Help:After your first article
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After creating your first article, there are still several things you can do to make it even better.
Keep making improvements
Wikipedia is not finished. Generally, an article is nowhere near being completed the moment it is created. There is a long way to go. In fact, it may take you several edits just to get it started.
If you have so much interest in the article you just created, you may learn more about it in the future, and accordingly, have more to add. This may be later today, tomorrow, or several months from now. Any time – go ahead.
Improve formatting
To format your article correctly (and expand it, and possibly even make it featured!), see
- Wikipedia:Tutorial to learn how to format your article
- Wikipedia:Writing better articles
- Wikipedia:The perfect article
- Wikipedia:Lead section
Others can freely contribute to the article when it has been saved. The creator does not have special rights to control the later content. See Wikipedia:Ownership of articles.
Also, to avoid getting frustrated or offended about the way others modify or remove your contributions, see Wikipedia:Don't be ashamed.
Integrate into the encyclopedia
Adding links to your article from other articles is an important feature of Wikipedia. Internal links bind the project together into an interconnected whole. When your article first reaches main space, it won't have any incoming links to it, or perhaps only a few, if some red links exist already.
An orphaned article is an article that has few or no other articles linking to it. The main problem with an orphan is that it'll be unknown to others, and it may get fewer readers if it is not de-orphaned. Make sure there are incoming links to the new article from other Wikipedia articles (click "What links here" in the toolbox) and that the new article is included in at least one appropriate category (see Help:Category). Otherwise, it will be difficult for readers to find the article.
Most new articles are orphans from the moment they are created, but you can work to change that. This will involve editing one or more other articles. Try searching Wikipedia for other pages referring to the subject of your article, then turn those references into links by adding double brackets to either side: "[[" and "]]". If another article has a word or phrase that has the same meaning as your new article that is not expressed using the exact same words as the title, you can link that word or phrase as follows: [[Title of your new article|word or phrase found in other article]]. In certain cases, you could create that word or phrase as a redirect to your new article.
One of the first things you want to do after creating a new article is to provide links to it so it will not be an orphan. You can do that right away, or, if you find that exhausting, you can wait a while, provided that you keep the task in mind.
See Wikipedia:Drawing attention to new pages to learn how to get others to see your new articles.
Add to a disambiguation page
If the term is ambiguous (meaning there are multiple pages using that or a similar title), see if there is a disambiguation page for articles bearing that title. If so, add a link to your article to that page.