Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia

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Create an account

You do not have to log in to read Wikipedia. You do not have to log in even to edit articles on Wikipedia – just about anyone can edit almost any article at any given time, even without logging in, and many long-time contributors do not log in. Nevertheless, creating an account is quick, free and non-intrusive and provides several benefits, as listed at Wikipedia:Why create an account?.

Fix or point out problems

Quite a few people get started on Wikipedia because they are reading an article and they notice an omission, a factual error, or a typo. If you know how to make edits and changes, go ahead, and if you add or change information to an article, please include references, because all unreferenced material is subject to being removed. But if you are not sure what to do, see Wikipedia:How to edit a page; or, go to the talk/discussion page associated with the article, hit the "New section" tab, and make a comment on what you think needs changing. Please remember to end your comment with four tildes like this ~~~~, which will sign and timestamp your comment.

Create new articles

Wikipedia articles contain lots of links to other articles. Blue (or purple, if you have already visited them) links represent pages that do exist. Red links (or tan, if you have already visited them) point to pages that do not yet exist, or have been deleted. Whoever created these links thought that an article on the topic should exist. If this was not a popular idea, the link may have been removed. It is also possible that a spelling error was made, or that they did not know the correct name for an existing page on the same (or a more general) topic. In this case, you could fix the link, and/or create a redirect. If you decide there should be an article at the other end of the link, by all means start writing it!

In addition to looking for red links, you can look at a list of requested articles, and pick one you know something about. (See the section "Where do I start?" below.)

Please read Wikipedia:Starting an article for additional advice about how, why, and when not to create a new article.

For technical help getting started, see Help:Starting a new page.

Merge pages

As said above, many people start editing on Wikipedia because they find an inaccuracy or typo while reading an article. Another problem that readers may encounter is partial and/or duplicated information spread among several similar articles, when all would best be found in a single, unified article. Unlike other websites, this is a Wiki, so if you can fit together some of those parts, go ahead and start merging. Even if you do not want to do a full merge, you can still add a link and comment in the main article where you think each of those parts should be merged in, and let another editor complete the merge if they determine it is beneficial. See also: Articles to merge.

Note: Please use the sandbox if you want to experiment (or just to mess around). Only edit articles where needed.

Make a donation

Wikipedia is in constant need of more server capacity, bandwidth and other technical services to keep it running and fast enough to be useful. Financial contributions to our non-profit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, are greatly appreciated. Please see http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising

Publicize Wikipedia

See Wikipedia:Building Wikipedia membership for ideas.

Help other users

Even new users can help answer factual questions on the Wikipedia:Reference desk, which serves the same purpose as a reference desk you might find in your local library. (You might also think of it as the Wikipedia version of Yahoo Answers or Windows Live QnA.) You do not have to be an expert on Wikipedia because:

  • You can help people find answers in existing Wikipedia articles.
  • If you know the answer to a question not answered by Wikipedia, you can assist the questioner and at the same time, add that information to Wikipedia for the benefit of future readers.
  • If you do not know the answer to an interesting question, you can research it in non-Wikipedia sources, and then improve Wikipedia for the benefit of the questioner and future readers.

If you already have some experience, your assistance in one of the many Wikipedia help forums, including Wikipedia:Help desk, would be a valuable contribution. You can help Wikipedia grow by helping other people share what they know.

Where do I start?

Start with a list of things that need doing

[edit]

Here are some tasks you can do:


Resources for maintenance and collaboration
 v • d • e 
Cleanup General - By topic - Copy to Wiktionary - Notability Sorting - English grammar - Copyediting - Spam - Cleanup Taskforce - Wikify an article - Deorphan an article - Update an article
Categories General cleanup - Articles to be categorized - Underpopulated - Undercategorized categories
Create an article Most wanted - Requests 1 year+ - Requested articles - Short pages - Missing encyclopedic topics - Review anonymous article submissions
Referencing Fact-check - Articles lacking sources - Need more references - Original research
Stubs Advice - Stubs by topic - Most wanted - Short pages - Incomplete lists
Deletion Speedy - Articles - Categories - Redirects - Templates - Misc. pages - Stub templates and categories - Log - Discussion archives - Review
Polishing Expand an article - Peer review - Featured candidates - Fill a topic list
Translation into English Wikipedia:Translation - Existing pages - Spanish trans. of the week - Interwiki link checker
Images Requested pictures - Images for cleanup - Caption review - Images with missing articles
Controversy Neutrality - Article accuracy - Statement accuracy
To-do lists Articles - Projects - Books
Disambiguation Disambiguation - Manual of Style Disambiguation - Hatnotes - Templates
More Active wiki fixup projects - Open tasks - Articles to merge - Articles to split - Copyright violations - Requests - Backlogs - Expert request sorting - Missing names

The tables you see above and to the right contain a wealth of starting points loaded with lists of things to do on Wikipedia.

