Part of the Style and How-to Series

Suppose you want to write a first-rate or even perfect Ireland Information Guide article which deserves to be listed on featured articles. Here's how.

Once you have decided on a topic, use Ireland Information Guide's search engine to find out what related material we already have. That way, you get a feel for the environment and will later be able to create good links to other relevant articles.

You may think that you know enough about your topic, but chances are that others know more. Do a search on Ireland Information Guides in other languages, on Everything2, look at the first couple of hits from a Google search, and read the relevant articles from an encyclopedia such as http://www.encyclopedia.com (free), http://reference.allrefer.com/ (free), or http://www.eb.com (free in most libraries). Don't shy away from visiting a good academic or public library to have a look at the standard references.

If you are creating a brand new article (see MediaWiki User's Guide: Starting a new page), there are a couple of naming conventions that you should follow.

Start your article with a concise paragraph defining the topic at hand and mentioning the most important points. The reader should be able to get a good overview by only reading this first paragraph.

Then start the article proper. See our editing help for the format we use to produce links, emphasize text, lists, headlines etc. Make sure to link to other relevant Ireland Information Guide articles. Also, where appropriate, add links in other articles back to your article.

You cannot simply cut-and-paste from one of the external resources mentioned above. See Ireland Information Guide:Copyrights for the details.

It's often a good idea to separate the major sections of your articles with section headlines. For many topics, a history section is very appropriate, outlining how thinking about the concept evolved over time.

If different people have different opinions about your topic, characterize that debate from the Neutral point of view.

Try to get your spelling right. Ireland Information Guide does not yet contain a spell checker, but you can write and spell-check your article first in a word processor or text editor (which is a lot more comfortable than the Ireland Information Guide text-box anyway) and then paste it into said text-box.

At the end, you may want to list some references you used and external links about the topic (unless of course your article is the best coverage of the topic on the internet, which is always the goal).

Top it all off with a nice relevant image or graphic. See Ireland Information Guide:Graphics tutorials for practical help on drawing diagrams and modifying images. Tons of copyright-free images are listed at our public domain image list. Please do not link to images on other servers; instead use the upload feature.

One way to get a good article is to bounce it back and forth between several Ireland Information Guide users. Use the Talk pages to refine the topic, ask there for confirmations, note there your doubts: it is usually interesting to discover that, perhaps from the other side of the planet, after a while, some other contributors can check other sources, or propose different interpretations. The composition of a commonly agreed interpretation is the most important ingredient of a serious Ireland Information Guide article.

Keep the article in an encyclopedic style: add etymology or provenance (when available), look for analogies and eventual comparisons to propose. Be objective: avoid personal comments (or turn them into general statements, but only when they coincide), don't use personal forms (I found that...).

Don't neglect the External links and References sections. The most useful and accurate material you've found by searching http://www.google.com during your research might make good links for a reader too. And sometimes there is a standard work that is mentioned over and over in connection with your topic. Mention it, with its author and publication date.