Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

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wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...

, meaning anyone can edit nearly any page and improve articles immediately. You do not need to register to do this, and anyone who has edited is known as a ''Wikipedia:Wikipedians, Wikipedian'' or ''editor.'' Small edits add up, and every editor can be proud to have made Wikipedia better for all. There are two editing interfaces: the new Wikipedia:VisualEditor, VisualEditor (VE) and classic Help:Wikitext, wikitext editing (wiki markup), which uses the Help:Introduction to editing with Wiki Markup/1, Source Editor.

Editing articles

Content style and policies

An Wikipedia:Writing better articles#Information style and tone, encyclopedic style with a Wikipedia:Writing better articles#Tone, formal tone is important: straightforward, Wikipedia:Summary style, just-the-facts, instead of essay-like, argumentative, or opinionated. The goal of a Wikipedia article is to create a comprehensive and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, neutrally written summary of existing mainstream knowledge about a topic. Wikipedia does not publish Wikipedia:No original research, original research. An encyclopedia is, by its nature, a tertiary source that provides a survey of information already published in the wider world. Ideally, all information should be Wikipedia:Citing sources, cited and Wikipedia:Verifiability, verifiable by Wikipedia:Reliable sources, reliable sources. Sourcing requirements are significantly stricter in Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons, articles on living persons.

Edit screen(s)

Editing most Wikipedia pages is simple. Wikipedia uses two interface methods: classic editing with the Help:Introduction to editing with Wiki Markup/1, Source Editor through Help:Wikitext, wikitext (wiki markup), and a new Wikipedia:VisualEditor, VisualEditor (VE). Wikitext editing using the Source Editor is chosen by clicking the Edit source tab at the top of a Wikipedia page (or on a Help:Section, section-edit link). This opens an editable copy of the page, showing all the wikitext used there, and the Source Editor toolbar offers simple menu options to add or change the formatting. Wikitext is used extensively throughout Wikipedia for such things as Help:Link, hyperlinks, Help:Table, tables and Help:Columns, columns, Help:Footnotes, footnotes, Wikipedia:Inline citation, inline citation, Help:Special characters, special characters and so on. The Source Editor lets users toggle on 'wikitext highlighting' which uses different colours to help differentiate article text from wikitext. The VisualEditor option is intended as a user-friendly, "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) editing aid, allowing one to edit pages without the need to learn wikitext markup. It is available only to registered, logged-in users through an opt-in choice available through Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures, personal preferences. See the Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide, VisualEditor user guide for more information. File:How to edit a page Edit box.png, alt=Text in a large rectangle below two toolbars and next to a scrollbar., Edit box showing the Help:Wikitext, wikitext markup. You can change the formatting and contents of the page by changing what is written in this box. File:Wikipedia article in VisualEditor 2018-02-12.png, Screenshot showing the same article in Wikipedia:VisualEditor, VisualEditor. Unlike the wikitext display, VisualEditor will show the text being edited almost as if it were already published. The Wikipedia community has developed Wikipedia:Manual of Style, style guidelines to make articles and facts appear in a standardized form, and Wikipedia easier to use as a whole. A basic list of Help:Wikitext, wikitext can be found on the Help:Cheatsheet, cheatsheet. An "Help:Edit toolbar, edit toolbar" is provided just above the edit box (pictured below), which allows logged-in users (by selecting the option in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, personal preferences) to automatically place and format various aspects of wiki code. See Help:Wikitext for more information, remember that you can't break Wikipedia, and, although there are many protocols, Wikipedia:Editing policy#Wikipedia is a work in progress: perfection is not required, perfection is not required, as Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a work in progress, Wikipedia is a work in progress. WikiEditor-advanced menu-en

When you have finished editing, you should write a short Help:Edit summary, edit summary in the small field below the edit box (pictured below). You may use shorthand to describe your changes, as described in the Wikipedia:Edit summary legend, legend. To see how the page looks with your edits, press the "Show preview" button. To see the differences between the page with your edits and the previous version of the page, press the "Show changes" button. If you're satisfied with what you see, Wikipedia:Be bold, be bold and press the "Publish changes" button. Your changes will immediately be visible to all Wikipedia users. Note: Do not sign the edit summary line with your ~~~~ signature, as it does not work there.

Minor edits

A check to the "minor edit" box signifies that only superficial differences exist between the version with your edit and the previous version: typo/grammar corrections, formatting and presentational changes, rearranging of text without modifying content, etc. A ''minor edit'' is a version that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. The "minor edit" option is one of several Wikipedia:Why create an account?#New editing options, options available only to Help:Logging in, registered users. Editors should not feel that marking a change as minor devalues their effort to edit.

Major edits

All editors are encouraged to Wikipedia:Be bold, be bold and strong, but there are several things that a user can do to ensure that major edits are performed smoothly. Before engaging in a major edit, a user should consider discussing proposed changes on the article discussion/talk page. During the edit, if doing so over an extended period, the tag can reduce the likelihood of an edit conflict. Once the edit has been completed, the inclusion of an Help:Edit summary, edit summary will assist in documenting the changes. These steps will help all to ensure that major edits are well received by the Wikipedia community. A major edit should be reviewed to confirm that it is consensual to all concerned editors. Therefore, any change that affects the ''meaning'' of an article is major (not minor), even if the edit is a single word. There are no necessary terms to which you have to agree when doing major edits, but the preceding recommendations have become best practice. If you do it your own way, the likelihood of your edits being reedited may be higher. When performing a large edit, it is suggested that you periodically, and before pressing "Publish changes", copy your edits into an external text editor (preferably one without formatting, such as Windows Notepad). This ensures that in the case of a browser crash, you will not lose your work. If you are adding substantial amounts of work, it is also a good idea to publish changes in stages.

