User:Pseudomonas/No-links beginners' guide to Wikipedia

This is a one-page guide to contributing to Wikipedia.

What should go in?

In short: anything that you'd expect to find in an encyclopaedia, but not things about you, your friends, your company, or any enterprise you're personally involved in. As a rough guide, if you can back it up with a reference to published material (books, newspapers, reputable independent websites, etc.), it's OK. Since you can, you should always cite your references, since they allow others to trust your work.

Backing up your statements with published material is not the same as copying word-for-word. If you're copying your own words from elsewhere, it's a good idea to say so (so that others don't get the wrong impression). Intellectual property issues are very important to Wikipedia.

All previous versions of the page are saved - it's impossible for you to mess things up in a way that can't easily be undone.

Writing style

Assume your audience is intelligent but without any specialist knowledge. If you use a specialist term that already has an article, it helps your readers if you link to it. If it doesn't, consider taking a sentence to explain it.

Stick to the facts, not your ideas and opinions. An encyclopaedia is a place where people learn facts to form their own ideas and opinions. So it's not a good idea to say Jane Q. Somebody is the best writer ever; it's perfectly fine to say According to the New York Review of Books, Jane Q. Somebody has sold more books than any other living writer. Adding a reference to the relevant issue of the New York Review of Books is even better.

References

Click on the button above the edit box. Choose the appropriate category (Web, Book, News, or Journal) and fill in the blanks. You don't need to fill them all in, but at least if your source has a web address ("URL") put that in. A reference will be inserted into the edit box at your current position.

... and, towards the end of the article, if there isn't a reference section already, add:

== References ==
{{reflist}}

Interacting with other users

Everyone working on wikipedia is a normal person contributing in their spare time. It's safe to assume that other users are basically well-intentioned - you'll see the phrase "Assume Good Faith". If you do run into someone who's having a bad day, don't let it spoil your day too.

Unfortunately, some people do make deliberately unhelpful changes. There is a team of people who find and undo ("revert") these changes. Putting in an edit summary helps your change be identified as constructive, especially if you're making extensive changes.

For instance, you might write:

spelling fix
fleshed out para on widgets
removed obvious vandalism
added reference
added para. copied from my own website at http://example.com/widgets
add wikilink
changed date of birth to 1949 to agree with [[Jane Q. Somebody]]

If you're having difficulties, you can ask any editing questions at Wikipedia:Help desk. You can probably expect an answer within an hour (unless it's a really complicated question).

If your change gets reverted

Don't take it personally. Sometimes people revert changes by mistake. If someone disagrees with or reverts your changes, you can look in the page history, find the person who made the change, and ask them about it directly by using the "Talk" link after their name. Remember they're an ordinary person just like you (and your changes can easily be recovered if it was them slipping up).

At the top of every page there's a "discussion" tab, leading to the article's talk page. This is a good place to see what discussions have already been had about the article and talk with other people who are working on it.

Editing existing text

The main thing to bear in mind is that the text as you find it isn't sacred - if you can edit it to make it better, go ahead. Of course, this applies to the next person to come along after you as well!

The article shouldn't turn into a discussion between contributors - if things need changing, change them in the article; if you want to say "this needs changing", then do that on the talk page.

If a statement has a reference, beware of changing the text so the reference incorrectly appears to support the new version.

Formatting

When you are editing a page, you'll see various characters that don't appear in the article, such as [[ ]] enclosing a link to another [[Article]] or == around a ==heading== . Don't worry about these - you can insert basic formatting using the buttons above the edit box, and you'll pick up the rest as you need them. It's OK to add please help with formatting to your edit summary.

It's a good idea to use the "Show preview" button to check that the page looks as you intended it to (but do use the "Save page" button eventually!).

 

If you have a specific problem or question, there's an enormous amount of documentation here. Please don't feel you need to read it all before editing, though - and if you can't find what you're looking for, feel free to ask other editors at the Helpdesk