Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day

Wikipedia is not for things made up in school one day. If you or your friends make up something novel in school one day, please do not write about it in Wikipedia. Write about it on your own web site.

What new young editors do

One common temptation that young editors who are new to Wikipedia often succumb to is where their friend, sitting next to them in (say) Spanish class, comes up with a new phrase, a new word, a new craze, a new fashion, a new fad, or a new idea; they and their group think that their friend's creation is cool and start copying them and using it; and they think "Hey! I'll write a Wikipedia article about this.".

Why this is wrong

There are several things wrong with doing this:

Wikipedia is not a dictionary. It's an encyclopaedia. Meanings of words and phrases go in a dictionary, such as Wiktionary.
However, please note that it is just as unacceptable to add new words and new phrases to Wiktionary as it is to Wikipedia. Wiktionary requires evidence that a word or phrase has been attested before it will accept it. A new word that one person or a small group of people have made up and are trying to make catch on is a protologism, and isn't acceptable at Wiktionary.
Wikipedia is not a free wiki host for you to use for your own purposes. It's an encyclopaedia. Our primary goal here is to write an encyclopaedia, not to provide free web hosting to people.
Tip: If you find yourself using the "What harm does it do? I'm not taking up much space." argument, what you are actually doing is arguing that you should be allowed to mis-use Wikipedia as a free wiki host for whatever things you may choose to write.
Wikipedia content is required to be verifiable. There's no way that the rest of the world can verify your account of what your friend said or did in Spanish class. It's not recorded and it's not documented. Indeed, there's no way that the rest of the world can verify that what you are writing about even exists at all.
Tip: If you cannot obey the request at the bottom of the edit form to cite sources in the article that you write, because there aren't any sources documenting what was made up in school one day, then what you are writing is unverifiable.
Original research is prohibited on Wikipedia. Wikipedia isn't a publisher of first instance. It isn't here to promote new things and be the place where they are first recorded and documented. It's here to collect, condense, and summarize existing knowledge that is already known by the world at large.
Tip: If you find yourself using the "How else are people going to find out about this if it isn't in Wikipedia? No-one else has written about it." argument, you will know that you are almost certainly on the wrong side of the original research prohibition.

Past examples

Articles where young editors have written about things that were made up in school one day are invariably deleted. Here are some past examples:

That infamous game

One example, of ideas that people make up in school one day that they think it would be cool to create articles about in Wikipedia, deserves especial mention, namely a game involving Wikipedia itself that has already been invented:

As you can see, we already have this idea more than adequately covered in the project namespace. We've deleted it from the article namespace numerous times:

Please don't write yet another article about it.

The right way for things made up in school one day to get into Wikipedia

School crazes, fads, and fashions can end up in Wikipedia. But only if someone first sits down and researches them, and publishes a book, an academic paper, or a magazine/journal article detailing that research. Then the subject becomes eligible for Wikipedia.

For example, Catherine Gewertz has written an article, published in in Education Week in 2001, about the school craze of freak dancing. That is thus a valid topic for a Wikipedia article. It's verifiable, the research has already been done (and peer reviewed and fact checked) outside of Wikipedia, and the world at large already knows about the craze from the Education Week article.

What you should do

Only succumb to the temptation to write Wikipedia articles about what was made up in school one day if you can and do cite sources. And by "sources" we don't mean people writing things in web logs or posting things pseudonymously on discussion fora. Only succumb to the temptation if you can and do cite reliable sources in your articles.

If you cannot cite reliable sources, please write about what was made up in school one day somewhere else, such as on your own web site.