How to Make a Wikipedia Article About Yourself?
Do you know the difference between a biography and an autobiography?
A biography is based on the life history of a person written by another writer, whereas, an autobiography is based on the life history of a person who himself has written it.
So, if you are planning to create a Wikipedia page for yourself, there are certain crucial aspects you needed to learn to get your page approved.
Wikipedia is one of the foremost openly editable platforms on the internet., It has nearly a million contributors with over 1.7 billion unique visitors per month. It has published over 55 million articles and has become the eight most visited website.
Considering the widespread reach of the platform, your brain must be popping up with an idea “can I create a Wikipedia page for myself”. Here are the guidelines and do’s and don’ts to help you compose a well versed Wikipedia page about yourself.
A Brief Guide to Make a Wikipedia Article About Yourself
How do I create a Wikipedia page for myself? – Is that what you are stressing about? Follow the step-by-step process to create a Wikipedia biography and an autobiography.
Step #1- Create A Wikipedia Profile About Yourself
The First Step to Create a Wikipedia Page For Yourself
- Go to the Wikipedia.org link
- On the top right corner click on the “Create Account” button.
- Fill it in with your basic credential and select an appropriate username.
- Turn on the notifications as well to stay updated.
- Create a user-page to get access to contribute to the platform.
- Edit other articles and compose one of your own.
Step #2- Thoroughly Read the Wikipedia Biography and Autobiography Guidelines
Wikipedia is strict with its rules and policies. The platform stresses upon sticking to a neutral tone and voice. It advises and instructs writers to make sure that the content is valuable for the readers. To increase the readership, there are certain regulations which you must adhere and one of its most prominent ones is to stay relevant and unbiased.
When you compose a biography you have to provide relevant and reliable information. However, with autobiography, the major problem is having a biased context in the information. No matter how much neutral you think you are, you will end up talking high about yourself and that is where the main conflict comes.
Things You Must Avoid When Writing About Yourself
There are certain problems associated related to autobiography writing.
- The content is usually positive
- Inclusion of unauthentic point of view and facts
- Incorporation of information that is not notable
- The information is unverifiable
Things to Remember When Creating a Wikipedia about Myself
As per the Wikipedia guidelines, 4 aspects are fundamental to follow:
· Principle of Notability
Is the person you are writing about notable on the internet? This is something too crucial to verify. You can use SEO tools to find out if the person has some online recognition or not. If not, then you have to work on building some presence first before getting on Wikipedia.
It’s highly imperative to have a certain reach on the internet, this clarifies two things- one is that you are authentic and secondly the content about you will attract an audience.
· Writing Style
The writing style of a Wikipedia page about myself should have certain aspects. It must be in a dispassionate tone with conscious structures. There must be any overestimated or underestimated statement with trustable secondary sources mentioned in your content. Support the mentioned achievements and success by relevant sources. Moreover, the writing style should in an active voice with properly structured sentences to deliver a certain message. Avoid verbosity as it may be created creating misleading concepts.
· Reliable Sources
You need to ensure verifiability with sources linked to your content. Your references must be authentic and reliable. Your stated facts and information about the achievements must be traceable. There must not be any baseless foundation to facts and history. If so, such a Wikipedia page gets removed instantly even after getting published. The AI bots scrutinize the content and they remove misleading or false information.
· Avoid Presumption to Respect Privacy
One must avoid victimization within the content, that’s the reason why Wikipedia has mentioned to stick to a neutral point of view. A clear example is as follows:
Source: Wikipedia
Here if the information about the divorce “being messy” is not from a reliable source then simple write:
“avoid use of “messy” and stick to the facts: “John Doe and Jane Doe divorced.”
Step #3- Check The Uniqueness of Your Subject
What if the biography you are about to write is already present? When you search about how to make yourself a Wikipedia page you will come across a clause to know the uniqueness of the subject. What you must do is to enter your page title in the Requested Article search box.
