It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.
Wikipedia may seem like it has a lot of rules, but these are the important ones:
Ignore all rules. "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." This is arguably the most important rule on Wikipedia. It is a
policy on Wikipedia, and according to cofounder
Jimbo Wales, "always has been". A corollary is that the spirit of the rules is more important than the letter.
Information must be verifiable. Any information added to an article must come from a reliable source. Make sure to cite those sources too, or information you add might be removed or slapped with the [citation needed] tag.
No original research. Wikipedia is not a place to add new information or interpretations of things.
Be bold. If you see a mistake, fix it. If you see some way to improve Wikipedia, do it. Unless the page is
protected, in which case you should make an
edit request... as boldly as possible. If your edit gets
reverted, seek
consensus on the page's
talk page instead on whether the edit should be made (this is called the
bold, revert, discuss cycle).
Ask for help. There are many places to do this, including the
help desk, the
teahouse and the talk page of the article you're editing. Just make sure to
sign your posts on discussion pages[1] with ~~~~!
It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.
Wikipedia may seem like it has a lot of rules, but these are the important ones:
Ignore all rules. "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." This is arguably the most important rule on Wikipedia. It is a
policy on Wikipedia, and according to cofounder
Jimbo Wales, "always has been". A corollary is that the spirit of the rules is more important than the letter.
Information must be verifiable. Any information added to an article must come from a reliable source. Make sure to cite those sources too, or information you add might be removed or slapped with the [citation needed] tag.
No original research. Wikipedia is not a place to add new information or interpretations of things.
Be bold. If you see a mistake, fix it. If you see some way to improve Wikipedia, do it. Unless the page is
protected, in which case you should make an
edit request... as boldly as possible. If your edit gets
reverted, seek
consensus on the page's
talk page instead on whether the edit should be made (this is called the
bold, revert, discuss cycle).
Ask for help. There are many places to do this, including the
help desk, the
teahouse and the talk page of the article you're editing. Just make sure to
sign your posts on discussion pages[1] with ~~~~!