How to Contribute to Wikipedia

Do you want to create a Wikipedia page, but don’t know where to start? Having a Wikipedia page is a great way to increase your online presence and manage your online reputation for yourself or your business. It also helps add to the encyclopedia of free knowledge that the site is known for. If you have never edited or created a Wikipedia page before, it is pretty easy to get started.

How to become a Wikipedia contributor

Becoming a Wikipedia contributor is designed to be simple for people with knowledge about a particular subject to add to it. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation Inc, a non profit organization that believes in accessible knowledge for everyone. The website is designed in such a way that people from all over the world can contribute their knowledge to the website.

Can anyone edit Wikipedia?

Anyone in the world is allowed to edit pretty much any Wikipedia article. Even if you don’t have an account, Wikipedia will list your IP address if you make edits to an existing article. You will however need an account in order to create new pages and have edits credited to your username.

There are over 34 million people who are registered with Wikipedia, and about 100,000 of those make regular contributions to articles. You can be one of those people too!

How often does Wikipedia get updated?

Updates to information on Wikipedia are frequent. According to Wikipedia, there are over 6 million articles on the site, and information is edited by someone every two seconds. Information is constantly being added to the site, but some of that includes Wikipedia Vandalism, which you should be wary of.

How to get a Wikipedia Page

If you want to create a Wikipedia page about a certain topic that hasn’t already been written about, you just need to sign up and add your article. However, it is not advised to create a Wikipedia page for yourself, as this goes against Wikipedia’s conflict of interest guidelines. Read this article to learn about how to get your Wikipedia article approved.

Contributing to Wikipedia – A Step-By-Step Process

1. Create an account with Wikipedia.
2. Understand Wikipedia’s Five Pillars. This includes some guidelines to help you write your article and make edits. These are policies and not hard rules, but you must agree to the terms of Wikipedia.
3. If you are completely new to editing, try the Wikipedia Adventure. This is an interactive game that teaches you all of the editing basics. There is also a cheat sheet to help you learn wiki text.
4. In order to unlock all of the features of your account, you will need to have your account open for 4 days and make 10 edits to existing articles.
5. There are two ways to make edits to Wikipedia pages. You can use the classic editor, which uses wiki markup, also known as wiki text. You can also use VisualEditor for a more beginner-friendly option.
6. Since anyone is allowed to edit on Wikipedia, editors may at times disagree about updates to articles. If you want to discuss something with another editor, you can use the talk page.
7. One of the most important things when it comes to writing Wikipedia articles is citing your sources. Everything that you claim in your article has to be backed up by an outside, reliable source.

How to cite a Wikipedia Page

When you write a Wikipedia article, it is important to properly cite every piece of information you put into it. Without proper citations, your article may not get approved. Follow these citation tips when writing your article:

• Articles have no credibility without the proper citation of outside sources. Everything you write in the article must be neutral and factual. Without sources, the information could be taken down by another editor.
• Do not cite other Wikipedia articles as sources in your article. Wikipedia gains credibility from outside sources.
• Do not cite self-published work. This is especially important when creating a Wikipedia article for yourself or your business.
• Wikipedia articles should not be original research. The information needs to be sourced from previously published work.
• Good examples of sources include books, articles, news stories, blog posts, textbooks, and documentaries.

How to cite Wikipedia In Text

Sometimes you find really good information on Wikipedia that you would like to use for your article or other research paper. Here are some tips for how to cite Wikipedia in text:

• Colleges and universities do not recommend that their students directly cite a Wikipedia page. You also can not cite another Wikipedia page in your Wikipedia article.
• Click on the footnote for the piece of information that you want to use. The page will scroll down to the source link.
• Click on the link and read through the source to decide if you can use it.
• Use that source directly for your in-text citation.

In Closing:

Wikipedia makes it really simple for people from all over the world to contribute to their free source of knowledge.  By following these steps, you can get starting contributing to Wikipedia today. If you need help creating an article, a Wikipedia specialist could be a good investment for you or your business.