Wkipedia Articles on Pool & Billiard Subjects
I recently ventured into the Wikipedia wilderness, with varying levels of frustration and success. Having cut my teeth on HTML (the basic computer language used to create Web pages), I figured I could handle it myself without a lot of help, but their markup language is really odd, and (as mentioned by JAM) their rules are complex and often frustrating. I had the same problem JAM mentioned with proper attribution and "Rights" statements on photos, even though the ones I uploaded came from a website that clearly stated they were not under copyright and could be used by anyone for any purpose. One editor (
Tim Pierce) helped me out with that and showed me the correct markup segment to insert on each photo's information page, so they weren't deleted before I got them fixed.
The major hurdle for new articles is getting past their "notability" standards, which evaluate any new subject based on their editors' collective judgment of its value as something worthy of being covered in an encyclopedia (which, as far as I can tell, has to do with how many times it has been mentioned in "reliable sources," whatever that means). You should also be cautious of indulging in praise for your subject. Objectivity is important (you should use a basic "reporter's" voice, not that of an editorial writer), and if you use superlatives to describe your subject or an aspect of it, they must be in direct quotes attributed to "reliable" sources.
The rest is formatting, adhering to certain rules of grammar, capitalization, punctuation, etc., and learning how to attribute sources correctly. For articles on pool/pocket billiards, there are specific spelling and grammatical standards they want you to adhere to, for example, here are some statements from their rules:
* The game is "nine-ball" (likewise eight-ball, one-pocket, etc.) — not "9-ball". (Exception: "blackball" is fully compounded, almost universally)
* Non-compound-noun game names are not hyphenated (bank pool, carom billiards, English billiards, straight rail)
* The ball is "the 9 ball" (likewise the 15 ball, the cue ball, the solid balls, etc.) — not "the 9-ball" or "the nine ball".
My first attempt was pretty poor, however, a couple of editors (including SMcCandlish) involved in the WikProject Cue Sports helped me out, and I was finally able to put together a page that will hopefully pass all the tests and remain up. The article was on The Snap Magazine, a now legendary (at least in my opinion, though I could not use that word) billiard publication from the late 1980s and early 1990s.
If anyone is interested in contributing articles on pool & billiard subjects, pay attention to what JAM had to say, start out with a trial page, take your time (there is no emergency or time restraint), and you should probably also check out the WikiProject Cue Sports page at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cue_sports
If you would like to see my page, which is still under review with no guarantee that it will eventually pass muster, it is at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snap_Magazine