Tuesday, February 24, 2009

How To-107: "How to Contribute to Wikipedia"


How to Contribute to Wikipedia


from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia project, written collaboratively by volunteers. Many people view Wikipedia articles every day, but don't contribute. This how-to will show you what you can do to constructively edit Wikipedia.

Steps

  1. Create a Wikipedia account - Account creation is not required; however, if you register for an account you will be given more privileges than a non-registered user. However, for all of these privileges to take place, your account must be at least four days old.
  2. Expand Stubs An article that is not complete, or written in full detail, may be marked with a {{Stub}} tag. You can help by adding content to the articles currently marked as stubs. Articles may also have a more detailed {{stub}} meaning that the stub has been sub-sorted. Sub-sorted stubs include anything from Arts, Cultures, Design, Broadcast Media, Radio, Television, Literature, and more!
  3. Add a Photo - An encyclopedia is not complete without pictures. You can upload as many pictures as you wish, however, you must provide detailed information on the source and the license of the file. If you cannot provide that information, you may wish to not upload any photos. If you still choose to upload photos, they will be deleted.
  4. Write a New Article - Wikipedia is rapidly growing. The English version of Wikipedia currently has over 2,300,000 articles! You can help continue this growth by writing an article of your own. You should write an article about something you are very knowledgeable about, so that you can write a complete and informative article. Articles created as test pages, pure vandalism, attack pages, etc. will be deleted on the spot, without any further debate.
  5. Remove Spam - Wikipedia is accessed by millions of people every day, thus, there tends to be a lot of vandalism or spamming. People who vandalize or spam a page may have added inappropriate links, blanked the page, added nonsense, etc. You can help out by removing, or reverting, this vandalism. Removing vandalism will make Wikipedia a better place for people to gather information and resources.
  6. Helping Out - Even though Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it is also a community. You can help out newcomers to make it a bigger and better community for the encyclopedia.
  7. Doing Maintenance - You can help Wikipedia run optimally by doing maintenance tasks like removing copyright, fixing up articles, participate in deletion processes, and all sorts of other things.

Tips

  • It takes less than a minute to create an account, and you receive so many benefits for account creation, including the ability to move pages. There is no confirmation email process, and the account creation is immediate.
  • If you have a problem with something or someone, discuss it. Always remember to be calm and reasonable, and you'll tend to have a better time in disputes.
  • You can ask questions of more experienced users by putting a {{helpme}} template on your talk page.
  • Remember, in order for your account to access all of the privileges, it must have at least 10 edits and be four days old.

Warnings

  • Don't vandalize Wikipedia. It just makes a headache for everyone when people vandalize Wikipedia. The vandalism must be reverted by someone who could be constructively editing Wikipedia in other ways. Vandalism is usually removed within five minutes, or even within seconds for popular pages.

Related wikiHows

Sources and Citations

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Contribute to Wikipedia. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

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