Adding references

Generally, sources are added directly after the facts they support at the end of the sentence and after any punctuation. Wikipedia permits editors to use any citation system that allows the reader to understand where the information came from and strongly encourages the use of Wikipedia:Inline citation, inline citations to do so. Common methods of placing inline citations include Help:Footnotes, footnotes, Help:Shortened footnotes, shortened footnotes and Wikipedia:Citing sources#Parenthetical referencing, parenthetical references. Inline citations are most commonly placed by inserting a reference between tags, directly in the text of an article. The reference is a footnote, appearing as an inline link (e.g. ^[1][2]) to a particular item in a collated, numbered list of footnotes, found wherever a template or tag is present, usually in a section titled "References" or "Notes". If you are creating a new page or adding references to a page that didn't previously have any, don't forget to add a references section with this display markup. There are a number of tools available to help with citation placement and formatting, some of which are internal tools and scripts, while others are available from external sites. For an example of the former, Wikipedia:RefToolbar, RefToolbar is a JavaScript toolbar displayed above the edit box that provides the ability to automatically fill out various Wikipedia:Citation templates, citation templates and insert them in the text already formatted inside ... tags. For an example of the latter, th
Wikipedia DOI and Google Books Citation Maker
converts a digital object identifier (DOI) or Google Books address (URL) into a filled-out or template ready to be pasted into an article. See Help:Citation tools for many others.

Adding images, sounds, and videos

A file that is already hosted on Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Commons can be inserted with the basic code . (Image: can be substituted for File: with no change in effect; the choice between the two is purely a matter of editorial preference.) Using thumb generates a thumbnail of an image (the most common placement option), which is typically sized differently from the original image. The Wikimedia Commons' Commons:Special:UploadWizard, File Upload Wizard and Wikipedia's Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard, File Upload Wizard will guide you through the process of submitting media. There are various file formats available.

Article creation

Before Help:Your first article, starting a new article, please understand Wikipedia:Notability, Wikipedia's notability requirements. In short, the topic of an article must have already been the subject of publication in Wikipedia:Reliable sources, reliable sources, such as books published by major publishing houses, newspapers, magazines, peer-reviewed scholarly journals and websites that meet the same requirements as reputable print-based sources. Information on Wikipedia must be verifiable; if no reliable Wikipedia:Independent sources, third-party sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article. Wikipedia's concept of notability applies this basic standard to avoid Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, indiscriminate inclusion of topics. An Wikipedia:Article wizard, Article Wizard is available to help you create articles — it is not required but will help you construct better articles. Note: The ability to create articles directly in mainspace Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed article creation trial/Request for comment on permanent implementation, is restricted to autoconfirmed users, though non-confirmed users and non-registered users can submit a proposed article through the Wikipedia:Articles for creation, Articles for Creation process, where it will be reviewed and considered for publication. Before creating an article, please Help:Searching, search Wikipedia first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject, and please also review the Wikipedia:Article titles, article titling policy for guidance on what to name the article.

Talk pages

Every article on Wikipedia has a Help:Talk pages, talk page, reached by clicking the "Talk" tab just above the title (for example, Talk:Alexander the Great). There, editors can discuss improvements to the content of an article. If you ever make a change that gets Wikipedia:Reverting, reverted by another editor, discuss the change on the talk page! The Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle, BOLD, revert, discuss cycle is a popular method of reaching consensus. It is very important that you conduct yourself with Wikipedia:Civility, civility and Wikipedia:Assume good faith, assume good faith on the part of others. Wikipedia:Edit warring, Edit warring (repeatedly overriding or reimplementing contributions) is highly discouraged. Most other Wikipedia:Namespace, types of pages on Wikipedia also have associated talk pages, including the Wikipedia:User pages, User page each editor is assigned once they sign up. When other editors need to contact you, they will usually do this by leaving a message on Special:MyTalk, your talk page. When someone has left you a message that way, you will see a notice the next time you log in or view a page on Wikipedia. :Sign your contributions to a Talk page by using four tildes (~~~~), which produces your username and a time/date stamp.

Protected pages and source code

Some pages are Help:Protection, protected from editing. These pages have a "View source" tab instead of an "Edit" tab. You can still edit these pages indirectly by submitting an Wikipedia:Edit requests, edit request—an editor with the permission to edit the protected page will respond to it. To submit an edit request, click on the protected page's "View source" tab and then the "Submit an edit request" link at the bottom right.

Policies and conventions

Wikipedia:List of policies, Policies, Wikipedia:List of guidelines, guidelines, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Contents, formatting norms are developed by the community to describe the best practices, to clarify principles, resolve conflicts, and otherwise further our goals. Make sure that you submit information that is relevant to Wikipedia's specific purpose, or your content might be deleted. You can always use the Help:Talk pages, talk pages to ask questions or check to see if your idea will be accepted. Please make note of which license will cover your contributions.

Notes

Some pages are Wikipedia:Protection policy, protected from editing and marked by a lock icon at the top right. If you are not allowed to edit the page, it will have a "View source" instead of an "Edit" tab. You can still edit these pages indirectly by submitting an Wikipedia:Edit requests, edit request: click "View source", then "Submit an edit request" at the bottom right, and an editor that is authorized to edit the page will respond to your request. {{Wikipedia community Wikipedia how-to, Editing, Help Wikipedia basic information, Editing, Help Wikipedia editing,