"This wonderful book resolves Wikipedia's paradox: Anyone can edit it, but to make your edits stick, you need to know what you are doing. Editing Wikipedia means navigating a minefield of implicit norms, tacit knowledge, secret lore, suggested policies, and enforceable regulations."
—Barry Wellman, director of Netlab, University of Toronto

Download Chapter 12: "Community and Communication"

Myxomatosis. The Order of Canada. Noble gas. Catherine de’ Medici. The History of Superman? Whether you’re doing serious research on the Web or just settling an argument, it’s easy to get caught up in Wikipedia’s two million articles. And that’s not such a bad thing. But how’d all the information get there in the first place? And how can you tell if it’s reliable?

Or say you want to become a part of Wikipedia and make your own contributions. Where do you begin?

In How Wikipedia Works, you’ll learn the skills required to use and contribute to the world’s largest reference work—like what constitutes good writing and research and how to work with images and templates.

With insight, anecdotes, and tips from three Wikipedia veterans, you’ll learn how to:

• Find information and evaluate the quality and reliability of articles
• Contribute to existing articles by copyediting, writing new material, and fact-checking
• Add new articles that conform to Wikipedia’s guidelines and best practices—so that your hard work won’t be deleted
• Communicate with other Wikipedians through Talk pages, discussion forums, direct messaging, and more
• Understand Wikipedia’s policies and procedures and how they’re created and enforced
• Resolve content disputes and deal with vandals and other malicious editors

Wikipedia is made up of people just like you: students, professors, and everyday experts and fans. With about 10,000 articles added to Wikipedia each week, there are plenty of opportunities to join this global community. How Wikipedia Works explains how you can make the Web’s go-to source for information even better.

Phoebe Ayers (user:phoebe) is a science and engineering reference librarian at UC Davis. She has been editing Wikipedia since 2003 and is an organizer of the Wikimania conferences.

Charles Matthews (user:Charles Matthews) holds a PhD in mathematics from Cambridge and has taught at Cambridge and Harvard. Matthews has been a Wikipedian since 2003 and is an arbitrator and administrator of the English-language Wikipedia.

Ben Yates (user:Tlogmer) is a technical editor who blogs about Wikipedia here. He has contributed to Wikipedia since late 2003.

Watch Ben Yates' video tutorial on alternate ways to search Wikipedia: