Wikipedia

Wikipedia:About

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Introduction to English language Wikipedia
"Wikipedia:Wikipedia" redirects here. For other uses, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia (disambiguation).
For information on the administrative structure of Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Administration.

This is a general introduction for visitors to Wikipedia. The project also has an encyclopedia article about itself, and an introduction and tutorial for aspiring contributors.
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About Wikipedia
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing" - Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit and millions already have.

Wikipedia's purpose is to benefit readers by acting as a widely accessible and free encyclopedia that contains information on all branches of knowledge. It is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and consists of freely editable content. The name "Wikipedia" is a blending of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick") and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's articles provide links to guide readers to related pages with more information.

Wikipedia is written collaboratively by largely anonymous volunteers. Anyone with Internet access and in good standing can write and make changes to Wikipedia articles, except in limited cases where editing is restricted to prevent disruption or vandalism.

Since its creation on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia has grown into the world's largest reference website, attracting 1.7 billion unique-device visitors monthly as of November 2021[update]. It currently has more than fifty-nine million articles in more than 300 languages, including 6,564,204 articles in English with 114,399 active contributors in the past month.

The fundamental principles of Wikipedia are summarized in its five pillars. The Wikipedia community has developed many policies and guidelines, with which familiarity is not a requirement for contributing.

Anyone is allowed to add or edit words, references, images, and other media here. What is contributed is more important than who contributes it. To remain, the content must be free of copyright restrictions and contentious material about living people. It must conform with Wikipedia's policies, including being verifiable against a published reliable source. Editors' opinions and beliefs and unreviewed research will not remain. Contributions cannot damage Wikipedia, as its software allows easy reversal of errors, and many experienced editors watch to ensure that edits are improvements. Begin by simply clicking the Edit button at the top of any editable page!

Wikipedia differs from printed references in important ways. It is continually created and updated, with articles on new events appearing within minutes rather than months or years. Because everyone can help improve it, it has become more comprehensive than any other encyclopedia. In addition to the quantity of its articles, its contributors work on improving their quality, removing and repairing misinformation and other errors. Over time, articles tend to become more comprehensive and balanced. Because anyone can edit them, they may contain undetected misinformation, errors or vandalism. Readers who recognize this can obtain valid information (see Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia) and fix the articles. Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow!

