Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Who writes Wikipedia
Unlike with other encyclopedias, the volunteer authors of Wikipedia articles don't have to be experts or scholars, although some certainly are. They can be anyone, including you! Volunteers do not need any formal training before creating a new article or editing an existing article. Many people have created or edited articles in Wikipedia. They come from countries all around the world, from all ages and backgrounds. Anyone who contributes to this encyclopedia is called a "Wikipedian" or "Wiki." It is Wikipedia policy to add to the encyclopedia only statements that are verifiable, and not to add original research. The Wikipedia style guide encourages editors to cite sources. Sometimes Wikipedians do not follow these policies because they forget or because they are not aware of the policy. Then readers of the article cannot be sure that a statement is verifiable. When a number of people are working to compile information on a given topic, disputes will inevitably arise from time to time. A useful feature of Wikipedia is the ability to tag an article or a section of an article as being the subject of a dispute about a neutral point of view. This feature is especially popular for controversial topics, topics subject to changing current events or other topics where divergent opinions are possible. To resolve the dispute, the interested editors will share their points of view on the article's talk page. They will attempt to reach consensus about how to edit so that both their perspectives are fairly represented. This allows Wikipedia to be a place not only of information but of collaboration. Many users of Wikipedia consult the page history of an article in order to assess the number of people who have contributed to the article. An article can be considered more likely to be accurate when it has been edited by many different people (since most edits are constructive changes rather than destructive ones). You may also consult the talk page of any article to see what other readers and editors have to say about it. One list of articles that has been edited by many people is the list of featured articles. These articles are considered to be of high quality when they are granted featured article status, and if later edits reduce the quality of the page a user can nominate an article for removal from that special status. The best way to decide whether a particular statement is accurate is to find independent, reliable sources to affirm that statement, such as books, magazine articles, television news stories, trade journals or web sites. For more guidance on evaluating the accuracy of Wikipedia articles, see Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia. [edit] How Wikipedians improve articlesWhenever a reader finds something in an article that he or she doesn't think should be there, that person can edit the article and help make Wikipedia more accurate and useful. Someone may place a notice at the top of the article indicating that it needs to be cleaned up. It is also possible to create a new article to share information that is not already in Wikipedia. When they first hear about Wikipedia, many people think that articles are created by people adding a few words at a time. Many edits are very minor and just fix spelling, rephrase a sentence or add a fact or two. But some editors who are interested in a particular subject contribute paragraphs or whole articles at a time; these editors might be professors, hobbyists or just someone wanting to fill a hole in the encyclopedia. Assembling text piece by piece doesn't necessarily take into account the bigger picture, so sometimes an editor will reorganize an article or rewrite it, keeping the same facts but making them flow more smoothly. Material also sometimes needs to be moved into other articles for any of these reasons: if it's been put in the wrong place, if one article has become too big and needs to be split up, if two articles on the same subject have accidentally been created or if there are many small articles that need to be combined into one larger one. Profanity is usually removed immediately. [edit] Who keeps order?Most Wikipedia editors discuss article content in a friendly way or gingerly improve each other's work. Most mistakes or bad edits are corrected by someone who notices them and changes them back or cleans them up. Publicly available tools like the recent changes page and personal watchlists help editors find bad edits without having to continually check all the pages on the site. Some problems are more serious, including vandalism (blatant stupidity, jokes that aren't funny, placing pornography in articles, deliberate defacement or falsification), disputes which result in edit wars (where editors change an article back and forth and fight instead of discussing), and disruptive behavior. To deal with these cases, over a thousand Wikipedia administrators have the power to protect (lock) articles, and to block individual editors. These administrators are elected by the community to enforce the site's policies and guidelines. The administrator power is granted by a small number of bureaucrats and stewards, who in turn have been granted their power by developers - the volunteers (and two paid employees) who have physical or online access to the servers that power the site. The hardware that runs the site is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, a charitable organization financed by your donations. The Board of Trustees and the site founder Jimmy Wales oversee all the projects of the foundation, which is not limited to the encyclopedias. They have largely delegated authority for arbitrating day-to-day disputes on the English Wikipedia to our local Arbitration Committee, a collection of appointed and elected volunteers who act like judges in a court. (You might think of the community of administrators as the local volunteer police force - they have special but limited powers, and their actions are subject to review by the court and by each other.) Be Bold! Become a Wikipedian! [edit] See also
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