Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Conservation Biology (Kyle Harms)/Student help

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Student orientation
Students, based on post-assignment surveys from students, we've now put together a brief introduction to Wikipedia and how to create content that sticks. Please check out this student orientation for some helpful information and tips!

Five pillars of Wikipedia
Please refer to this list of the five most important things you need to know to successfully add content to Wikipedia. To summarize, you should know that:
 * You should write with neutrality. As a student, you've often been encouraged to take a stance or form a new argument for your professor. This writing does not belong on Wikipedia, so take care to restrict your content to facts and summaries of experts' arguments.
 * Please treat other editors with respect. If somebody does not treat you so, you can remind them that you are trying to improve Wikipedia but may need guidance on how exactly to do so.
 * You should take extra effort to avoid copyright violations and close paraphrasing. Remember that this community of editors is concerned about copyright, and your hard work will be deleted if you are not careful to cite your references and create content without redistributing copyrighted material.

Creating a new article

 * Moving out of your sandbox – This handout walks you through how to move an article draft from a userpage sandbox onto the Wikipedia article space.
 * If you are creating a new article, you can see this guide to submit your article, which will give a group of more experienced editors the chance to provide feedback to you. This can benefit new editors, as you may not have yet mastered the appropriate style of writing or formatting on-wiki.

Helpful videos

 * Learn how to draft your article in a sandbox
 * Learn how to track edits to your articles in a watchlist
 * Learn how to interact with other editors, including other students in your class, on talk pages
 * Learn how to cite sources
 * Learn how to upload images and other files to Wikimedia Commons

Get help!
Remember that you can talk to an Ambassador when you need help, and they are excited to help you learn how to edit Wikipedia.