Wikipedia:Tip of the day/December
While using a public domain work as the basis for a Wikipedia article may be a good idea (see public domain resources for a selection), please do not include large source documents within articles. We try to collect free (public domain or copyleft) source documents in a single place, Wikisource, where they can be annotated and translated. This reduces duplication across wikis, and frees articles from the context of the source documents. Keep in mind that Wikipedia articles are subject to merciless editing, so if a document is the subject of an article, yet is included in it, it might not be the same document for long! Even long quotation sections should be moved—to Wikiquote.
Two
A
Still not enough stubs? Then try
...and compare!
In the
You should be presented with a screen that shows you which words have been removed and which ones have been added (affected words are highlighted in red). You always can
There is an input field in
Whenever you sign a post with ~~~ (nickname only), or ~~~~ (includes nickname and timestamp), your new nickname or wiki-markup will be used. Bonus tip #1: ~~~~~ (timestamp only).
Bonus tip #2: To display a nickname, the software adds [[User:Name| to the beginning of the nickname, and ]] to the end. So, by entering something like Klaaus Meieer]] [[User talk:Klaaus Meieer|(talk), you can "trick" the software into adding another link at the end, in this case, to your talk page, which will look like this: Klaaus Meieer (talk).
While
Try to
Is your text editor window too large and you cannot reach the Preview and Save buttons without scrolling? Try reducing the number of rows of the window at your user Preferences Editing tab.
To add an image to a page, type [[File:image-file-name.jpg|caption]] where you want to insert the image. You can add various options separated with a vertical bar: "|", also known as a "pipe", after the image name. For example, [[File:image-file-name.jpg|thumb|185px|A caption]] will automatically generate a right-aligned thumbnail of the image with a width of 185 pixels and the caption "A caption", and [[File:image-file-name.jpg|left]] will produce a left-aligned full size image version. Bonus tip: Adding a video or audio clip uses nearly the same procedures.
When you are done editing, you do not have to scroll or click to summarize your edits, nor to Preview or Save the article.
You can jump to the Edit summary box by pressing the Tab ↹ key.
To preview the article, press Alt+⇧ Shift+p.
To save the article, press Alt+⇧ Shift+s or press ↵ Enter when the cursor is in the Edit summary box.
To see the changes you have made so far, press Alt+⇧ Shift+v.
Another
If you have
If you want to create a new section at the bottom of a talk page, click the New Section link in the navigation links under the heading This Page. Bonus tip: In your user Preferences under Editing you can enable section [edit] links for the lead section of articles too. Be sure to save your changes.
Some examples of the elements of style in the MOS are:
- singular formin titles wherever possible.
- Capitalization—do not capitalize all words in section headings, or non-proper nouns
- Link placement—list external links in their own section at the bottom of an article
- logical quotes
- lead creation essay.
To place the MOS template at the right on your
Please follow the MOS guidelines when you update an article.
The
Do you know any languages other than English? If so, you also can contribute to the Wikipedia in those languages, or translate articles from that Wikipedia into the English Wikipedia. Do not forget to include an interlanguage link when you translate a new article. To help coordinate with other language Wikipedias, you can join the Wikimedia Embassy. Also, check out how other languages are doing with our multilingual statistics.
The Wikipedia help page, Advice for parents, is provided to help parents, guardians, teachers, and other adults consider the best way to allow children they are responsible for to engage with Wikipedia safely and enjoyably.
The most useful piece of advice guardians can give to younger editors is to never divulge any
You may also be interested in another independent project, the Schools' Wikipedia—a specific selection of about 5,500 articles from the English Wikipedia, suitable for school children, which has been checked and edited for this audience.
Or, you always can grab your favorite
Wikipedia always needs
We strive to make
Peer review for accuracy and quality happens constantly through the
There is a semi-automated peer review available. The easiest way to install the script is to enable it as a Gadget: go to your user Preferences and check off the MoreMenu, adds Page and User dropdown menus to the toolbar... entry under Appearance and hit save. Each article page will then have a Page and User pull down menu near the top; go to the article; hover on Page; hover on Tools; click on Peer reviewer.