You may be interested to join in one of the collaborations of the week, or the Wikipedia:Article improvement drive, featured on Wikipedia:Community Portal.

Category:Wikipedia maintenance also lists a variety of tasks.

Category:Incomplete lists is the place to start if you would enjoy making or finishing lists.

Start with what you know

Visit Wikipedia:Pages needing attention to find a list of articles by topic. These often need contributions from people who know something about the subject!

Make a list of everything you know. Strike through the things that are not verifiable or not supposed to be covered by Wikipedia. Then, find the proper places to write about the items remaining on the list. Use the go button, the search, or just navigate by following links. Click the "What links here" link on pages you visit.

Things you might know about...

  • Things you have already done research on. Have you written a thesis, essay, or school paper? Consider contributing the fruits of your efforts to related Wikipedia articles. You probably do not want to dump the raw text of your essay into the wiki. First of all, there will almost certainly be an existing article which you will want to merge your content into. Secondly, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Articles that are not written in an encyclopedic style should be rewritten that way, or at least tagged {{cleanup-tone}}. Also keep in mind that Wikipedia is not a place to post original research. This means that if you make a new discovery or come up with a new theory, you should find someplace else to post it. What we are about is researching and summarizing ideas and information that have already been publicized elsewhere. Most papers written up to the undergraduate level do exactly this. For technical help, see Wikipedia:How to import articles.
  • Current events. Wikipedia articles constantly need to be updated to reflect recent developments. Wikipedia also has an important role to serve in publishing background information that helps people understand current events and issues. If you hear a news story on your favorite news source (check out Google News if you don't have one), check Wikipedia's coverage on the topic! Remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia; if you want to write your own news stories, use Wikinews.
  • Do you know a foreign language? Add interlanguage links to articles! Translate an article or two! Or check out one of the many translation tasks listed under the "Start with a list of things that need doing" section, above.
  • Your college or university. Find its article on the list of colleges and universities.
  • Specific countries, provinces, counties, cities, and towns. Maybe one you have lived in, maybe one you like to visit. Start with the list of countries to find a place of interest. (But remember Wikipedia is not a travel guide; see Wikitravel for that.)
  • What are your favorite subjects in history, entertainment, or sports?
  • What are your favorite books (especially non-fiction)?
  • Do you know anything about your local political or religious leaders? Find them on one of the lists of office-holders.
  • Are you a fan of anyone who should have an encyclopedia article? Find them on one of the lists of people. Are they properly indexed according to birth and death date?

Start with outside research

Feed your appetite for knowledge. Pick a subject about which you know relatively little but have always been curious or want to remedy a guilty ignorance. If you already know a lot about something, the best references in the field might know more, or might be a helpful reference for other readers or helpful to you in your writing.

Try to find good online and print resources, both books and magazines. Using good references is a way of improving Wikipedia, which will be increasingly important as Wikipedia grows and becomes more and more relevant. Then cite your sources. By citing sources you avoid copyright violations and plagiarism as long as you use only acceptable portions of other works. Doing research also makes it easier to think of material to add and allows you to improve any article, even one you did not know much about.

Write about something you do not know about. Use this as an excuse to research a new topic. As you learn about it, write what you are learning here on Wikipedia. This is actually a good study aid because it forces you to take notes, to organize information, and to put what you have learned into your own words. You can take how to write a great article as a guide.

Find something from a public domain resource, update it, add links to it, and put it here (but make sure it really is not copyrighted – see Wikipedia copyrights).

Things you might want to learn about:

Class assignments wanted

Main article: Wikipedia:School and university projects

If you are a professor or teacher at a school or university, we encourage you to use Wikipedia in your class to demonstrate how an open content website works. You are not the first person to do so, and many of these projects have resulted in both advancing the students' knowledge and useful content being added to Wikipedia. An advantage of this over regular homework is that students are dealing with real world situations, which is not only educational but also is motivational ("the world gets to see my work"), probably resulting in increased dedication. Besides, it will give students a chance to collaborate on course notes and papers, and their effort might remain online for reference, instead of being discarded and forgotten as is usual with paper coursework, or classroom systems which are routinely reinitialized.

Programmers wanted

Programming skills are especially valuable, to help write useful standalone scripts, or to improve the software that runs Wikipedia.

Thank you very much

Your positive contributions are what make Wikipedia possible.