find it. Here are some additional considerations to think about as you look for and add content:
If a section, when you're done with it, is clearly superior in terms of the amount of information and the number of sources cited, you're much less likely to run into opposition. Well-documented information is the nirvana of Wikipedia. It's also wonderful point-of-view-repellent when other editors have strong opinions about a subject.
Once you've added a bunch of good stuff—content and sources—then you're in a much better position to remove content that doesn't add materially to the article. Some editors call such useless information cruft, and most readers hate it. Furthermore, per WP:NPOV, giving undue space to any particular aspect of a topic is a violation of the neutral point of view. It may be worth mentioning that someone has eight honorary degrees, but a list of them all is pure cruft.
Wikipedia has a very large number of rules about wording, including spelling. Here's the quick summary:
Looks count. They don't count nearly as much as good text, but readers do notice when an article looks boring or has odd formatting. Here are some suggestions for making an article look better, keeping in mind that looks are no more important than the content issues discussed in the rest of this chapter.
When you've spent time improving an article, and aren't sure what to focus on next, one option is to submit the article for review by other editors. Chapter 12: Lending other editors a hand has an entire section, " Reviewing articles", which lists places at Wikipedia where you can do so. Read the instructions to see what articles are appropriate for submission. Don't start, for example, by asking for it to be considered for a Featured Article designation. And don't submit an article to more than one place simultaneously, which causes more work for other editors. Fix the problems identified by one set of reviewers before you ask others to look at it.
If you're comfortable with JavaScript (see Chapter 21), then you have another option—an automated review of an article you've worked on. The page User:AndyZ/peerreviewer provides the details of how to install the user script that generates such a review.