Wikipedia has only a few limitations on what topics it covers. Recipes and how-to articles are not included in the main namespace, but just about everything else is.
In which other encyclopedia do you find a
Sometimes the question is posed whether Wikipedia allows
Wikipedia is not Yahoo! Answers. But if you have a general question such as, "Why is the sky blue?", and you cannot find a Wikipedia article that answers it, you can ask your question at the Wikipedia:Reference desk. If it turns out that no article on the subject exists, you can request one be written at Wikipedia:Requested articles.
Creating a
To create an account, all you have to do is click on the "Sign in / create account" link, click on "Create one", enter a username, a password (twice), then click the "Create account" button. Consider attaching an email address to your account for user account password recovery, to receive system updates, or to receive email from other users. Nobody will see your email address until you choose to send them an email or reply to theirs.
Any user on Wikipedia can create a User page. While you are logged in, your name appears in the top middle section of the screen. Click on the name and then create or edit your User page. Tell us about yourself and your motivation to participate in this project. Other users can leave comments on your Talk page. For experiments and personal projects, you also can create subpages to your User page, or you can use your User sandbox.
Have you tried the Advanced options in your Recent changes user preferences settings? It requires a modern browser to work and is disabled by default.
Unlike the normal "recent changes" page, these options can summarize edits to the same page and let you dynamically expand and collapse the list items. For multiple edits to the same page, it also provides a single "changes" link which will show you a view of the differences (diffs) between these combined edits and the last non-recent revision.
After changing the Advanced options, the "Recent changes" list takes effect immediately and can be reversed by unchecking any option.
Clicking the "Recent changes" link in the interaction menu on every page will give you a list of all edits in the last few minutes. If you just want to watch for changes to articles you have edited, use your Watchlist. You can add articles to your Watchlist by clicking "Watch this page" tab (starred) at the top of any article (the talk page will be auto-watched, too). You can click "Related changes" in the toolbox menu on any page to see changes made to the pages linked from the one you are viewing. And finally, you can click the "My contributions" link to view a log of your edits; if yours is no longer the edit marked with "top", then someone else has edited the page.
The "perfect" Wikipedia article is built on solid research (remember to cite your sources). Contrary to popular belief, not all information is available for free on the Internet. Some research is only published in scientific journals and books (ask your library for remote lending services); some material is available only in commercial, password-protected electronic databases. If you have access to useful research material, please add the relevant information to Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange, a central portal to find Wikipedians with access to such resources. Remember we can only use facts from sources such as these, not a particular copyrighted expression thereof.
If you are a qualified user you can request access to the databases of paywalled resources
The MediaWiki software that runs Wikipedia is under constant development. Do you want to see the latest, greatest features? Then head over to test.wikipedia.org, where the development branch is tested. But be careful. That wiki runs in debugging mode, so even the smallest problem in the code might cause it to spew out error messages. Take a look at the list of features under development in the MediaWiki roadmap. MediaWiki already is one of the most feature-rich wiki engines; see the MediaWiki feature list. MediaWiki and its dependencies are open source, so if you are the inquisitive type, please take a look at the code and help improve it.
Wikipedia should function and look right in any web browser. However, depending on the layout of an individual page and the Wikipedia skin set in your User preferences, a page layout might be broken in your browser. If the problem occurs on a single page, edit the page to fix it yourself. If you cannot fix it, put a message on the Talk page for the page (a screenshot always helps!). If the problem occurs on all pages, try a different skin. Your browser might have some minor issues. These are listed at Wikipedia:Browser notes.
The Teahouse is a friendly place to help new editors become accustomed to Wikipedia culture, ask questions, and develop community relationships. Memorize this shortcut to get to the Teahouse quickly: WP:THQ = Wikipedia:Tea House Questions.
- Ask questions about using Wikipedia and volunteers will respond as soon as possible.
- Visit the Teahouse to learn from other new editors' questions, and the replies from experts.
- Contribute an answer to a Teahouse question as you learn more about editing Wikipedia.
One of the most important criteria for inclusion of articles in