Help:Starting a new page

Here is how to start a Wikipedia page. You can also read our page about how to edit a Wikipedia page for more advanced features generally, and tips on contributing to Wikipedia for general inspiration, guidance, and good advice.

Starting a page from an existing link

To start a new page, you need to start from a link to the title of the new page. As you're reading through Wikipedia articles, you'll see question marks that are clickable links to pages that haven't been written yet. Click on the question mark, and you'll arrive at a page that says "Put the text for the new page here." Just delete that text and replace it with the text of your article. When you're finished, click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page. (Use the "Preview" button if you want to see what the page will look like first.)

Creating a link to an article

While you are editing some existing article, if a word or phrase you are typing strikes you as if it ought to have an article of its own linked from here, just put it in double square brackets, [[like this]]. We call that "wikifying" the text. When you save the present article, that word will either magically link to an article if one exists, or it will become one of those question-mark links mentioned above which allow you to create the article. This is a great way to build new articles.

If you want to create a brand-new topic, probably the first thing to do is to use the "search" form (see the bottom of this page, for example) and see whether someone has not already created a page on that topic or some very similar page. If not, you can find some related topic (often a general category, like Philosophy or Biology), edit that page, and (in an appropriate place) add the title of the article you want to create between double brackets, [[like this]]. (When you're naming pages, you might bear in mind the suggestions in naming conventions and topic creation.) Then press the "save" button at the bottom of the page. On the page you just edited, you should again see a clickable "?"; click on that and go to work on your new page! Creating brand-new topics is a great way to help Wikipedia increase its breadth (and depth).

Note! Bear in mind that Wikipedia is an open content encyclopedia. You are contributing to a free, publicly-usable database of information. You automatically license everything you contribute under the GNU Free Documentation License; you can only do that if you own the copyright to the material (which you do if you created it), or if the material is in the public domain. See Wikipedia:Copyrights for details. Never submit copyrighted material without permission.