What is the first site that you open on the web when you are looking for answers? Wikipedia, isn’t it? Not just you but millions of people on the planet relies on Wikipedia for their answers, and it is the site that receives billions of views each year. Wikipedia is a platform that has all the information you need, from details of a person to a place to a business to even a TV series; you can literally find anything you are looking for on Wikipedia. After all, it is the largest online encyclopedia!
Wikipedia is a platform that was created with the aim of being the one place where all answers are available, and it has successfully reached that level. Moreover, when it comes to who can access the site, there are no restrictions. All you need to do is find a stable internet connection, and you can get on Wikipedia. The articles on Wikipedia can be translated into more than 300 languages, so you are not restricted in any way.
But what makes you trust the information you get on Wikipedia? Well, for us, it has to be the citations that you can see in the article. Citations are one of the most important parts of Wikipedia, and when one is trying to make a Wikipedia page, then one must learn how to put references in Wikipedia. These references are what authenticate and verify the information you add on Wikipedia!
So, if you have any plans to make a Wikipedia page, then let Wiki Specialist Inc. make things easier for you and tell you how to add reference links in Wikipedia. Take a look at the following guide, and we are sure that after reading it till the end, you will be a pro at how to add links to Wikipedia.
Why Are References Important In Wikipedia?
Before we start with how to add links to Wikipedia, let us tell you why it is important that your Wikipedia page has to have references as the founders of Wikipedia have made it very clear that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and nothing else, not a marketing platform, not a blog website, and not a discussion forum. So, as defined, an encyclopedia only uses proven and true information. It is based on proven facts and figures and must have information that can be verified.
So, whatever information you are adding to your Wikipedia page, to make sure that it is credible, you must provide a reference for it. These references will be the proofs for Wikipedia to justify the credibility of the information. Moreover, as per the Wikipedia rule book, when you are looking to create a Wikipedia page that could easily get approved on the site, it is important that you add credible secondary resources to it!
Citations and references prove that the information you are adding to your Wikipedia page is not just something that you made up from your mind but is authentic.
What Are The Best Reference Links For Wikipedia?
If your aim is to create a Wikipedia page that gets approved easily and stays put in the long run, then you need to give close attention to which reference links are you adding to Wikipedia page. The best links for a Wikipedia page is the secondary internet resources. These are verified and credible websites on the internet that are recognized for their authenticity. Moreover, these sources must be independent of the subject that your Wikipedia page is covering because then there might be a conflict of interest and your page would go to rejection.
So, secondary sources are important. While you can use primary sources as well, but keep your focus on the secondary ones to increase the credibility of your page!
Creating References on Wikipedia
No Wikipedia page is completed with the references; if you don’t believe us, just open a random Wikipedia page and go to the end of the page, and you will see a list of references and links. These links are mandatory to make sure that your page gets approved so, it is one of the most important steps in your process to create a Wikipedia page for yourself.
Here, we have divided this guide into two parts, first part teaches you how to add links to Wikipedia and the second part is about adding citations or how to put references in Wikipedia;
How to Add Links to Wikipedia
Wikipedia allows you to create both internal and external links on your page and add your references to your articles. While these links are always represented as citations at the bottom of the page but adding links throughout the article will help you make it easier for the reader to check the source of the information directly.
Adding links to your Wikipedia article is extremely important because often the pages that have no links are considered as orphans on Wikipedia and are at high risk for deletion. So, to make sure that the Wikipedia page you created stays on the site in the long run, it is important that you add links to it.
Creating Internal Links on Wikipedia
Have you ever noticed that in a Wikipedia article, there are many words that are written with a different ink color, i.e., blue? Well, that’s because these words have links to them, and these links are to other Wikipedia pages. The internal links on Wikipedia goes right with the text and highlights the texts with the blue color. Now, let us tell you how to add these internal links to your page;
- Select the words in your article you want to add the link to.
- Go to the button that says add a link.
- Go to the Wikipedia page that you want to link with that information. (make sure that the page is opened on the other tab)
- Copy the URL of the page you want to link.
- Go back to your article and add the URL to the text.
