User:Neotarf/Article tutorial

Userboxes This user is a member of the Wikiproject: Medal of Honor.

American Civil War barnstar

Are you ready to write your first article? It is very easy. This tutorial will show you how to write an article using a list of people who received the Medal of Honor.

This project has a barnstar and also a user box for WikiProject Medal of Honor. After you write your first article, you can give yourself a barnstar, if you like.

Steps in writing the article

Sometimes it is easier to just look at an article and copy the format. Here are two examples from Simple Wikipedia: Luke M. Griswold, John Hack If you want to put your article on English Wikipedia, here are two examples from enwiki: :Norman F. Bates, :en:John Brazell.

1. Choose someone to write the article about. There is a list of red links here. These do not have article on the English WP, so your article will be the one that comes up in a Google search. [More red links here].
2. Open your sources and find the page with the name of the person. You may want to have your references open in several windows as you write. [Sources are here].
3. Start the article. You can click on a red link or type the name into the search window. It will tell you there is no article, then give you a link to create a new article. Some people like to start the article on a user page, and move it out when they are finished. Your first edit should be a topic sentence that includes the reason for notability, plus a reference. [See Notability].
4. Finish the article. Most experienced editors like to make many short edits and save their edits often, so they do not lose their edits. On Simple Wikipedia, an article about a person should have at least two references, a reason for notability, categories, and a defaultsort template. Biographical articles should have categories for: the year the person was born, the year the person died (or [[Category:Living people]] if the person is still alive), the award itself, if such a category exists, the person's nationality, or the specific place they are from, and anything else of interest about the person: that could be their profession, other accomplishments, etc. [See Categories and Defaultsort].
5. Add the final touches. Your article will probably have an infobox and a reference section, and maybe a picture. If I can't find a photo of the person, I like to use a picture of the battleground or place where they earned the medal. You will want to format the references with REFILL. To find pictures, and to have a little fun learning about history, I like to use the "insert media" function of the visual editor, with the name of the battle or geographical location as a search term. [See Infobox, REFILL, and References].
6. Help yourself to a barnstar and userbox. [See A userbox for you]. There are two different kinds of barnstars on user pages here and here. You can use Template:Barnstar with one of the images below and sign it with four tildes (~~~~) to make the time stamp..
7. Now that you know how to write an article, you can teach someone else, and give them a barnstar! And there is also a user box for you.

Userboxes Ready to write your first article? Try the article tutorial.

• 
  ODM article award.png (Orders, decorations and medals barnstar)
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  ACW Barnstar.png (American Civil War barnstar)

Sources

Here are some sources of information for the Medal of Honor:

• Military Times - Hall of Valor
• Medal of Honor Citations, United States Army Center of Military History
• Naval History and Heritage Command
• Congressional Medal of Honor Society
• Find A Grave This is very helpful for finding the date of death. You can also use Google to find more information.

Reason for notability

Medal of Honor recipients are automatically notable per WP:MIL notability guidelines. Also see discussions here, here, and here. It is best to state the reason for notability ("received the Medal of Honor") in the first or second sentence.

Categories

The categories you will use for notability are:

• [[Category:United States Army Medal of Honor recipients]]

• [[Category:United States Navy Medal of Honor recipients]]

• [[Category:United States Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipients]]

Since all the recipients are from the U.S., you can use their state instead of their nationality:

• [[Category:People from Vermont]]

The format for the date of birth is:

• [[Category:1954 births]]

The format for the year of death category is:

• [[Category:1915 deaths]]

If you can't find the year of death, you can use:

• [[Category:Year of death missing]]

Defaultsort

The format for the defaultsort template is:

• {{DEFAULTSORT:lastname, firstname}}

References

You can format references by using ref tags like this: <ref>‎https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Neotarf/Medal_of_Honor_red_links</ref>‎‎. If you format your sources with ref tags, you can use https://tools.wmflabs.org/refill/ to change them into citations. The format of the reference section is:

== References ==

{{reflist}}

Infobox

The infobox for Medal of Honor is "infobox military person" The instructions are on English Wikipedia here.

List of red links

• There is a list of red links at User:Neotarf/Medal of Honor red links#American Civil War (G—L). These do not have article on the English WP, so your article will be the one that comes up in a Google search.

• There are lists of red links on these pages, but these lists are for Simple Wikipedia only, and may already have articles at English WP.

• If you want more names that are red-linked on enwiki, there is another list on English WP at this page It is missing some names from WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, and others, but it is a start.

• If you want a more difficult project, there is a list of red links of women journalists here. They have all won an award, so they should be notable, but you will have to look for more information about them.