Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia
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Who writes Wikipedia
Volunteers do not need any formal training before creating a new article or editing an existing article. The people who create and edit articles in Wikipedia come from countries all around the world and have a wide range of ages and backgrounds. Anyone who contributes to this encyclopedia is called a "Wikipedian". 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, and until citations are supplied, readers of the article cannot verify the content in question. When a number of people are working to compile information on a given topic, disputes will arise. 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 exist. 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 so that all valid perspectives can be 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, and the perspective, of people who contributed to the article. You may also consult the talk page of any article to see what other readers and editors have to say about it. Some articles that have been edited by many people are shown in the list of featured articles. These articles were granted "featured" status because they were considered to be of high quality. (If later edits reduce the quality of a featured article, a user can nominate an article for removal from the list.) 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 to improve articlesWhen you find an article that is incomplete or inaccurate, you can edit the article to 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 yet 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 editors who have a good understanding of a particular subject often contribute paragraphs or whole articles at a time. These people range from university professors to well-informed amateurs and hobbyists. New or casual readers of Wikipedia will often spot small errors in articles as they pass through, and fix them, but other casual users are just curious to see whether they can really edit Wikipedia, and they often add unhelpful or rude comments, which are generally removed quickly by other editors. [edit] Who keeps order?Most Wikipedia editors discuss article content or improve each other's work in a constructive fashion. Most mistakes or bad edits are corrected by someone who notices them and changes them back or cleans them up. Wikipedia 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 (jokes and deliberately incorrect edits), advertisements, personal attacks, disputes which result in edit wars (where editors change an article back and forth, and fight instead of discussing), and other disruptive behavior. To deal with these cases, over a thousand Wikipedia administrators have the power to protect (lock from editing) articles, and to block individual editors. These administrators are chosen through community discussion to enforce the site's policies and guidelines. The administrator power is granted by bureaucrats upon a successful request for adminship. 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. Always be bold! [edit] See also
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