Where can I learn to edit Wikipedia?
Become a volunteer editor today with these 5 resources
Every single day, millions of people around the world use Wikipedia as a reference. A very, very, very small percentage of those readers, though, ever contribute to the site as editors.
Many Wikipedia users likely don’t even realize that they can edit the site—even from their phone!—and that’s actually quite easy to do.
Well, relatively easy to do. Like most things on the internet, there’s a learning curve with Wikipedia and a definite right way and wrong way to do things. Luckily, though, there are a lot of great resources out there to help get you started with editing on the site.
Official Wikipedia resources
Several official Wikipedia Help pages and resources offer tutorial-style introductions to contributing to the site and engaging with other editors. As its title implies, Help: Getting started is the most basic of these and also the most useful reference for newbies. Another good option is The Wikipedia Adventure, a seven-part guided tour that walks new editors through editing procedures.
If you’re already familiar with the basics and simply want to know what you can (and can’t) do with a brand or business page, you can try the Wikipedia: Conflict of interest page, which covers issues related to editors engaging with articles in which they have a clear relationship. Wikipedia: Reliable sources is another good resource, as it covers in detail the type of sources you should use (and those you should avoid) when proposing updates.
The Wikipedia Revolution (book)
The best book about Wikipedia is Andrew Lin's The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. Over a brisk 272 pages, Lin covers the site’s precipitous launch, meteoric growth, and substantial cultural impact. Even though some of the information is out of date (the book was published in 2009), reading it will help you understand the principles guiding article creation and improvement.
The University of Edinburgh video tutorials
Several universities have produced video tutorials about editing Wikipedia. The best of these is probably the University of Edinburgh's series of clips, which walk users through the basics of the site and the nuts and bolts of making edits. Videos like these are extremely useful as a reference, as you're actually seeing somebody perform the actions necessary to insert new language and citations.
The Harvard Law School Library post
The Harvard Law School Library also has a great guide called Contributing to Wikipedia & Wikimedia Commons that, as the title suggests, also covers Wikimedia Commons—the media repository for Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wiktionary, and other Wikimedia projects. Understanding how to upload content to the Commons can be critical if you’re trying to create a new article (with pictures) for Wikipedia.
Lumino's Wikipedia newsletter
Yes, dear reader, we have a newsletter about Wikipedia engagement aimed at communication professionals! Each of the eight installments covers a different topic related to the site's rules and best practices, specifically as they pertain to editors with conflicts of interest. You can learn more about it (and subscribe) over here.