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 Basic information on Wikipedia
  • Help
    • directory
    • menu
  • Teahouse (interactive help for new editors)
About Wikipedia
  • Readers' index to Wikipedia
  • Statistics
  • Administration
  • FAQs
    • Purpose
    • Who writes Wikipedia?
    • Organization
  • Censorship
  • In brief
  • General disclaimer
Readers' FAQ
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  • Researching with Wikipedia
    • Citing Wikipedia
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Introductions
to contributing
  • Main introduction
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  • The answer
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Policies
and guidelines
  • Five pillars
  • Manual of Style
    • Simplified
  • Etiquette
    • Expectations
    • Oversight
  • Principles
  • Ignore all rules
    • The rules are principles
  • Core content policies
  • Policies and guidelines
  • Vandalism
  • Appealing blocks
  • What Wikipedia is not
Getting help
  • Help menu
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Wikipedia community
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Sourcing
and referencing
  • Research:
  • Research desk
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    • Request Resources
    • Free resources
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  • WikiProject Resource Exchange
    • Shared resources
  • Guidelines:
  • Finding sources
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  • Citations
    • Citation Style 1
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How-to guides
  • Category
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    • Development
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Wiki markup
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Wikipedia community
For a listing of current collaborations, tasks, and news, see the Community portal.
For a listing of ongoing discussions and current requests, see the Dashboard.
General community
topics
  • Administration
  • News
    • The Signpost
    • Goings-on
    • In the media
  • Meetups
  • Mailing lists
  • Wikipedians
  • Statistics
  • The Wikipedia Library
  • Centralized discussion
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    • Technical
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    • WMF
  • Holidays
  • Bots
Contents and grading
  • Requested articles
  • Most-wanted articles
  • Images needing articles
  • Articles needing images
  • Articles for creation
    • WP:AFC/R
    • Creation
    • Help
  • Vital articles
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  • Peer review
  • Good article nominations
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    • Lists
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    • Topics
  • Article translation
    • Pages
  • Main Page
    • Errors
WikiProjects
and collaborations
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  • Geographical
  • History and society
  • Science, technology and engineering
  • Wikipedia assistance and tasks
  • Patrols
    • Recent changes
  • Counter-Vandalism Unit
  • Version 1.0 Editorial Team
  • Accessibility
  • Organizations category
Awards and feedback
  • Reward board
  • Contests
  • A nice cup of tea and a sit down
  • Charitableness
  • WikiLove
    • Compliment before criticism
    • Kindness Campaign
  • Thanks!
Maintenance tasks
  • Task Center
    • Open tasks
  • Backlog
    • Category
    • Admin category
  • Edit requests
    • Category
  • Database reports
  • Category tracker
  • Dusty articles
  • Special pages
    • New pages
    • Recent changes
  • Controversial issues
Administrators
and noticeboards
  • Administrators' noticeboard
    • Incidents
    • Edit warring
    • Vandalism
  • Admin dashboard
  • Admin requests
    • Closure
    • Page protection
    • User permissions
    • Sockpuppets
    • Open proxies
  • Revision deletion
  • Oversight
    • Request
  • Usernames
    • Changing
    • Title blacklist
  • OTRS
  • Bureaucrats'
    • Requests for adminship and bureaucratship
  • Arbitration Committee
    • Requests
    • Enforcement
Content dispute
resolution
  • Requests for comment
  • Third opinion
  • Dispute resolution noticeboard
    • Biographies of living persons
    • Conflict of interest
    • External links
    • Fringe theories
    • Neutral point of view
    • No original research
    • Reliable sources
Other noticeboards
and assistance
  • Regional notice boards
  • Requests for help
    • Category
  • Asking questions
    • Teahouse
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  • Mergers
    • History mergers
  • Moves
    • Page importation
  • Spam
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    • Whitelist
  • Bots
  • Education
  • General sanctions
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  • Long-term abuse
Deletion
discussions
  • Guide
    • Admin
  • Today
  • Articles
  • Templates
  • Files
  • Categories
  • Redirects
  • Miscellany
  • Speedy
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    • BLP
  • Review
    • Undeletion
  • Arguments to avoid
  • Arguments to make
  • Article Rescue
Elections and votings
  • Requests for comment (meta)
  • Wikimedia Foundation elections
  • WP Democracy
    • Voting is not evil
    • Milestones
Directories, indexes,
and summaries
  • Departments
  • Edit summary legend
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  • Essays
