![]() Wikipedia is not a manual or guidebook.Articles aren't intended to help you navigate a local bureaucracy, find the nearest Italian restaurant, or otherwise include information that other Web pages do a perfectly fine job of maintaining. (You'll find hundreds listed at, a site not associated with Wikipedia.) (If you do find any of these, it's a violation of the rules and likely to be removed when other editors discover it.) Thousands of wikis do welcome original research and original writing, but Wikipedia isn't one of them. You won't find ground-breaking analysis, original reporting, or anything else in Wikipedia that hasn't been published elsewhere first. Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought.Aside from the what seem obvious to more experienced editors at Wikipedia ("Wikipedia is not a blog, Web space provider, social networking, or memorial site", "Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files") and ones that follow from sister projects ("Wikipedia is not a dictionary", "Wikipedia is not a textbook"), here are several that readers and contributors frequently misunderstand: Wikipedia's policy, What Wikipedia is not, is lengthy, so this section just hits the highlights. Wikisource is an archive of "free artistic and intellectual works created throughout history." Except for annotation and translation, these are essentially historical documents (fiction as well as nonfiction) that are in the public domain or whose copyright has expired.Given a choice, most editors chose to work with Wikipedia articles, which are more widely viewed. Because of the overlap between the two, Wikinews has struggled to attract editors. Unlike Wikipedia, Wikinews includes articles that are original writing, but the vast majority are sourced. A story in the national news (Hurricane Katrina, for example) is likely to show up on both. Wikinews and Wikipedia clearly overlap.It's common at Wikipedia to move ( transwiki) articles to Wiktionary because they're essentially definitions. It's the "lexical companion" to Wikipedia. Wiktionary is a free, multilingual dictionary with definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, sample quotations, synonyms, antonyms and translations.Several of the projects listed in Figure B-1 overlap (or potentially overlap) with Wikipedia: The Wikimedia Foundation has twelve projects that are parallel to Wikipedia, plus a project called Commons, where pictures and other freely usable media are stored for use by all projects in all languages ( Figure B-1).įigure B-1 The Wikimedia Foundation has twelve other projects in addition to Wikipedia, including Commons, a central repository of pictures and other media. The sister projects that the Wikimedia Foundation supports, such as Wiktionary, fulfill some of the roles that Wikipedia does not. Wikipedia has a well-known policy (to experienced editors, at least) stating what kinds of information belong in the encyclopedia. Still, there's much confusion about Wikipedia's scope. Library of Congress has roughly 30 million books in its collection, not to mention tens of millions of other items, by comparison to about six million articles in Wikipedia). It has always defined itself as an encyclopedia-a reference work with articles on all types of subjects, but not as a final destination, and not as something that encompasses every detail in the world. Wikipedia's goal is not, as some people think, to become the repository of all knowledge. To understand what Wikipedia is, you may find it very helpful to understand what Wikipedia is not. Appendix B: Reader's guide to Wikipedia.Appendix A: A tour of the Wikipedia page.Chapter 21: Easier editing with JavaScript.Chapter 20: Customizing with preferences.Chapter 18: Better articles: A systematic approach.Chapter 16: Getting readers to the right article: naming, redirects, and disambiguation.Part IV: Building a stronger encyclopedia.Chapter 13: Article sections and tables of contents.Part III: Formatting and illustrating articles.Chapter 12: Lending other editors a hand.Chapter 11: Handling incivility and personal attacks.Chapter 9: WikiProjects and other group efforts.Chapter 8: Communicating with your fellow editors.Part II: Collaborating with other editors.Chapter 7: Dealing with vandalism and spam. ![]() Chapter 5: Who did what: Page histories and reverting.Chapter 3: Setting up your account and personal workspace.Part I: Editing, creating, and maintaining articles. ![]()
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