What are the four general rules at Wikipedia?
The four general rules are to respect your fellow Wikipedians, remain neutral, cite your sources, and to ignore a rule if it prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia.
Why can't I edit some particular pages?
Some pages that have been vandalized repeatedly are semi-protected, meaning that editing by new or unregistered users is prohibited through technical measures. If you have an account that is four days old and has made at least 10 edits, then you can bypass semi-protection and edit any semi-protected page. Some pages, such as highly visible templates, are fully-protected, meaning that only administrators can edit them.
Where can I experiment with editing Wikipedia?
How do I create an article?
Please use the Article Wizard to create one, then add references to the article as explained below.
What are references, sources, and citations all about?
All claims must be supported by a book, website, or news organization independent of the subject of the article. The source must be reliable, meaning it cannot be a blog, MySpace page, or personal website. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to prove that an inaccurate statement is true, and that it should stay in the article. The policy regarding this states that the statement has to be verifiable, not necessarily true. See Wikipedia:Verifiability for more information.
How do I insert a reference into an article?

For inline references:

  1. Do a search on Ask.com, Google, or your preferred search engine for the subject of the article that you want to put a reference in.
  2. Click 'Edit this page' or 'Edit' in the Wikipedia article, and insert a claim into that article stating a fact about the subject. Don't click the save button just yet.
  3. In the search you did in step 1, find a website that supports the claim you made in step 2. Highlight the address in the address bar (where it says http://www.some-website.com/some-page.htm).
  4. Go to the reference generator, click on the 'An arbitrary website' bubble, and fill out the as many fields as you can. Then click 'Get reference wiki text'.
  5. Highlight, and then copy (Ctrl+C or Apple+C), the resulting text.
  6. In the article, after the claim you made in step 2, paste (Ctrl+V or Apple+V) the text you copied in step 5.
  7. If the article does not have a References, Footnotes, Notes, or Bibliography section, then add this below the See Also section and above the External Links section:

==References==
{{Reflist}}

For references put at the end of an article:

  1. Do a search on Ask.com, Google, or your preferred search engine for the subject of the article that you want to put a reference in.
  2. In the search, find a website that supports the claims made in the article. Highlight the address in the address bar (where it says http://www.some-website.com/some-page.htm).
  3. Go to the reference generator, click on the 'An arbitrary website' bubble, and fill out the as many fields as you can. Then click 'Get reference wiki text'.
  4. Highlight, and then copy (Ctrl+C or Apple+C), the resulting text.
  5. Go to the Wikipedia article. If the article does not have a References, Footnotes, Notes, or Bibliography section, then add this below the See Also section and above the External Links section:

==References==
{{Reflist}}

Then, add this after the {{Reflist}}, in a new line:

{{Refbegin}}
*Press paste (Ctrl+V or Apple+V) after this asterisk, then remove the <ref></ref> tags

{{Refend}}
What is a WikiProject, and how do I join one?
A WikiProject is a group of editors that are interested in improving the coverage of certain topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to help, add your username to the list that is on the bottom of the WikiProject page.
How do I format text on Wikipedia?

Again, Welcome!

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Hello, Robert Bin Peters, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Our intro page provides helpful information for new users—please check it out! If you need help, visit Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on this page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Happy editing!--S. Rich (talk) 06:39, 19 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

December 2011

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  Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, talk pages are meant to be a record of a discussion; deleting or editing legitimate comments, as you did at Talk:Norm Chow, is considered bad practice, even if you meant well. Even making spelling and grammatical corrections in others' comments is generally frowned upon, as it tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Discussions are typically not deleted. If an issue is resolved, you can mark it using a template like {{resolved}}Bagumba (talk) 09:34, 22 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

  Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. Regarding your edits to Human Terrain System, it is recommended that you use the preview button before you save; this helps you find any errors you have made, reduces edit conflicts, and prevents clogging up recent changes and the page history. Thank you. Specifically, this edit [1] removed the "Stantonbook" citation data which created a big red line down in the footnotes. It's fixed now, but please be sure to look at the entire article with the preview button, or at the very least after you complete your edits. Thanks. --S. Rich (talk) 01:03, 29 December 2011 (UTC) PS: I'm kicking myself for not noticing it earlier! 01:04, 29 December 2011 (UTC)Reply