Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

by John Broughton

Want to be part of the largest group-writing project in human history? Learn how to contribute to Wikipedia, the user-generated online reference for the 21st century. Considered more popular than eBay, Microsoft.com, and Amazon.com, Wikipedia servers respond to approximately 30,000 requests per second, or about 2.5 billion per day. It's become the first point of reference for people the world over who need a fact fast.

If you want to jump on board and add to the content, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual is your first-class ticket. Wikipedia has more than 9 million entries in 250 languages, over 2 million articles in the English language alone. Each one is written and edited by an ever-changing cast of volunteer editors. You can be one of them. With the tips in this book, you'll quickly learn how to get more out of -- and put more into -- this valuable online resource.

Wikipedia: The Missing Manual gives you practical advice on creating articles and collaborating with fellow editors, improving existing articles, and working with the Wikipedia community to review new articles, mediate disputes, and maintain the site. Up to the challenge? This one-of-a-kind book includes:


Basic editing techniques, including the right and wrong ways to edit
Pinpoint advice about which types of articles do and do not belong on Wikipedia
Ways to learn from other editors and communicate with them via the site's talk pages
Tricks for using templates and timesaving automated editing tools
Recommended procedures for fighting spam and vandalism
Guidance on adding citations, links, and images to your articles
Wikipedia depends on people just like you to help the site grow and maintain the highest quality. With Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, you get all the tools you need to be part of the crew.

Genres: Reference, Computers

501 pages, Paperback

First published January 25, 2007

Reviews

[Liander (The Towering Pile) Lavoie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book on Wikipedia at Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. I've been an editor for quite a while, so I already knew the basics of editing, but this book was a great resource for learning more about content disputes, clean-up templates, various ways of collaborating with other editors, and a lot of other useful topics.

[Vernon White]

Very useful!

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly useful.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a useful book because editing on Wikipedia is not intuitive and writing good entries is a skill which needs attention and application so you are writing quality entries.