How To Get A Wikipedia Page Approved? – Things You Must Follow
Are you having trouble getting an approval on your Wikipedia submissions? Wondering how to get a Wikipedia page without facing rejections?
You spend hours brainstorming an idea for your content, strive hard to format it wisely, even go for adding images to make it look appealing, still you got rejected. Wikipedia is one of the renowned free encyclopedia. It is an openly editable site that keeps on growing every hour. With over a billion active contributors, it guarantees to provide most reliable content.
Being an open source platform, it allows users to make edits and improvise the content when they find any flaw in the published materials. However, to maintain the quality, it has placed strict restrictions and guidelines. The comprehensive Wikipedia policies and instructions are hard to follow and impossible to ignore. If you do not format and compose, your content following the guidelines, no matter how well versed your content it may get rejected. You need to learn the criteria for getting an approval from Wikipedia.
How To Get A Wikipedia Page Approved
To get a page approval you have to go through several steps. You have to ensure that every section of your content is properly aligned with the Wikipedia policies and that there is nothing that goes against it. So, to help you out let’s begin the step by step guide to understanding how a Wikipedia article or page gets approved. Read on!
The Wikipedia Account Creation
Contributors need to create their account on Wikipedia. The account gives them a dashboard from where they can manage and monitor their published pages. Secondly, through the account there comes an option to create a user page. The user page lets a contributor edit and improvise the faulty content of the published pages.
Wikipedia offers a feedback guidelines section where all the aspects that an editor must check in a content are mentioned. Some of the important points include:
- Irrelevant Content
- Shaky Context
- Outdated Information
- False References
If you want to be known as credible, you must contribute to the platform before penning down your content.
Go Through Wikipedia Guidelines
What qualifies you for a Wikipedia page? This is one thing that becomes clear through the policy section among the many other confusions you may have. So, the first step to creating a page starts from learning about the comprehensive Wikipedia guidelines, which are as follow:
· The Notability Guidelines
The principle of notability instructs writers to make sure the subject of their topic is notable on the internet. If it’s about a person or a company, the entity should have a certain online presence. This helps in two ways, first it ensures about the subject’s authenticity and secondly it increases the readership of the page.
Now, here the question arises as to what makes you notable and what the criteria.
To find out whether you are notable and eligible for a Wikipedia page you need to check if you appear on any credible platform like The Times or Forbes. You need to have an online recognition with at least a minimal target audience. If not, you then have to start building it up. For that, you can even consult an experienced SEO company who can ensure you promising results. They will first build up your presence and then go for the Wikipedia page.
· Content Criteria
The content guidelines are precise but defined. No use of promotional content and argumentative aspects. There must be no incorporation of personal viewpoints or opinions. The content you are about to write should be precise and rich with information. It should be in a neutral tone and voice with biased information.
· Researched Material
The material you are about to fetch needs to be verifiable. The sources should be credible and the content should be authentic. You are not allowed to go for irrelevant and false information.
· Vandalism
The next most important aspect covered in Wikipedia guidelines is about vandalism. You need to make sure that you stay away from the act if you do not want your account to be blocked by Wikipedia. It’s an act where a writer deliberately tries to affect the integrity and online presence of another author by making irrelevant edits on his page. The moment Wikipedia identifies such an activity it blocks the doers account.
· Conflict of Interest
You may get to write about a person or thing for a Wikipedia page so it’s necessary that you do not have conflict of interest with your subject. Your context should not be misleading. You should not talk high about a person or share your perspective about the subject. The tone should be unbiased.
Wikipedia Article Creation Process
Wikipedia appreciates and motivates its writers in every way possible. For those who are reluctant to go for submitting their content can even try the Wikipedia sandbox where they can practice composing an article.
Writers can go to the sandbox and submit their article to the community of contributors who will evaluate the content and give their opinions making it easier for the writer to get a Wikipedia approval.
Apart from this, if you want to create a page on your own you can go the option in your dashboard present in the left side “Create a page”.
The first thing is to ensure that the title you have picked is unique on Wikipedia along with being notable.
For that, you have to follow the Red Link and Blue Link Method. As per the methods, there is a Requested Article Search Box where you need to enter your title. If a Red link appears that means the title is good to use. On the contrary, if a Blue Link appears that means the title is already present.
So, as you proceed with your article creation step you have to keep one thing in mind that the content should be engaging and captivating. Your content should be precise and that it does not have verbosity. No need to add extra content or something, which goes against the title. Your content should be readable and easy to grasp.
Apart from this, the structures must be engaging. Avoid making weak sentence structures. It is a prime aspect of a content that defines its quality. If your content is professional, it will be composed in a way that a reader would stick reading it for hours.
SEO Optimization
The next aspect which you must keep in mind is the SEO optimization of your content. You need to make sure that the content is indexed with most searched keywords. Your content should be formatted professionally as per the SEO guidelines. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner to help yourself find the long and short tail keywords.
Next important aspect to note is the back-linking. You can use the external linking section to enter the URL to your blogging site or website. As you know that Wikipedia does not allow the do-follow link, you cannot add your links directly. So, the external link section can be helpful for you.
Formatting and Citation
The most important thing you would find about how do you qualify for a Wikipedia page is formatting and after that citation. Both of these two aspects of a Wikipedia page are important. You need to create a reader’s journey. Map down the layout as to how the reader will start reading and what are the aspects he will note.
You need to make sure that the content should be backed with legit and authentic references. That is only possible if you extract information from reliable websites and sources. About the citation format, you can check out the citation styles listed in Wikipedia guidelines. The most common citation format is Harvard style of referencing.
Proofing and Content Submission
Once you are done with your content you have to proofread it thoroughly to learn about the errors and omit the typing mistakes. You have to scrutinize the content and make edits where needed. You can use the tool Grammarly that is a perfect one to detect flaws. Check if you have missed out any policy or have gone against the instructions. Double check the references you have cited. In short, take your time to evaluate your content and to get rid of every error.
To submit the page you have to go to your account and click on page creation tap, the next page where you will be navigated will have the option to upload your content. You have to enter the citation in a separate tab with the relevant images and visuals.
How Long Does It Take To Get A Wikipedia Article Approved
Wikipedia page submissions may take up to 3 to 6 months. As there are millions of submissions every month from all across the world, it becomes tough to offer quick responses. In addition, the official editors have to scrutinize every single aspect of the content; therefore, it takes time to get a response whether positive or negative.
In case of minor edits, you will get an email to make the required changes and then your article will get live. Otherwise, if there are major errors, your submission will get rejected. The best way to refrains from facing such a disappointment is to seek a professional’s help. You must get in touch with a credible Wikipedia page creation company who will make it easier to get approved.
How do you qualify for a Wikipedia page?
To get qualified on Wikipedia you have to ensure that you are credible and notable on the internet. You must have an online presence with a certain audience reach.
How to avoid Wikipedia page rejection?
To make your submission approved you need to stick through the Wikipedia policies. You need to make sure you are following all the instructions and not misleading the readers though your content.
Wrap Up
A Wikipedia page is composed with a purpose to give information to the readers. Wikipedia never intends to promote a business directly but its massive online reach makes it easier for writers to gain incredible online recognition and to get ranked at the top. So, either you follow all the Wikipedia guidelines and compose a well versed content or consult a professional agency who have a bunch of expert writers who would work for you.
