Help:How to start a page

From Ballotpedia

User Help
Editing guide
Cheatsheet
Visual standards
Textual standards
Copyright
Glossary of terms
Wiki training
Library of tutorials

Once you are comfortable editing pages, and changing other people's content, why not add some of your own? There are two main ways to go about creating new pages, and they both involve using red links. A red link is a link that doesn't exist... yet. It is words placed in the double brackets that indicate an internal link ( [[ ]] ), meant to encourage (or remind) people to follow up on that subject. To use them for writing new pages use one of these techniques:

• Follow a red link with a topic that interests you
  • Example: you can see on the List of ballot measures by topic page that there is a red link for Smoking ban initiatives. You happen to know about an upcoming smoking ban initiative in your state, so you decide to write about it using that link.

• Find a page that would lead naturally to the topic you want to post about, and edit it to create a red link
  • Example: you are on the Illinois page, and you notice that even though there is a new ballot drive in progress, nothing has been written about it. So you edit the Illinois page to make a link leading to the ballot drive you know about, then you follow the link you just created to write a new page.

Enter a headline below to start an article. From more information, see our introductory tutorial.

Where to start

If you want to contribute new content but are having trouble deciding where to start, try the List of Ballotpedia Projects page, or expanding a stub article.