Originally founded by a bunch of geeks, today Wikipedians are a diverse community!Screencast: how to use your watchlist.
You know the five pillars and you are familiar with the basics of the editing process. But: Just as important are the unwritten rules and habits of the Wikipedia Community.
Each user account has its own watchlist. This is a useful tool to keep track of articles you have edited, but also of talk pages and any other page you might find interesting. By clicking on "Watchlist" on the top of the page, you can access the watchlist and you will see the recent changes of all watched pages.
It is important to avoid plagiarism. A good method to avoid plagiarism is, to read a text, then explain the content so someone else and only then write it down for Wikipedia. Otherwise it may happen that the original wording is still somewhere in your head and finds its way into Wikipedia inadvertently.
In Wikipedia there are people from a great number of backgrounds with all kinds of previous experiences and assumptions. Keep this in mind to avoid misunderstanding each other. Wikipedians, who have been around for a long time, sometimes have difficulties understanding the impediments that newbies stumble upon. The best way to deal with this, is to say openly what you do not understand and to ask a lot of questions. Wikipedians are knowledgeable people and usually only too happy to share.
If you want to know what is going on, have a look at the Wikipedia:Community portal. A link to this page is also included in the navigation bar on the left.
