Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia

First, make a list of everything you know. Then, write an article for every item on that list. If, for some reason, this is not practical, here are some other tips to help you get started.

Choose a topic that is of interest to you--what you do at work, a game you play, the place you live, a subject you like to read about. Find out what has been written about that topic so far. Make improvements to the articles that already exist. Fill in the gaps by creating new articles on aspects of the topic that have not been covered yet.

Visit a random page. Improve that page, or find a link to an article on that page that hasn't been written yet. These are the links that are, depending on your preference settings, in red or followed by a blue question mark (e.g. I don't exist[?]). Click on the link, and add something about that topic.

When you see a red word or phrase, that is a topic that someone thought might make a good article, but where no article currently exists. So that's a good opportunity to make one.

Write about something you don't know about. Use this as an excuse to research a new topic. As you learn about it, write what you are learning here on Wikipedia. This is actually a good study aid because it forces you to take notes, to organize information, and to put what you've learned into your own words. You can take how to write a great article as a guide.

Find something from a public domain resource, update it, add links to it, and put it here (but make sure it isn't really copyrighted--see Wikipedia copyrights).

Make a project! Take a book and write a thorough chapter-by-chapter summary. Make pages for all the characters. Or do this with a well-known fictional universe (Star Wars, Middle-earth). Or correct the spelling of a term in every article where it appears (it's "Middle-earth", people, not <shudder> Middle Earth </shudder>!) Pick your favorite actor and write articles for all of his or her movies. Pick your favorite city and build pages for all its best attractions. Find a big topic (like World War II or Chinese history) you enjoy and add more articles to flesh it out.

You don't have to write to contribute. Edit pages for spelling and grammatical errors. Remove nonsense when you see it. Correct false or misleading claims. Wikify words (turn them into links). Find pages containing basically the same information and combine them into one. Even asking questions on talk pages can contribute to making articles better.

Tell your friends, your enemies, random strangers on the street. Hire skywriters to write "Wikipedia.org" across the sky. Get the word out.

For more basic information on contributing to Wikipedia, see How to add content to Wikipedia with minimal effort, how to start a page and our page-editing instructions.

For more great Wikipedia advice, see Wikipedia policy and Wikipedia FAQ.

• If you like, you can enter just a paragraph or two of text for an entry. It's a start. Full-blown articles are not required. Adding any (accurate, helpful) information to Wikipedia is welcome! Of course, if you can write more, that's all the better. See The perfect stub article
• We strongly encourage you to add and adapt work you have created elsewhere, for other purposes, to Wikipedia. For examples of this, see Larrys Text and Ernest Hemingway. We also encourage that you add information found in public domain resources and other open content projects. But--again--we cannot allow using copyrighted material except under specific conditions, namely that it be subject to a license compatible with the GNU Free Documentation License.
• How you word your articles will determine, to some extent, how likely it is other people will work on it. Examples:
  • An article that leaves many intriguing-sounding links or leaves ellipses (...), etc., might invite other know-it-alls to fill in the blanks.
  • Straightforward requests for information in an article can lead to good articles. For example, one might supply a rough description of a thing or place and then ask about its history; some people who know the answer will find it difficult to pass up the opportunity to teach.
  • A strongly-worded initial version of a page will, probably, cause more revisions and reaction, and perhaps the end result will be well written. This might not be such a good idea, though. An article on relativity that starts by proclaiming the existence of the aether will probably be revised and quite likely end up better than an article that states it is "some kinda theory Einstein made." But as a habit, this is probably a bad idea, because we would like our articles to be written from a neutral point of view.