Citations, Links & Images

 

Adding a citation

Citations are the most important part of any Wikipedia page. Every bit of information on Wikipedia should be backed up by a reliable, high-quality, published secondary source… anyone can edit but we can’t just say anything. We should aim to have a citation at the end of every sentence, or at least every paragraph. We can use multiple sources to back up one piece of information.

More details on adding references with Visual Editor can be found here.

  1. In your sandbox, click Edit to access the Visual Editor interface.
  2. Add your statement to the Wikipedia page.
  3. Place your cursor at the end of the relevant statement (after the full stop or punctuation mark of the sentence you are writing) and click Cite on the editing toolbar at the top of the page.
  4. Paste the url web address, DOI code, PMID or ISBN number into the Automatic citation box and click Generate. This will create the citation automatically.
  5. Click Insert to place the citation into the article.
  6. Click Publish changes to save the page with a short edit summary like added citation.
  7. Click Publish changes to save your citation and auto-generate a reference at the bottom of the page.

More details on adding references with Visual Editor can be found here.

Adding links to and from other Wikipedia pages

Wikipedia is based on wiki links leading from one article to another. I’m sure we’ve all been up researching a topic and fallen down the rabbit hole of finding interesting articles relating to that topic. You might even have played the Wiki Game where you navigate between pages in the fewest number of clicks…

Well, links are another one of the most important aspects of Wikipedia. You should go through your article as you are editing and add links to any potential pages you think may need a link. If a concept or topic is mentioned more than once in an article then it should be only be linked the first time it is mentioned.

How-to:
  1. Assuming you are already in the Visual Editor for your page:
  2. Highlight the text you wish to wiki link.
  3. Click the chain link dropdown menu on the editing toolbar at the top of the page. This will search Wikipedia pages for the text you have highlighted.
  4. Select the correct Wikipedia page.
  5. The text will now turn blue if a page exists with the title of the text you have highlighted or red if it can’t find a page.
  6. Click Publish changes to save the page with a short edit summary like added link(s).
  7. Click Publish changes again to save your edit.

Links are also one of the key ways readers will find your page. The problem comes when pages that should have a link… don’t. Links can be the difference between articles that are easy to find and those that aren’t. And therefore receive more pageviews as a result, particularly if the high traffic pages link to your page.

The Find Link tool (video demo) does a search for article titles/keywords throughout Wikipedia to highlight those articles that mention the search term and therefore ought to be linked to. You can then use the visual editor to add links to your page from relevant articles and generate interest.

Adding images

  1. Click Edit to access the Visual Editor interface.
  2. Place your cursor where on the page you wish your image to appear.
  3. Click Insert at the top of Visual Editor and select Insert Media from the dropdown menu.
  4. Type a keyword in the Insert Media search bar. This will look in the 46 million openly-licensed media files on Wikimedia Commons. Alternatively you can use the Upload tab to add your own openly-licensed image.
  5. Click Use this image and type a caption.
  6. Click Insert to add the image to the page.
  7. Drag the bottom left corner of the image to resize it.
  8. Click Publish changes to save your image with an edit summary of ‘added an image’. Click Publish changes again.

We often find when adding biographies about niche or obscure individuals that images will not already have been uploaded to Wikipedia’s sister project, Wikimedia Commons. If you want to source an open image for the page then try:

Video walkthrough of the main Visual Editor elements

There are more details on how to edit with Visual Editor in our Wiki Basics and the Visual Editor userguide.