Wikipedian

HOW TO BE A WIKIPEDIAN

Wikipedia wants to make it easy for visitors to edit its contents, but it has recently taken steps to make creating new entries somewhat more difficult. Here is how Wikipedia articles are edited and created:

How to edit a Wikipedia article:

Go to any article on the site.

Click on the "edit this page" tab, located near the top of the page.

Make alterations and save them. The changes will show up immediately, but Wikipedia's army of contributorswho check the site regularly for changesmay test the veracity of any newly added information. Every article on Wikipedia includes a "history" button, near the top of the page, that allows users to track every change made in the text.

How to create a Wikipedia article:

Register as a Wikipedia member, providing a user name and password.

New users are shown introductory Web pages that explain the site's posting guidelines.

Type in the title of your article and wait for the site to search for similar articles that may already exist.

Enter the text of your article. Links to other Wikipedia articles can be created simply by selecting sections of text and letting the site find URL's for the articles they represent.

Write a brief "edit summary" that tells other Wikipedia posters why you created the entry.

Preview the article, save it, and get ready for the masses to edit it. The new article should appear on the site quickly, but it could be removed almost as quickly under Wikipedia's "speedy deletion" policy, under which "Wikipedia administrators may delete Wikipedia pages or media 'on sight' without further debate, as in the cases of patent nonsense or pure vandalism."