Write only if your selected subject is unique otherwise all your efforts will go down the drain as Wikipedia never allows an already published article to be uploaded again.
Step #4- Carry Out Comprehensive Research
As described above when you plan to hunt for information make sure that it’s not only unique but valuable as well. It should be interesting enough to garner attention. Your Wikipedia page must be supported with facts, figures and finings related to the person’s achievements and work. Reliability is one of the basic aspects of a well versed Wikipedia page. Therefore, be specific with your research do not add any information without verifying it.
Step #5- Write Your Wikipedia Page about Yourself
When you set off to write the Wikipedia page, you need to follow the format of a Wikipedia biography which is shown below:
As per the format, first, you have to add the basic information about the person followed by his career goals and work achievements. After which comes to the reference section and external links to give another avenue to the readers to look for added information.
Step #6- Optimize Your Content
Do you want the Wikipedia page about yourself to be ranked at the top? Do you want to see its search engine visibility accelerating? If so, you must know the basic to optimize your content. The first aspect is to index most searched keywords in your content. You need to add keywords with high search rates. In this way, your audience can navigate to your page.
Apart from this, Wikipedia allows no-follow links which have an added advantage of giving more weightage to the page as per the Google algorithm’s evaluating criteria. So, you can create a kind of boomerang effect with the no-follow link. What you can do is to add external links in your content where external sources like credible newspaper, online magazine or any book having your biography or reference in it can be linked. In this way, your other sources will also be ranked to the top along with boosting your overall online credibility and recognition.
Step #7- Format Your Wiki Page
As you know how descriptive a biography should be, here is a layout provided on Wikipedia to show how the content should be formatted.
Source: Wikipedia Biography Template
You can see how every section is properly categorized. In this section, you have to mention the early life with an expanded description and details about the personal life of the person till his death. After that, you have to give his political and religious point of views and then the thorough details about his work and achievements. In the end, support the information with reliable and authentic external sources and citation.
Step #8- External Links and Citation
How to add the external links, wondering about it? What’s the purpose of citation?
The aim of Google and of Wikipedia is to provide ample sources to the readers to gather details about the searched subject. Therefore, Wikipedia intends its writers to pay special interest in adding all the relevant sources and to give an avenue to the readers to find information in detail about the discussed subject. However, through external sources you can help in getting your page rank higher. You get a double benefit out of it. You can enhance your overall online recognition and search visibility through it.
Furthermore, you have to refer to the Wikipedia citation policy. There are certain formats available which you can follow. Mostly Harvard referencing style is followed as shown below:
Step #9- Proofread and Edit Your
Thinking about “can I make a Wikipedia page about myself” is one thing and making it possible requires a serious of dedicated efforts. You need to prepare your content professionally and make it readable. You have to add the richness it requires along with ensuring flawlessness. That’s why it’s highly important to edit and proofread your content.
As per the sources, over 32.5 million active editors work on Wikipedia to improvise the content and ensure highest content quality. They edit 600 articles every day, that’s how huge the quality standard of the platform are.
Therefore, either hire a professional Wikipedia page editor or use advanced writing tool to get a hold on your content. You have to thoroughly scrutinize the content to omit the errors and fix the mistakes. If you lack behind and submit the content in raw form it will get rejected instantly.
Step #10- Wiki Page Submission & Approval
A Wikipedia page may take up to 6 months to get approved or rejected. Once your page is approved you will a page link sent via email.
Source: Wiki How
To upload your content, you have to head to your Wikipedia account and there you will find a tab “create a page” upon clicking it you will get the option to upload your attachment and beneath it will be the bar to add all your references and citation.
How famous do you have to be to get a Wikipedia page?
You do not have to be famous to get on Wikipedia. If you plan to create a page about yourself, you need to make sure you have a minimal recognition on the internet. You should have some achievements present or mention somewhere online. Wikipedia intends to showcase people who have made some positive contribution to the community so if you think you are eligible you should go for it.
