The Editing Tabs: Your Home Away From Home

There are two editing options in Wikipedia: Edit, and VisualEditor.

The Edit Tab View

The Edit view uses the Wiki markup language (or Wikitext), and allows for coding of hyperlinks, tables, columns, etc. Check out the Wiki markup language cheat sheet - it's a quick and easy guide to carry with you in your editing!

The VisualEditor View

The VisualEditor is a graphical display and will show you what the article will look like as you type it.

Use the one that will work best for you - you have complete control! Remember, the point is for you to have fun editing, so do whatever works best!

Your Editing Sandbox

The Sandbox is an editor's best friend. Every editor has one and it can be found at the top of the Wikipedia page when you login. Use it to start composing new articles, editing paragraphs, or jotting down ideas.

But remember - your Sandbox is part of Wikipedia, and can be seen by anyone. All material produced here falls under plagiarism rules, so do not copy and paste from your sources; only original writing can be on Wikipedia!

Check out the short video below for a quick introduction to your Sandbox.

Cite It!

Learning to cite your sources is one of the most important editing tricks to learn in Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation has an excellent 2 part video tutorial that will teach you everything you need to know about citing in Wikipedia - check them out!

                                           Be Bold!

Talk Pages

Talk Pages are an excellent resources to check out before you make changes to an article. These pages gives you a history of edits made, and why they were essential to make the article better. 

Check out the video below for a quick intro to Talk Pages!

Editing Tips & Tricks

There are many tips and tricks that will make you a great editor. Whether you are looking to start your own page, or just copy editing an existing page, the following tutorials will make you a tips and tricks expert.

This video shows how to upload all those great Creative Commons Images you have to Wikipedia!

The video below show how to use the Wiki Markup Language to add bold and links to your awesome articles.

Take Ownership

Take ownership of the edits you make. At the bottom of the edit page is an "Edit Summary" box. Give a very brief description of the changes you made.