 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Creating an article is much easier if you start with the sources. |
If you read pages like the Teahouse where experienced editors advise the less experienced about creating new articles, you'll see statements like these:
- "Writing an article is much more difficult than it looks."
- "Creating a new encyclopedia article in Wikipedia is one of the most difficult tasks there is for inexperienced editors."
and even:
- "Successfully creating a new article is the most difficult task to perform on Wikipedia."
Not necessarily so.
True, creating a new article isn't easy. It's harder than rewriting a clumsy sentence, or adding an image, or finding and adding a reference. Few experienced editors would recommend it to anyone who's made fewer than 300 constructive edits to existing articles. But it's easier than editing a large table or creating a template with parameters, let alone changing Wikipedia policy.
So why do experienced editors say such things?
They do so because they're used to seeing new editors try to create their first article backward. It's this that's extremely difficult.