This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus. |
Text on Wikipedia is added in one of two ways:
Open license text which is available under a compatible license or in the public domain can be used to improve existing Wikipedia articles and create new ones. |
Scope of this guideThis guide is about importing text that has been previously published with an open license, that is text previously unpublished in Wikimedia projects:
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Reminder: if you are being paid to add text to Wikipedia please state this and list the articles you've contributed to on your user page. For more information please see Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure Which licenses does Wikipedia accept?Accepted licensesWikipedia accepts text available under these licenses. Acceptable licenses include:
Licenses not acceptedAmong the licenses not acceptable for text in Wikipedia are:
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Converting and adding open license text to WikipediaThe process for adding open license text to Wikipedia can be broken down into the following steps:
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Attributing open license text in Visual editor
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Attributing open license text in Source Editor
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Measuring reachTools are available to measure the number of page views Wikipedia articles receive that use text from a range of external sources e.g. a website, a section of a website, a specific URL or a publication: A small number of articlesTo measure the page views for a small number of Wikipedia pages where it is known text from a source has been used simply use the Pageviews tool and enter the names of the articles into the Pages field (you can click on the x next to the name of an article to remove it from the graph). A larger number of articlesTo measure page views of all articles using text from a source use the Massviews Analysis Tool:
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Share your content on WikipediaWikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world and receives over 15 billion page views per month. If you would like to make text or any other content available on Wikipedia you can learn how to license and label your work (website, publication etc.) on the Creative Commons website here, the licenses Wikipedia accepts are listed above. To help people learn about text you have made available under an open license, you can contact a Wikiproject that works on that subject or your local Wikimedia organisation. They will help to get it reused. If you have a specific article in mind that could use the text you can write on the article talk page. To contact a Wikiproject or writing on an article talk page:
Tools are available to measure reuse and reach of your content and are described above. |
Notes
- ^ Text only. Images under this license are fine.