Help talk:Your first article

How do i make an article?

PLEASE TELL ME HOWWWWWW Starmaglclove (talk) 15:16, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

The instructions on this page (Help:Your first article) are pretty decent. Figuring out the topic and whether it would make a useful article is the first step. CMD (talk) 15:28, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Ty but how do i open it? Starmaglclove (talk) 16:42, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Starmaglclove, the draft article you created previously was deleted as test content. If you want to experiment, you can use your sandbox.

I'd encourage you to stop screwing around before attempting article creation. Edits like removing references, introducing typos, adding unsourced content, mislabeling terms, whatever this is— these give the unfortunate impression you're not here to help. Almost every edit you've made has been undone, so I'll not spend any more time linking them here. Folly Mox (talk) 00:55, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

"Your first article" Hatnote

Moved from User talk:Sdkb § "Your first article" Hatnote

 – Sdkb ^talk 03:36, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

The hatnote for this article (Help:Your first article) that I added linked to the Wikipedia:How to make a redirect page, and the reason that I added it was so newcomers who wanted to make a redirect wouldn't confuse the latter page with the former page. You are right that the "Your first article" page is in very high demand, but that is all the more reason why clearing a misunderstanding is needed. I don't see a good reason why that hatnote shouldn't be there other than "it's a risky edit in a very prominent article", and Wikipedia's guidelines do say to be bold with your edits so I don't see why that's necessarily an issue. If you think it stands out too much for a hatnote, then it can alternatively be put into a "see also" section, or just as an extra line in the middle of some paragraph. I understand the concept of due and undue weight of where an important text should be placed, and I see your point, but redirects are, nonetheless, an integral part of wikipedia. Senomo Drines (talk) 23:13, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

For context for anyone else, this refers to the back-and-forth Senomo Drines and I had in the summaries of the most recent edits to the page.

Some brief things to add: We should follow the Wikipedia:Hatnote guideline, which establishes that their purpose is navigational. I would have no issue with a link to it being in a see also section; that seems appropriate. Beyond that, interested in hearing from others. Sdkb ^talk 03:40, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Sounds like you are, in good faith, trying to fix an anticipated problem with a WP:BOLD edit, in order to make things better for others who end up here by mistake. For that, bravo! However, I don't see a real world problem here, and so if it ain't broke applies. The "someone might accidentally" do something, includes an infinity of possibilities, and we simply don't need to address purely hypothetical problems in a page intended for newbies with the very real world problem of creating a new article. If there is evidence of lots of users ending up here by mistake and confused because they wanted to create a redirect, then I would agree with you; till then, it hurts more than it helps. Additionally, after being reverted the first time, you should have come here directly, and not doubled down. Mathglot (talk) 02:11, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Translations from other wikis

Sometimes an editor's first article, at least on en, is a translation from another wiki. Should something be added here about translations to at least link to Help:Translation? @Mathglot you do some work in this area, any thoughts? S0091 (talk) 16:39, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

Hi, S0091, and thanks for raising this; definitely something on my radar. In the long run, I would say definitely, yes. The problem currently, imho, is that Help:Translation and its parasitic twin WP:Translation are more a hindrance than a help. I have it on the back burner to propose a major overhaul (and possibly a reunification) of these two, to turn them into something comprehensible and useful, and have some ideas and notes about how to do it, based on a central core pertaining mostly to translation process at Wikipedia regardless of language, plus limited stuff relevant to all languages, along with a suite of subpages tailored to concerns for individual languages (but I am getting ahead of myself).

For the time being, probably the best advice for Wikipedia translators comes from the OKA project, in their page meta:OKA/Instructions for editors. (OKA is a Swiss foundation that provides fees to editors to translate articles of their choice; more at m:OKA.) However, I don't know that H:YFA should link to their page, as it is tailored to OKA translator-editors, and isn't really appropriate in the general case.

In short, yes we should link to our own translation page[s], but not just yet. If you would like to collaborate on an overhaul project, lmk, maybe that could kick-start it. Mathglot (talk) 17:55, 14 July 2025 (UTC)