Wikipedia

Fred Pierce – President of BnBwebsites.com

Rules - guidelinesConflict of interest Wikipedia’s 5 pillarsHow to write / submit an articleReferences

We recommend to go through all of Wikipedia's rules, guidelines, and conflict of interest so you don’t violate any of Wikipedia's rules to avoid getting banned or blocked.

Rules and guidelineshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_policies_and_guidelines

Conflict of interesthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest

Self-promotion. It can be tempting to write about yourself or projects in which you have a strong personal involvement. However, do remember that the standards for encyclopedic articles apply to such pages just like any other. This includes the requirement to maintain a neutral point of view, which is difficult when writing about yourself or about projects close to you. Creating overly abundant links and references to autobiographical sources is unacceptable. See Wikipedia:Autobiography, Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest.

Advertising. All information about companies and products are written in an objective and unbiased style. All article topics must be verifiable with independent, third-party sources, so articles about very small "garage" or local companies are typically unacceptable. External links to commercial organizations are acceptable if they identify major organizations which are the topic of the article. Wikipedia neither endorses organizations nor runs affiliate programs. See also Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) for guidelines on corporate notability. Those promoting causes or events, or issuing public service announcements, even if noncommercial, should use a forum other than Wikipedia to do so.

What is conflict of interest?Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a forum for advertising or promoting yourself, or a vanity press. As such, it should contain only material that complies with its content policies, and Wikipedians must place the interests of the encyclopedia first. Any editor who gives priority to outside interests may be subject to a conflict of interest.There are no firm criteria to determine whether a conflict of interest exists, but there are warning signs. Adding material that appears to promote the interests or visibility of an article's author, its author's family members, employer, associates, or their business or personal interests, places the author in a conflict of interest. When editors write to promote their own interests, their contributions often show a characteristic lack of connection to anything the general reader might want to consult as a reference. If you do write an article on an area in which you are personally involved, be sure to write in a neutral tone and cite reliable, third-party published sources, and beware of unintentional bias. Neutral point of view is one of Wikipedia's five pillars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest

Citing oneself Financial Legal Antagonists Autobiography Self Promotion * Promotional article production on behalf of

clients Campaigning Close relationshipsHow can we avoid Conflict of Interest

edits?

Wikipedia is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit," but if you have a conflict of interest avoid, or exercise great caution when:

Editing articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with;

Participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors; and

Linking to the Wikipedia article, your own user subspace, or a website of your organization from other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam); and you must always:

Avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially neutral point of view, verifiability, and autobiography.

Don’t copy your source from another website.Example – TripAdvisor history.

Wikipedia will delete your article right away when this happens and possibly ban you.

The fundamental principles by which Wikipedia operates are summarized in the form of five "pillars

Pillar 1

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. It incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers. Wikipedia is not a soapbox, an advertising platform, a vanity press, an experiment in anarchy or democracy, an indiscriminate collection of information, or a web directory. It is not a dictionary, newspaper, or a collection of source documents; that kind of content should be contributed instead to the Wikimedia sister projects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:5P

Pillar 2

Wikipedia has a neutral point of view. We strive for articles that advocate no single point of view. Sometimes this requires representing multiple points of view, presenting each point of view accurately and in context, and not presenting any point of view as "the truth" or "the best view". All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy: unreferenced material may be removed, so please provide references. Editors' personal experiences, interpretations, or opinions do not belong here. That means citing verifiable, authoritative sources, especially on controversial topics and when the subject is a living person. When conflict arises over neutrality, discuss details on the talk page, and follow dispute resolution.

Pillar 3

Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit and distribute. Respect copyright laws, and avoid plagiarizing your sources. Since all your contributions are freely licensed to the public, no editor owns any article; all of your contributions can and will be mercilessly edited and redistributed.

Pillar 4

Wikipedians should interact in a respectful and civil manner. Respect and be polite to your fellow Wikipedians, even when you disagree. Apply Wikipedia etiquette, and avoid personal attacks. Find consensus, avoid edit wars, and remember that there are 3,521,866 articles on the English Wikipedia to work on and discuss. Act in good faith, never disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point, and assume good faith on the part of others. Be open and welcoming.

Pillar 5

Wikipedia does not have firm rules. Rules on Wikipedia are not fixed in stone, and the spirit of the rule trumps the letter of the rule. Be bold in updating articles and do not worry about making mistakes. Your efforts do not need to be perfect; prior versions are saved, so no damage is irreparable.

We obviously want to write about our bed and breakfast or Inn, but more specifically we want to write about the HISTORY of the building and/or the area it is in.

Then we need to backup our article with facts, or references (links to other articles)

We need to be neutral in the article.

Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Wailuku_Inn_at_Ulupono

Search for the article you want to write to verify it hasn’t already been written

If the article you want to create hasn’t been written, click on the red title of the new article

Look down the list to see if there is anything close to the article you want to write. Maybe you can just edit an article instead of create a new one.

You will be presented with an empty content box to paste your pre-written article in

After you paste your article in, you can edit it and make your format changes.

Don’t save your page until you are completely finished with the article! You need to click on “show preview” or it will be visible to everyone.

If you save your article when it isn’t finished, you could be marked for speedy deletion because you article may not have all the links and references needed to backup your facts.

Formatting: To make a link to an internal Wikipedia page, highlight the word(s), then click on the chain icon

The insert link page will come up with the word(s) you have highlighted. Choose an internal or external and insert link.

Its always a good idea to verify the link works before you put them in

You can see the link is in blue text

You also need to mark your references with <ref></ref> tags.

Notice what you need to put in brackets.

This example will put the reference of Jamul Haven at the bottom with a link to http://jamulhaven.com

You will also need to put a reflist at the bottom of your article so the references will be listed. {{reflist}} is all you have to put

After the ref tags and reflist is put in, you will see the reference look like this.

Top of page Bottom of page

Headings:

==heading==

===subheading===

Headings:

==heading==

===subheading===

This is what it looks like after you preview your settings.

Once you are happy with the way it looks after looking at the preview, click on the save page button

You can always use Wikipedia’s Article wizard but I feel the previous steps are easier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_wizard

Be familiar with Wikipedia's rulesMake the article mater of factNo self promotionNeutral point of viewHistory of the building / propertyEdited properly with references

Fred Pierce fpierce@bnbwebsites.com

801-615-9759

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