User:SD0001/101 Ways to Contribute

There are a huge number of ways in which you can contribute to Wikipedia. Contributing doesn't just cover creating articles or adding content to articles. While that is the undoubtedly the primary means of contributing, there are many secondary ways to contribute in case you don't find yourself good at researching for sources, paraphrasing content and presenting it in your own words without causing factual inaccuracy. Writing quality articles is an art, and it is not for everyone. Many are likely to find it quite of a tedious task that easily exhaust one's energy. While most editors begin their wiki-careers with content creation, over time, many move away from this field and switch to other tasks, many permanently so. Nevertheless, there exist some really prolific editors here at Wikipedia who produce new articles like others drink water.

This article is an attempt to make new editors aware of the multitude of activities taking place at Wikipedia, so that they can take part in the ones which they find exciting.

Creating articles
Meh

Fixing disambiguation links
Many a time, it happens that there multiple people or entities with same or similar names, like George W. Bush and George H. W. Bush. Then, when someone says "George Bush", it is ambiguous as the name could refer to either of the two US presidents, or even to the biblical scholar or the car racer with the same name. The page George Bush hence is a "disambiguation" page - it lists all the people with the name. When someone searches for George Bush, they are taken to this page so that they select the person they wanted to read about. It should now be obvious that there should not exist any links to disambiguation pages in the encyclopedia. When someone has created a link to George Bush in an article, it is definitely a mistake - they intended to link to the article of the specific person they were talking about - and so this link needs to be "fixed" to correctly point to the intended article.

Fixing of disambiguation links is a significant chore - see Disambiguation pages with links for guidelines on how you can help. There is an active project dedicated to this which also organises regular contests, rewarding editors who fix large numbers of disambiguation links. A variety of automated tools exist which make this task more easy.

Commenting at deletion discussions
At WP:Articles for deletion, articles with possible notability concerns are put forth to be considered for deletion. Over a 7-day period, editors comment at the discussion opining whether to keep the article or delete it, on the basis of Wikipedia policies. (Notability problem is not the only reason for which articles may be deleted, but it is by far the most common one.)

What can you do here? Search the internet for sources giving information on the subject. Remember that you need to look for reliable sources that significantly cover the subject, and are independent of the subject. Make yourself familiar with the notability policy. Different topic areas usually have specific notability guidelines like for people, companies, etc. If you can find sufficient sources and feel that the article's subject is notable based on your understanding of relevant policies, put forth those sources at the discussion, and explain how the notability guidelines are met.

Patrolling recent changes
Go to Special:RecentChanges - this link is available as "Recent changes" on the left sidebar, under the interaction header.

Boom! You have landed at a dynamic page that shows the most recent edits make to WP. All of the edits listed here occurred over just the last few minutes. Edits from IP addresses and newly registered accounts are reviewed to make sure they aren't vandalism or test edits. With the massive number of edits being made, the task of looking for rogue edits - "vandalism" - becomes onerous. Reverting vandalism is of fundamental importance to the project. If this weren't being done, if vandalised articles weren't being immediately restored to their original state, there would be little point in writing the articles in first place.

Fortunately, the task of repairing vandalism is far easier than committing it. Recent changes page allows you set a variety of filters to find vandal edits more easily. Begin by getting Twinkle (go to your preferences to enable it, once your account gets autoconfirmed). Using Twinkle, it is easy to revert the edit and warn the user on their talk page. There exist a variety of sophisticated tools that make can this work faster, some of which are only made available to editors once they gain a lot of experience in patrolling recent changes.

However, identifying whether an edit is vandalism or not is not always simple. In many cases, contextual knowledge of the subject matter may be needed. When you run into such issues, you can always choose to skip the edit and leave it for another patroller. Don't make any hasty decisions. New editors may stop editing if you mistakenly label their edits as vandalism and revert them. Make sure you're familiar with the policy on vandalism and know what exactly constitutes vandalism and what doesn't.

to be completed