User:Chrisarnesen/Editing Wikipedia

Wikipedia is one of the most frequently visited sites on the web. The Bitcoin article alone is viewed tens of thousands of times per day. Anyone who can access the site can edit almost any of its articles. Please consider contributing your expertise.

Basics

The rules

There are just a few things you'll need to learn about Wikipedia before you can start editing. One of the five pillars of Wikipedia is that Wikipedia does not have firm rules. That's absolutely not true. There are more rules on Wikipedia than you'll ever know. Research and writing are only a small part of being an editor; the rest is learning, applying, and adjudicating the rules.

Verifiability is the most important rule. Learn it. Know it. Statements in articles must not only be true but also verifiable. On Wikipedia, that means that the information has been published by one or more reliable third-party sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Most reliable are sources like peer-reviewed academic papers and New York Times articles. Publications with smaller staff and readership such as Bitcoin Magazine and Coindesk are considered to be reliable, about as much so as the "blog" posts of the "most reliable" publishers. Company websites and press releases can be used to establish non-controversial facts though third-party sources are always preferred if available. The Bitcoin wiki and self-published blogs may very well be true, but they're not considered "reliable" on Wikipedia as in-line citations.

The second core content policy of Wikipedia is "neutral point of view" or NPOV as they say on the talk pages; articles should provide "warts-and-all" coverage of their subject. This one shouldn't need too much explanation. Just remember that Wikipedia aims to be an encyclopedia, and don't take it personally.

Just to round out the list, the third and final core content policy is "no original research". That's a corollary of verifiability, so I'll say no more. You're ready to edit!

Visual editor

Click the "Edit ^beta" button at the top of the page to use the WYSIWYG Wikipedia editor. Pick your spot and type a true statement. With the cursor at the end of your verifiable statement, click the "Insert" button at the top of the page. Choose "Reference" on the drop-down list. Paste the URL of the publication of the reliable source. Click "Save page". Congratulations, you've just edited Wikipedia!

Wikimedia markup

The "source code" of Wikipedia is Wikimedia markup language. If you prefer, you can edit the markup directly :

Markup	Renders as
The cow jumped over the moon.<ref>http://www.ask.com/question/the-cow-jumped-over-the-moon-nursery-rhyme</ref>	The cow jumped over the moon.

Find an article you want to edit. Click the "Edit source" tab at the top of the page. Add a true statement and a ref link. Click the "Show preview" button at the bottom of the page. Inspect for typos and markup mistakes then click "Save page". Congratulations, you've just edited Wikipedia!

Be bold!

The edit cycle is "bold, revert, discuss". Make a bold edit! That's the first step in the process and other editors will help you from there. If you're already bored or haven't yet clicked on a hyperlink, you're probably not going to enjoy editing Wikipedia. Otherwise, go forth and edit. Treat your fellow editors with respect and civility. Act in good faith, and assume good faith on the part of others.

Advanced editing

Create an account

It's optional but it's impossible to fully participate in the editing process without one. In particular the main Bitcoin page often has "semi-protected" status due to persistent vandalism; only user accounts that are at least four days old and with at least ten total edits can edit it. You can use a pseudonym like Satoshi if you prefer. Click here to learn more and create an account. Henceforth, this guide assumes the reader is logged in to their Wikipedia account.

Create your user page

When you're logged in to Wikipedia you'll see your username at the top of the page. Click on it to edit your user page. Like the rest of Wikipedia, your user page is just a Wikimedia document. Unlike the "real" articles, however, you can write whatever you want on your user page; the information need not be verifiable. I consider my contributions to Wikipedia to be part of my professional output, like my contributions to open source software. I provide a link to my LinkedIn profile on my user page. You need not provide any information about yourself whatsoever, even if you have a conflict of interest. The choice is yours. I encourage you to create the page, however, even if only with a single word "foo" because a link to your user page will appear in the edit logs every time you make an edit and in your signature when you comment on talk pages. If your user page doesn't exist, those links will be red, and like all good Wikipedia editors I hate to see a red link. So please create your user page. Plus it'll be good practice and your edits will count towards the 10 required to become an "auto-confirmed" user.

Create / delete an article

Verifiability restricts which statements/assertions are eligible for inclusion on Wikipedia. Notability restricts which subjects/topics are eligible to be their own dedicated article. Want to create an article for some hot new Bitcoin startup that's been blowing up in the press? Read Wikipedia:Notability#General_notability_guideline and Wikipedia:Notability_(organizations_and_companies) then create your first (main space) article. Though I mostly self-identify as inclusionist I can and do occasionally also make the case for article deletion.

Now what?

Navigate to Talk:Bitcoin. Click the "New section" tab. Add your two satoshis.

Remember when I said the edit cycle is "bold, revert, discuss"? Be bold on Bitcoin. Other editors will show you what "revert" means. Bitcoin is a highly visible article about a very controversial and volatile subject. For every sentence you add to the article, you'll write dozens on the talk page.

Ripple (payment protocol) needs help. See, e.g. Talk:Ripple_(payment_protocol)#Concept_Section

Pick an article on Category:Bitcoin whose title piques your interest. Read it and correct any typos that you encounter.

Correct the error in this sentense.

"This article needs additional citations for verification." No phrase appears more frequently on Wikipedia. If you see this or a bunch of "citation needed"s on an article, search for the subject on Google News. Paste the relevant results to the article's "Talk" page. For example that's what I did when I was first writing the BitPay article, see Talk:BitPay. If you're still feeling ambitious at that point, read one of those news articles whose link you just pasted onto the Talk page, distill the contents down to a couple relevant and interesting statements about the subject and add them statement to the article as, for example. If the article is about a company and you know somebody who works there, ask them to send you a list of publications. Every company has such a list already and that's way easier that trying to search for reliable sources yourself, even with Google. That's how I got all the links here Talk:Ceres_(organization)#Legitimate_references, for example. Heck, you don't even need to know somebody who works at the company, just tweet em.

Help prevent future link rot. Since you're new here, you can provide in-line citations as simply as, for example (in Wikimedia markup) "Widgets are commonly used for fibnostication<ref>http://widgetnews.com/Advances_in_Fobnostication</ref>". Such "bare" external references consisting of just a hyperlink aren't ideal though because if the link breaks, the reference becomes nearly impossible to verify. Citing sources is a rich art. At a minimum, editors are encouraged to include additional metadata like author, title, and publisher in in-line citations. When you encounter an article with bare links. Fix them manually or using the reflinks tool.

Edit this section and add your suggestion for cryptocurrency articles on Wikipedia that need help / to be created.