Calcoolidgefan

Finding things to edit

How are you even supposed to find things that need editing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Calcoolidgefan (talk • contribs) August 21, 2012

Hi, and welcome to Wikipedia. I left you a longer welcome message below, but in answer to your specific question, there are a few ways that come to mind to find something to edit.

What got me started was reading an article on something I knew something about, and realizing it either had errors, unclear language, or was missing some important stuff. Then I edited it to correct that.

I also occasionally look for some "favorite errors" to fix: like misspelling the school Juilliard as "Julliard"; or, another one of my favorites, the word "eighth" misspelled as 'eigth".

You can also look into some of the clean-up categories, like Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating or Category:Wikipedia cleanup. But that's kind of hit-or-miss: if you don't know anything about the subject in the article, most are hard to clean up.

All in all, I think you should start with that first option: reading and correcting errors or adding additional material. In any event, welcome and good luck!. TJRC (talk) 22:24, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Welcome

Hello, Calcoolidgefan! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already excited about Wikipedia, you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field when making edits to pages. Happy editing! TJRC (talk) 22:13, 24 August 2012 (UTC) Getting Started The five pillars of Wikipedia • Tutorial • Your first article How to: edit a page • upload an image Getting Help Frequently Asked Questions New contributors' help page Where to: ask questions • make requests Request administrator attention Policies and Guidelines Neutral point of view • Reliable sources Verifiability • Citing sources • No original research What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Simplified Manual of Style • Three-revert rule Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism • Sock puppetry Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The Community Community Portal • Adopt-a-user program Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • Resolving disputes Build consensus • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Things to do Be bold in editing • Help develop an article Maintenance • Peer review • Requested articles Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism Miscellaneous Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts