Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that is being written collaboratively by its readers. The following articles contain guidance and information about reading, authoring, and participating towards this effort on this site.
For help which is also applicable to our sister projects, see the MediaWiki User's Guide.
About Wikipedia
How do I do that?
See also: Wikipedia's How to.
Using Wikipedia
- How to explore Wikipedia
- How to search for an article
- How to use talk pages
- How to use the Recent Changes page
- How to use the Related Changes page
- How to use the Go button
- How to log in
- How to set preferences
- How to contact us
Modifying a Wikipedia page
- Tutorial
- How to edit a page, including markup details. You can experiment with editing pages in the sandbox.
- How to start a new page
- How to add images to pages
- How to use redirect pages
- How to revert a page to an earlier version
- How to create pages for topics with several different definitions
- How to add boilerplate text for readers
- How to use tables
- How to use categories
- How to rename (move) a page
- How to delete pages/images/categories
- How to link together Wikipedia articles in different languages
- How to link to sister projects
- How to edit an article so long that you can't edit
- How to edit with an external editor
- How to edit mathematical formulas using TeX
- How to produce graphics for pages
- How to protect/unprotect pages (sysops only)
Information and resources for contributors
- Policies and guidelines for contributors
- Glossary of common Wikipedia terms
- Style and How-to Directory
- How to write a great article
- Public domain resources
- Manual of style
- WikiProjects, writing and style guidelines for specific disciplines.
- Topical index, a collection of links to pages that are useful to "doing things" in Wikipedia.
Getting in touch
- Contact us
- General Complaints for things in general (that is, a problem on more than one page) that could be fixed or made better.
- Help desk for newcomers with questions about Wikipedia or editing.
- Village pump, a discussion forum to ask questions not answered here or in the FAQs.
- Reference desk, request an article or information. See also Requested articles.
- Wikipedia mailing lists
- Chat with other users on IRC
- Bug reports and feature requests
- Wikipedians
- Meta Wikipedia, a site that works alongside the main Wikipedia project. Here you can post essays and discussions about topics related to Wikipedia.
- Contingency page for when the main Wikipedia server is down