Ask a Wiki Expert #3: Would it Be Easier if We Write a Wikipedia Article for You to Publish?
Note: this blog post is a companion to the video series “Ask A Wiki Expert”. Watch the video here.
Would it be easier if we write a Wikipedia article for you to publish?
Hello, and welcome to Ask a Wiki Expert, I am William Beutler, and I will be your wiki expert today. In this series, I answer a frequently asked question about Wikipedia from a business perspective, because that is what my firm, Beutler Ink, does every day.
The question I'm answering today is one that we get sometimes from professionals who would like to improve an existing page or create a new one. And the question is: would it be easier if someone from their team writes the page and then gives it to Beutler Ink to post.
Can you just handle the complicated Wikipedia stuff?
I understand why we get this question—a lot of companies, especially those with a dedicated communications team, have talented writers and know their subject very well, so it kind of makes sense for them to write it, and let a specialist handle all the complicated Wikipedia stuff.
The truth is, that's not really how it works: it's actually much faster and more efficient for our team to write the article content.
This is because all the complicated Wikipedia stuff starts at the very beginning. First there's the research, figuring out which sources Wikipedia will accept, how those sources can be used, and what kinds of details meet Wikipedia's content requirements.
The writing is harder than you think
Then there is the writing—and writing for Wikipedia is a specific kind of technical writing with its own exacting standards. That includes what to call section headings, where to place citations, where to insert links, and any number of elements from infoboxes to navboxes and categories. And that's even before we get into the markup code you need to learn to make it look right.
Let me tell you, I have seen a lot of great business writers try their hand at a Wikipedia article, and they write things that sound reasonable—but run afoul of Wikipedia's content guidelines. It's not at all their fault they didn't get it right. Wikipedia just has lots of rules that take a long time to learn.
When my team receives a draft someone else has written, we still have to go back to check the sources, trace all the steps, and in the end it would have been easier to start from scratch.
What should you do instead?
So that's why our advice is: instead of writing a full draft, collect all the sources you think you would use to write one, make a list of what you want to see in the article, and then we can handle all the complicated Wikipedia stuff so together, we get it right the first time.
And that answers the question, would it be easier if someone from your team writes the page first. If you have any follow-up questions, please add them in the comments and I will do my best to answer them, perhaps in an upcoming video. To see this video in blog form with added links and resources, I'll put that in the comments. Thank you very much, and I'll see you on the next Ask a Wiki Expert.