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  • Glossary
    • Abbreviations
  • Help
  • Manual of Style
    • Simplified
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    • Five pillars
    • Policies
    • Guidelines
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    • Citation templates
  • Tips
    • Today
  • Tools
  • Wiki markup
  • Media
  • Category
  • Templates
  • v
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Wikipedia key policies and guidelines (?)
  • Five pillars
    • Ignore all rules
Content (?)
P
  • Verifiability
  • No original research
  • Neutral point of view
  • What Wikipedia is not
  • Biographies of living persons
  • Copyright (Copyright violations)
  • Image use
  • Article titles
G
  • Notability
  • Autobiography
  • Citing sources
  • Reliable sources
    • Medicine
  • Do not include copies of lengthy primary sources
  • Plagiarism
  • Don't create hoaxes
  • Fringe theories
  • Patent nonsense
  • External links
Conduct (?)
P
  • Civility
  • Consensus
  • Harassment
  • Vandalism
  • Ignore all rules
  • No personal attacks
  • Ownership of content
  • Edit warring
  • Dispute resolution
  • Sockpuppetry
  • No legal threats
  • Child protection
  • Paid-contribution disclosure
G
  • Assume good faith
  • Conflict of interest
  • Disruptive editing
  • Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point
  • Etiquette
  • Gaming the system
  • Please do not bite the newcomers
  • Courtesy vanishing
  • Responding to threats of harm
  • Talk page guidelines
    • Signatures
Deletion (?)
P
  • Deletion policy
  • Proposed deletion
    • Biographies
  • Criteria for speedy deletion
  • Attack page
  • Oversight
  • Revision deletion
Enforcement (?)
P
  • Administrators
  • Banning
  • Blocking
  • Page protection
Editing (?)
P
  • Editing policy
G
  • Article size
    • Summary style
  • Be bold
  • Disambiguation
  • Hatnotes
  • Broad-concept article
  • Understandability
Style
  • Manual of Style
    • Contents
  • Accessibility
  • Dates and numbers
  • Images
  • Layout
  • Lead section
  • Linking
  • Lists
Classification
  • Categories, lists, and navigation templates
  • Categorization
  • Template namespace
Project content (?)
G
  • Project namespace
    • WikiProjects
  • User pages
    • User boxes
  • Shortcuts
  • Subpages
WMF (?)
P
  • Terms of Use
  • List of policies
  • Friendly space policy
  • Licensing and copyright
  • Privacy policy
  • List of all policies and guidelines
    • P: List of policies
    • G: List of guidelines
  • Summaries of values and principles
  • v
  • t
  • e
Wikipedia articles
Overview
(outline)
  • Censorship
  • Citation needed
  • Conflict-of-interest editing
  • Criticism
  • Biases
    • gender
    • geographical
    • ideological
    • racial
  • Deletion of articles
    • Deletionism and inclusionism
    • Notability
  • Edit count
  • Fact-checking
  • "Ignore all rules"
  • MediaWiki
  • Predictions of the project's end
  • Reliability
  • Vandalism
Community
  • Administrators
  • AfroCrowd
  • Arbitration Committee
  • Art+Feminism
  • Bots
    • Lsjbot
  • Edit-a-thon
  • List of Wikipedias
  • The Signpost
  • Wiki Indaba
  • Wiki Loves Monuments
  • Wiki Loves Pride
  • Wiki Loves Earth
  • Wiki Loves Folklore
  • WikiConference India
  • WikiConference North America
  • Wikimania
  • Wikipedian in residence
  • WikiProject
  • Women in Red
People
  • Florence Devouard
  • Sue Gardner
  • James Heilman
  • Maryana Iskander
  • Katherine Maher
  • Magnus Manske
  • Ira Brad Matetsky
  • Erik Möller
  • Steven Pruitt
  • Larry Sanger
  • María Sefidari
  • Lila Tretikov
  • Jimmy Wales
  • Wikipedians
  • Wikimedian of the Year
History
  • Bomis
  • First edit
  • Logo
  • Controversies
    • U.S. Congressional staff edits
    • Essjay controversy
    • Seigenthaler biography incident
    • Henryk Batuta hoax
    • Jar'Edo Wens hoax
    • Croatian Wikipedia administration
    • Zhemao hoaxes
  • Internet Watch Foundation
  • Scientology
  • CAMERA campaign
  • Italian Wikipedia blackout
  • English Wikipedia blackout
  • Hillsborough disaster Wikipedia posts
  • MyWikiBiz
  • VisualEditor
  • #1Lib1Ref
  • Star Trek Into Darkness discussion
  • Coverage of American politics
  • Coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic
  • 2021 WMF actions on the Chinese Wikipedia
  • Coverage of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
Honors
  • 2008 Quadriga award
  • Wikipedia Monument
  • 2015 Erasmus Prize
  • 2015 Princess of Asturias Award
References
and analysis
  • Cultural
  • Bibliography
  • Films
  • Academic studies
  • Listen to Wikipedia
  • Wiki-Watch
  • Wikipediocracy
  • WikiScanner
  • Wikipedia Review
Mobile access
  • Apps
  • QRpedia
  • Wapedia
  • WikiNodes
  • Wikipedia Zero
  • Wikiwand
Content use
  • Books LLC
  • Boundless (company)
  • DBpedia
  • Deletionpedia
  • Kiwix
  • Wikimedia Enterprise
  • WikiReader
  • Science information
  • Health information
Similar projects
  • Interpedia
  • Nupedia
  • Citizendium
  • Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español
  • Everipedia
  • Veropedia
  • List of online encyclopedias
  • List of wikis
Related
  • The Iraq War: A Historiography of Wikipedia Changelogs
  • Print Wikipedia
  • Magna Carta (An Embroidery)
  • Wiki rabbit hole
  • Wikiracing
  • 274301 Wikipedia
  • Wikipedia for World Heritage
  • Wikimedia Foundation
    • movement
  • List
  • Category
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