Getting Started

It is recommended that you create a Wikipedia account before making any edits. While possible to make edits without logging in, access to do so is more restricted. Once an account is created a user should be autoconfirmed, meaning that the account is more than four days old and the user has made ten or more edits.

The following page provides great information about contributing to Wikipedia. As you work, keep the following from the previously linked page in mind:

In general, high-quality articles have these elements: a lead section that gives an easy-to-understand overview, a clear structure, balanced coverage, neutral content, and are based upon and verifiable in reliable sources.

Learn How to Edit (New Way)

Wikipedia has created a way to edit pages which requires a person to not know wiki markup language. If you are interested in doing so, skip down to the “Old Way” sections. Editing in Wikipedia is made much easier by using the Visual Editor (VE). This is basically a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor, similar to Gmail or Microsoft Word. Using it should be familiar to most. There are some limitations to the VE and using it will not completely remove the need to know markdown, but using it should make editing much more straight-forward.

Adding References

This section details how to add references with the VE.

Learn How to Edit (Old Way)

Wikipedia provides many tools to learn how to edit its pages. The tutorials provide you the opportunity and space to learn and practice with the tools/wiki code necessary for editing pages.

a few of those resources will be linked to here. Take the time to practice the wiki markup language in the practice areas. This will make your experience better when you get to editing your real article. Below are some quick links.

Editing Wikipedia Tutorial - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial

Wiki Markup Cheat Sheet - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cheatsheet

Wiki Markup Help - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wiki_markup

Editing Help

Once you login, you will be taken to your home page. The navigation located on the left will be very helpful. Select the “Interaction” drop-down in the navigation to expand it if it is not already expanded. Click on “Help”. This will take you to the main help page. There are a number of resources available to you.

The Editing Wikipedia link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents/Editing_Wikipedia) will take you to a list of links to information about editing wiki pages.

The Getting Started link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents/Getting_started) will take you to a page with information to help you get started editing wiki pages. There is a link to an Editing tutorial on this page. Using the tutorial will help you learn and practice the wiki markup language used to format the pages.

Note: Whenever you write or format something, use "Show preview" to see if your formatting works before you save to make sure that things look the way that you intend.

Each user is given a “sandbox” to practice in. This is a good place to draft articles and practice markup. If you are editing multiple articles you might want to consider creating a subpage.

Linking

Part of the power of Wikipedia is the ability to link to other pages or sites within an article. You can visit the full documentation on linking in Wikipedia here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Link.

As a quick reference, there are two types of links, internal and external. Internal links are links to other wiki pages. External links are links to other web pages or content.

The syntax for creating an internal link is:

• [[a]] gives a (link to a, labeled a).

• [[a|b]] gives b (link to a, labeled b).

External links are written in the form [http://www.example.org link name] (resulting in link name), with the link name separated from the URL by a space.

Links without link names appear numbered: [http://www.example.org] becomes [1].

Links with no square brackets display in their entirety: http://www.example.org .

Adding References

Citing the sources for your article is very important. You can find Wikipedia’s documentation for citing sources at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial/Citing_sources.

As a quick reference:

• Add a reference by typing <ref>Your Source</ref>

• You will also want to create a references list at the end of your article. You can do so by inserting, {{Reflist}} or <references/>.

Inserting Images

Inserting images is done in-line with the text via wiki markup. The general syntax for insterting an image is:

The alt text is used by assistive technologies (automated readers) for those users that cannot see the image(s). Please make sure to include a brief description of the image you are including for those that may need it.

Note: Only logged in users with autoconfirmed accounts can upload images (meaning that the account must be at least four days old, and the user must have made at least ten edits). If you do not have an account, or you have not been autoconfirmed yet, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Files_for_upload.

A helpful link for inserting images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Picture_tutorial