Wikipedia:Welcoming committee/Welcome to Wikipedia
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Welcome to Wikipedia...Welcome aboard! We're glad you wish to help develop Wikipedia, and hope you enjoy participating in its community as much as we do. As a new contributor however, you may feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer size and scope of this project... but don't worry, it will become easier and clearer as you go, and if you have any problems, there will always be other Wikipedians happy to help. There are some resources set forth below to help you get started. Good luck and have fun! -- The Wikipedia Welcoming Committee
If you do get stuck, there are volunteers available to answer your questions on the following pages. You can usually expect an answer quickly, often within just a few minutes:
We also have a copy of a published book, at Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, if you would like to know a bit about how things are done. There is also a tutorial that can guide you step-by-step. Finding your way aroundTo understand Wikipedia, it is easiest to think of this website as having two types of pages: pages that are part of the encyclopedia itself, and pages of the community (used by contributors to help build and operate the encyclopedia). To find your way around the encyclopedia, either enter a term into the search box at the top-right side of the screen, or go to Wikipedia's table of contents. You may also use Wikipedia's category system to browse through the article categories. Wikipedia's community pages include instructions, help pages, policies and guidelines, processes, discussion forums, places to make requests, pages to report problems, and user pages. These are all pages which we use to develop the encyclopedia and to communicate with each other in that mission.
There is a quick and easy way to find community and project pages: Almost all "Wikipedia-space" pages have shortcuts that take you directly to the page you want from whichever page you are currently on. Most of these shortcut redirects are just abbreviated forms of the page's title. To use a shortcut, in the search box simply type WP: followed by the word of what you wish to learn about. For example, if you wish to learn what primary sources are, you would type WP:PRIMARY in the search box and hit enter, or if you want to know what NPOV means, just type WP:NPOV (it doesn't necessarily need to be in capital letters) and it will take you straight to the relevant page. This is also why you sometimes see short notes at the tops of pages saying things like "WP:FOO" redirects here. For <blank>, see <blank>., it's to ensure users arrive at the correct destination. Experienced and established users navigate throughout Wikipedia using this method and it's also a great way for new users to find their way around.
Some directories to help you find your way around the community are:
Tip of the day1. Pipe trick: Many article titles are disambiguated with parenthetic qualifiers, like this: [[Self (psychology)]]. But when you want to include such a link in the body of an article, this would look rather awkward. So all you have to do is use the "pipe trick", like this: [[Self (psychology)|]]. Notice the "|" character stuck in there at the end of the link? That makes the link look like this: Self, without having to type the name of the link after the pipe! This trick also works with namespaces, so that [[Wikipedia:Tip of the day|]] (again notice the pipe character) displays like this: Tip of the day. 2. Plural trick: While editing, you'll often need to make a link to a plural. For example, suppose you wanted to link "Fred Foo was famous for his study of puddles" to puddle; you could link it like so: [[puddle|puddles]]. However, you can save time by instead writing [[puddle]]s. This also works for adjectives ([[Japan]]ese), verbs ([[dance]]d), and any other suffixes or prefixes. It does not, however, work for some irregular verbs. For example, ([[try]]ied does not work; you have to do [[try|tried]]). Read more: Wikipedia:Links and URLs
Our "Rules"
Be sure to read the above pages! They are very important, and they will help you — even if you're not perfect the If you need help...If you've made a mistake and wish to undo it, revert it. Here's how: click history at the top of the page you made the mistake on. Then click on undo at the end of the first line which is your edit. Then save page. See more detailed instructions at Help:Reverting. There are two main styles of help on Wikipedia: self-help and assistance... Self-help involves reading the help and instruction pages around Wikipedia. Some very informative self-help pages are: When you get stuck, confused, or befuddled, assistance is available on Wikipedia's "desk" and "request" pages - use these when self-help hasn't provided you with an answer:
Almost anyone on these lists will help you as well: |
