User:MatthewVanitas/Newb advice

Using refs

Greetings, I see you've made some basic edits and started an article on a village in Northern India. It's particularly helpful that you've uploaded a local photo, as that really helps expand the articles.

One caveat though: thus far your articles have tended to lack WP:References. That is, footnotes that explain where the information comes from, and that a reader can turn to to learn more, or to check the facts for themself. This is a policy called WP:Verifiability and is fundamental to Wikipedia itself. In fact, articles about people, organisations, businesses, books/films, bands, etc. all require proper footnoting (and proof of WP:Notability) to even begin as articles and not be deleted.

You've made some good first steps, now the next step is articles with proper sourcing. I do emphasise as well that sources must be WP:Reliable sources, that is not blogs, forums, FaceBook, etc. Ideally scholarly books, newspapers, and the like.

I would suggest as a next step that you put the sources first, and then write the article after you have found sources. For example, perhaps you can go to GoogleBooks and see if you can find a book about an area or topic that interests you, and when you find a name, a fact, a place, an event, and there is no article on Wikipedia for it, then you can start the article and cite your source as a footnote.

I know I've given you a lot of instructional pages to learn from, and some new ideas, so feel free to write me on my Talk page if you have any questions. Your initial enthusiasm is great, and with just a little learning you can be producing articles that will stand the tests of time and scrutiny, based on solid verification and footnotes. Good learning!