Wikipedia:Tutorial A/Aiki Afrilu 2019

How to create an article on Wikipedia

1 - Check that it is possible to create an article on a specific topic

There might already be an article on this topic, maybe under a different spelling (for instance, Nijeriya or Najeriya for Nigeria). If so, please do not create another article, but improve the one that already exists. You can also create a redirection in order for everyone to land on the same article when looking for information on a specific topic: for instance, if the article on Nigeria is spelled Nijeriya, you can create a redirection under Najeriya, like this: #REDIRECT [[Nijeriya]]. This way, anyone who types Najeriya will land on Nijeriya.

You should avoid: 1) writing an article about yourself or about someone you are closely related to; 2) writing for a person (or a company) who is paying you to write an article about her or himself; 3) writing about someone if no secondary sources are available (meaning, independent media, peer-reviewed academic articles and books...).

When you are sure a new article is needed, type the title of the article in the search area/ku bincika... (top right of the front page); you will see the title of the article in red (on Wikipedia, red means there is no article yet; blue means there is already an article); click on this red link and you will be able to write the content of the article.

It is useful to start an article with the Databox template on the first line, like this: {{databox}}. This will add an "infobox" at the top right of the article, with useful information from Wikidata. We will come back to Wikidata later.

To add an image to an article, you need to check what is available on Wikimedia Commons: it is the central repository for media files on all Wikimedia projects. For instance, let's have a look at this picture of a Hausa caravan carrying kola nuts at the end of the 19th century. To add to an article, you need to add the following code: [[File:Caravane_Haoussa_transportant_le_kola.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Hausa caravan carrying kola nuts.]]. It will appear like that in the article:

Hausa caravan carrying kola nuts.

To make navigation within the project easier, categories are very useful: at the bottom of the article, you can include relevant categories, like that: [[Category:'Yan wasan ƙwallon ƙafa ta ƙasar Nijeriya]]. It is not useful to use redudant categories, like, [[Category:'Yan wasan ƙwallon ƙafa ta ƙasar Nijeriya]] and [[Category:'Yan wasan ƙwallon ƙafa]] in the same article, since the category [[Category:'Yan wasan ƙwallon ƙafa ta ƙasar Nijeriya]] is included in the category [[Category:'Yan wasan ƙwallon ƙafa]]. With {{DEFAULTSORT:}}, you can make sure the article is ranked as appropriate within the category, using for instance the surname of the person ({{DEFAULTSORT:Modric, Luka}}, for instance).

There is already a lot of content available in other languages and you can of course create articles by translating content from English, French or any other language you speak. However: 1) at this stage it is better to refrain from using automated translation tools; they are quite horrible at translating into Hausa at the moment (but maybe in 10 years they will be better at it!); 2) it is also very important to bring the perspective of Hausa speakers and sources into Wikimedia projects.

Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at anytime. This implies a verifiability policy. As much as possible, you need to provide sources or references when you add information to an article. To this purpose, after the statement you want to provide a source for, you just need to add<ref>Author, ''Book'', publisher, date of publication, page number.</ref> or <ref>[http://website.com Website].</ref>.

At the bottom of the article, you need to add a references section (I've been told one word for that in Hausa can be "manazarta", but there might be other options). You do it by inserting the following code: <references/>.

Wikipedia also relies on the principle of "neutral point of view", which doesn't mean making room for all points of view, but representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.

For instance, let's take a topic that could be quite difficult: the article about Jesus/Isa. You need to include the view of Christian theologians of different denominations, of Islamic theologians, but also of mainstream historians. You can even write specific articles about Jesus in Christianity, Jesus in Islam, the historicity of Jesus... all these articles already exist on the English version of Wikipedia, for instance. But if you or one of your friends has a personal theory about Jesus, there is no reason to include it in the article.

If you have a conflict with someone about the content of an article, it is better to try to resolve it through dialogue. Every article has a talk (tattaunawa) page and you can use it for that. Every user of Wikipedia also has a talk page that you can use. Generally speaking, if two people are in a conflict about a statement in an article, and both views can be supported by reliable sources, it is better to try to include both views, for instance like that: "Author 1 and Author 2 think that Football player 1 was the best player from Brazil in the 1980s; however, Author 3 and Author 4 disagree and think that Football player 2 was the best."

Wikidata is a central repository for all kind of information that can be easily used in all Wikimedia projects. When you create a new article on Wikipedia in Hausa, you need to connect it to the relevant "item" on Wikidata. For instance, if you create an article about the city of Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, just go the item Antananarivo, in the part where all the links to Wikipedia articles are, go to "edit", and add the code language for Hausa ("ha") and the name of the article in Hausa ("Antananarivo").

We have seen previously that the Wikidata template ({{databox}}) allows you to add a lot of information to an article. You can look for instance at the article about Napoleon. For that, we need to translate as many Wikidata "properties" as possible. In order to translate properties in Wikidata, you can proceed as follows: 1) while connected to your Wikimedia account, go to Wikidata, then to "Preferences", then to "Gadgets" and then tick the "labelLister" box; 2) go to the List of Wikidata properties and its subpages; find a property that has not been translated into Hausa yet, click on "Labels list", then "Edit", then type "ha" (the language code for Hausa), then "OK", then type the Hausa translation in the "label" field, then click on "Save": done! Now the property will appear in Hausa on the Hausa Wikipedia. The same way, you can also translate any "item" into Hausa.