This link has been bookmarked by 20 people . It was first bookmarked on 17 Apr 2007, by Terry Elliott.
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01 Aug 10
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Just the facts, ma'am
Wikipedia isn't a place for opinions, judgements, self-promotion, spam, rumors or speculation. Wikipedia instructs:
Always use a neutral point of view, as Wikipedia is not a place to promote points of view. Write as if the information is a non-judgmental news article.
Cite your sources so others can check and extend your work. Most Wikipedia articles currently lack good references, and this contributes to Wikipedia's single greatest criticism that it is not a reliable source. Please help by researching online and print resources to find references for the article you are working on, then cite them in proper form, and consider in-text citation for contentious facts.At first writing like a reporter may feel awkward to non-journalists, but presenting cited facts and not opinion is core to making Wikipedia a legitimate source. Unfounded opinion or subjective observations in an entry will be deleted. See the Guide to writing better articles at Wikipedia for tips and advice for improving a Wikipedia article.
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So poke around and be bold, but not reckless. You never know what stray facts you may have rattling around in your head that might benefit everyone in a Wikipedia article.
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30 Mar 10
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17 Jan 10
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13 Jan 10
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Over the years, Wikipedia has greatly benefitted me with scads of information about every topic under the sun. However, the prospect of editing the thing seemed scary and mysterious - I mean, who are these people anyway? How does one become an encyclopedia editor? - but there it was, a big honkin' typo staring at me. I was suddenly seized by the responsibility - obligation, really - to fix it. So I took the plunge and hit that edit button.
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To edit a page, you simply click on the edit button at the top of a page, here:
The text of the page will be displayed inside an editable textarea. You'll see some square brackets and other formatting markup; we'll go over that in a minute. For a simple typo, you can just change the word that's misspelled. To preview your changes without saving them, you can hit the "Show Preview" button. (I highly recommend doing this first, even for a little typo correction.) When you're satisfied with your changes, press the "Save this Page" button. Your changes will appear immediately.
Before you hit the Save button for the first time, enter a line summarizing it. Are you deleting spam? Linking text that should've been linked but wasn't? Adding a section? Say so in the Summary field.
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Once you save the page, your change will be noted in Wikipedia's Recent Changes which lists the thousands of Wikipedia edits that happen per hour. Also, the change will be listed in the History section of that particular page. Any revisions can be rolled back and diff'ed against other versions of a page. That's the beauty of Wikipedia: anything can be done and undone and corrected and added to realtime, and there are full logs of all of the activity, time-stamped and available for everyone to view and review. Don't think your change will go unnoticed, because it won't.
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Your Wikipedia user page
Once you get started editing Wikipedia, consider creating a Wikipedia user account. A user account is your community identity, which will be listed next to your changes, and in turn will list all the edits you've made throughout the site in one place.
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My Wikipedia user page reveals that the few changes I've made over time span topics from 1970s films to Brooklyn parks and schools to WNBA players' personal lives.
Everyone's an expert on something; Wikipedia aggregates that expertise and makes it available to everyone.
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Be bold but not reckless
Wikipedia's advice to editors is be bold but don't be reckless. (Pretty good life advice, as well.) The introduction to Wikipedia page says it best:
Don't be afraid to edit pages on Wikipedia anyone can edit, and we encourage users to be bold...but don't be reckless! Find something that can be improved, either in content, grammar or formatting, then fix it. Worried about breaking Wikipedia? Don't be: it can always be fixed or improved later. So go ahead, edit an article and help make Wikipedia the best source of information on the Internet!
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Where help is needed
Wikipedians organize around specific efforts to improve the content of the site, like Project Punctuation and Too-short pages. Also, lists of the most wanted but not yet created articles is available for those of you who want to start your own entries. Explore and find the areas where help is needed the most. Then pitch in where you can.
If all this linkage is overwhelming, then simply start here at the Wikipedia Tutorial, a step-by-step guide to editing, formatting, registration and other wiki functionality.
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31 Oct 05
vikramsjnhow to contribute to Wikipedia and give back to the community which offers so much by way of free information
contributing editing wikipedia encyclopedia deliciousExport20110319
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