- There you go! The information is now linked with the relevant Wikipedia page!
How to Add External Links to Wikipedia
While every Wikipedia page has numerous internal links to the article, have you ever noticed that there are numbers in the square brackets at the end of a few sentences in a Wikipedia article? Well, these numbers are what represent the external links. The links that are from other internet resources. Clicking on this number will take you to the citation where you can find the link for the information. But, how do you add these external links to your Wikipedia page?
Let us tell you;
- Select through the text where you want to add your link
- Follow the same protocol and go to the link button
- Move to the tab where you have the page opened that you want to link to your text
- Copy the URL of the page and get back to the Wikipedia article
- Paste the link and click done
- Congratulations, you have successfully created an external link for your Wikipedia article.
You might think that both adding internal and external links to your Wikipedia page is quite the same process, and yes, you are right! The only difference is that for the internal links you use a Wikipedia page and for the external ones, you have to use some other internet resource!
With this, we have covered our first part of the guide that is on how to add links to Wikipedia, now, it is time to move forward to the citations and teach you how to put references on Wikipedia.
Putting Citations in Wikipedia
The best part about working on Wikipedia is that the platform is extremely user-friendly. It has created so many ways to make things easier for the user, all you have to do is follow the policies and the rest will be made easy for you. Just like that, when it comes to creating citations, Wikipedia makes things easier by automatically creating reference entries when you start to add citations to your text. So, you don’t have to take all your citations to the bottom and create a list manually.
When it comes to how to put references in Wikipedia, there are two methods. First, to use an automatic citation generator and the other is to do it yourself. Let us explain both the ways for you and then you can decide which you want to use!
Using Automatic Citation Generator
Using Wikipedia’s Automatic Citation Generator means that all you have to do is add the URL you want to cite to it and it will extract the rest of the data for you. So, get on the page that you want to cite and copy the URL and then follow the following steps on your Wikipedia page;
- Select the text where you want to add your citation
- Go to the cite button and click on the Automatic option
- You will be given a box where you have to paste the URL that you copied
- Go straight to the generate tab
- Now, the citation generator will go on and extract the data from that URL and show you the results
- Cross check and see if everything looks good
- Simply click on the insert tab
- And there you have your citation added to the page.
That’s simple right? And thanks to Wikipedia, this citation will automatically be added to the bottom of the page in the reference list.
Well, that’s one way to do it. However, if you ask us, we would recommend you to do the citations manually as you can add all the information to it that could help increase the credibility of the source.
Adding Citations Manually To Wikipedia
When you opt for creating the citations manually, you have to use the manual citation tool on Wikipedia. While you might need to work a little extra for this because you will have to look for the data to enter in you citation, still the tool helps you do the most. Follow the following process to create your citation manually;
- As usual, select the text where you want to add your citation
- Click on the cite tab but now instead of going to the automatic one choose the manual option
- Go to the journal tab and you will see a menu where you will be asked to fill in the details
- Add as many details as you can about the source, you can even copy paste directly from the source where applicable
- You will also see a few fields where you will see asterisk (*), make sure that you fill these fields because these are mandatory
- Go through everything to be sure that you have added all the correct information
- Click on the insert button
- Was it that difficult? We don’t think so!
We are sure that you would still prefer using the automatic option but there are some sources that needs to be cited manually as the generator could not extract all the necessary information. But when you compare the Wikipedia manual citation tool to the regular citation tools you can see on the internet, you will know that the Wikipedia one is far better! Here, it will take care of the formatting and organizing your citations on your Wikipedia page. So, in a way, you are doing a semi-manual sort of work!
The Bottom Line
Adding citations and references to Wikipedia is a crucial step and something you cannot miss while creating a Wikipedia page. However, you need to be smart about these citations because they play a very important role to get your page approved. So, if you are a little confused and need any form of help to make sure that things go smoothly, you can connect with us at Wiki Specialist Inc. for assistance. We have a team of Wikipedia experts that could tell you everything you need to know about how to add links to Wikipedia and not just that, we can also do the job for you! Contact us today!
