User:TylerMagee/Simplified tutorial

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This page serves as a guide on how to create Wikipedia pages. (A Wikipedian is a human who helps improve Wikipedia.)

Note: Wikipedia does not use Markdown. Instead, Wikimedia's MediaWiki format is used, so when editing this Guide, no talking about Markdown.

Practicing editing

Practice in your personal sandbox. It is a great way to practice editing without breaking all of Wikimedia and blowing up the world!

Alternatively, you can also create pages on the Test Wikipedia. The Test Wikipedia runs a work in progress MediaWiki, so please do report any issues you run into!

Start an article

To start an article:

Open the Article Wizard.
Click a red link in Wikipedia.
Open a invalid link that looks like a normal Wikipedia article URL.

Publish a page

IP users or new users need to submit an article at Articles for Creation (AfC) to publish a page. Auto-confirmed users and higher can publish articles without submitting it for AfC submission!*

*Auto-confirmed levels are applied when a user makes 10 days and their Wikipedia account is 4 days old.

Draft articles

Draft articles are articles not indexed by any search engine, including Google. If somebody tries to create a new page outside the "Draft" namespace, the page may be moved to the Draft namespace.

Format text (WIP)

Use astrophes to make text bold, italic or bolditalic. An example can be found in TylerMagee's sandbox. Use asterisks to make bullet lists.