welcome!
Welcome to Wikipedia...Welcome aboard! We're glad you wish to help develop Wikipedia, and we hope you enjoy participating in this virtual community as much as we do. As a new contributor, you may feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer size and scope of this project (which includes over 100,000 regular participants)... ...but don't worry, things will become easier and clearer as you go, and if you have any problems, there will always be other Wikipedians happy to help, see Wikipedia:Requests for more information. There are some resources set forth below to help you get started. Good luck and have fun! If you would like to get a good overview of the project and how it works you could read through the introductory page which is found at Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia. The same basic information can be seen at the Help:Introduction. There is also Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure, a 7-mission interactive guided tour which covers all the basics about editing and the expectations and norms of the Wikipedia community. To browse help related pages see the help menu or help directory. Or you can use the search box at Help:contents (accessed at any time by clicking Help displayed on the left side of all pages). There is also a copy of a comprehensive published book, at Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. Tip: Sign your name - At the end of your comments simply type four tildes (~), like this: Finding your way aroundTo understand Wikipedia, it is easiest to think of this website as having two types of pages: pages that are part of the encyclopedia itself, and pages of the community (used by contributors to help build and operate the encyclopedia). To find your way around the encyclopedia, either enter a term into the search box at the top-right side of the screen, or go to Wikipedia's table of contents. Clicking on links like this one will take you to relevant or related pages. If you know the name of the topic you are looking for, simply type it into Wikipedia's search box and press Go. If you would like to look around Wikipedia to see what's on it, keep in mind that many major subjects have a root article on the Wikipedia:Contents/Overviews page and an outline on the Wikipedia:Contents/Outlines page. There are some other "Tables of Contents" type pages on Wikipedia. They are:
Wikipedia also has an alphabetical index of all of its articles, and a categorical index of most of them. Wikipedia's community pages include instructions, help contents, policies and guidelines, processes, discussion forums, places to make requests, pages to report problems, and user pages. These are all pages which we use to develop the encyclopedia and to communicate with each other in that mission. We even have an online newspaper, The Signpost, that reports on developments that affect the encyclopedia and its community, from within and abroad.
Some directories to help you find your way around the community are:
WikiProjects are social groups of contributors (anyone may join them), who work together as a team to improve Wikipedia. These groups often focus on a specific topic area (for example, women's history) or a specific kind of task (for example, copyediting). WikiProject are one of the central places for editor collaboration and the organization of specific topics. The English Wikipedia currently has over 2,000 WikiProjects and they all have a variety of tasks to get done (for example, Canadian articles to improve).
Our "Rules"Wikipedia does not employ hard-and-fast rules and there is no need to read any page before editing. However, some standards and behavioural expectations may be enforced. Don't be afraid to contribute as you are encouraged to be bold in editing in a fair and accurate manner (See: Wikipedia:Core content policies for more information)
If you need help...If you've made a mistake and wish to undo it, revert it. Here's how: click history at the top of the page you made the mistake on. Then click on undo at the end of the first line which is your edit. Then publish changes. See more detailed instructions at Help:Reverting. There are two main styles of help on Wikipedia: self-help and assistance... Self-help involves reading the help and instruction pages around Wikipedia. Some very informative self-help pages are:
When you get stuck, confused, or befuddled, assistance is available on Wikipedia's "desk" and "request" pages - use these when self-help hasn't provided you with an answer:
Almost anyone on these lists will help you as well: Tip of the dayHelp reduce the Wikipedia backlog
There are many tasks that need to be done to maintain Wikipedia, from fixing typos, to adding citations, to finding archived versions of dead external links—and many many more. There is a tremendous backlog on all the types of improvements, which can be found on Wikipedia's backlog page. Please help! – – Read more: |
