Wikipedia: Editing and Contributing

If you or someone or something you are personally involved with is worthy of inclusion in the encyclopedia, let someone else add that article. Putting your friends in an encyclopedia may seem like a nice surprise or an amusing joke, but those articles are likely to be removed. In this process, feelings may be hurt and you may be blocked from editing if you repeatedly make attempts to re-create the article. These things can be avoided by a little forethought on your part. The article may remain if you have enough humility to make it neutral and the subject really is notable, but even then it's best to submit a draft for approval and consensus of the community instead of just posting it, since unconscious biases may still exist that you are unaware of.

Please do not try to promote your product or business. Please do not post external links to your commercial website. We do have articles about products such as Kleenex and Sharpies and about notable businesses such as McDonald's, but if you are writing about a product or business, be sure you write from a neutral point of view, that you have no conflict of interest, and that you are able to find references in reliable sources that are independent from the subject you are writing about. For a business or similar organization, make sure it meets the specific notability guidelines for businesses and read the FAQ for non-profits and for-profit businesses.

Material that violates our biographies of living persons policy or is intended to threaten, defame, or harass its subject or another entity is not permitted. Unsourced negative information, especially in articles about living people, is quickly removed, and attack pages may be deleted immediately.

Wikipedia surveys existing human knowledge; it is not a place to publish new work. Do not write articles that present your own original theories, opinions, or insights, even if you can support them by reference to accepted work. A common mistake is to present a novel synthesis of ideas in an article. Remember, just because both Fact A and Fact B are true does not mean that A caused B, or vice versa (fallacies or post hoc ergo propter hoc). If the synthesis or causation is true, locate and cite reliable sources that report the connection.

People frequently add pages to Wikipedia without considering whether the topic is really notable enough to go into an encyclopedia. Because Wikipedia does not have the space limitations of paper-based encyclopedias, our notability policies and guidelines allow a wide range of articles – however, they do not allow every topic to be included. A particularly common special case of this is pages about people, companies, or groups of people that do not substantiate the notability or importance of their subject with reliable sources, so we have decided that such pages may be speedily deleted under our speedy deletion policy. This can offend – so please consider whether your chosen topic is notable enough for Wikipedia, and then substantiate the notability or importance of your subject by citing those reliable sources in the process of creating your article. Wikipedia is not a directory of everything in existence.

Articles need to have real content of their own.