The joys of Wikipedia
Wikipedia – we all know about it, and many people use it on a weekly basis. (1) You probably also know that anyone can edit (almost) any article, but have you actually edited Wikipedia before? I decided to try in November 2025, and now, five months later, I have over 3,000 total edits. Maybe Wikipedia editing could be for you too?
Why edit Wikipedia
There are many reasons to edit Wikipedia: firstly, you’re helping to build an encyclopaedia for everyone, benefiting all readers of Wikipedia by improving and expanding content. If you’re not motivated by selfless acts though, there are also many benefits to yourself.
Editing Wikipedia is a great way to practise writing in clear style, being able to get a point across to a general audience. Being exposed to other editors’ writing can also help you improve. It’s also good for practising and researching different topics; finding sources on a subject, deciding which are reliable, and accurately summarising them are all skills you develop when editing Wikipedia. These are also useful in other aspects of life, such as when writing essays for university, or determining whether a piece of news you have heard is true or not.
Lastly, when editing Wikipedia, you get exposed to lots of information on various subjects and learn many interesting facts on whatever you’re writing about.
It's not easy at first
While editing Wikipedia can be fun, rewarding, and informative, it can also be hard, especially in the beginning. Wikipedia is a massive place, with over 7 million articles in the English version alone, plus hundreds of policies and guidelines, and thousands of editors making changes at every hour of the day.
But don’t worry. I found it quite challenging at first, but now I’m accustomed to the ways of Wikipedia, I feel in my element when editing (mostly). Take it slow at first, starting with small edits, and don’t feel you need to know all the policies and guidelines at first; start by reading the beginner’s guide and take it from there. The main one you need to understand is about how to cite sources, and which sources are reliable. Any others you will pick up along the way.
When you first create an account, you are given a list of tasks to complete for practise, starting easy with fixing typos and adding links to other articles, and increase in difficulty to tasks such as expanding short articles. They’re not mandatory to complete, but they give you a good understanding of the basics of Wikipedia.
There are other places with suggestions for what you can do, such as the task centre. (2) After trying out some different types of editing, you’ll probably find one area that you enjoy most, or that you are best at.
3.You'll make mistakes
Every Wikipedian is human, even experienced editors with hundreds of thousands of edits and 20+ years of experience mess up sometimes, and often in big ways.(3) At some point, you’ll make a mistake and someone will correct you, possibly by undoing the edit you’ve spent time working on. This can be frustrating but try not to let it bother you; take it as an opportunity to learn where you went wrong – maybe you made a silly mistake that you didn’t spot, or perhaps you violated a policy that you didn’t even know existed. If it’s the latter, simply read the policy, and now you know for next time.
There’s a saying among Wikipedians: “Be bold, but don’t be reckless”. If none of your edits are being undone, it probably means you aren’t being bold enough. (4)
What not to do
Don’t try to write an article about yourself, or any of your family members or close friends. Firstly, you or your relative probably do not meet Wikipedia’s criteria for having an article, known as “notability”, which includes having multiple independent reliable sources covering them, like newspaper articles or published books. (5) Even if they did, this falls under Wikipedia’s guidelines of conflict of interest. It’s very hard to write neutrally about yourself or someone you are close too, as you will tend to embellish positive facts, omit negative ones, and potentially add false claims. (6)
Don’t try to vandalise Wikipedia or create articles that spread misinformation. You might think it’s funny to add a silly joke or rude word to a random article, but there are many editors constantly watching the new changes being made who will revert your joke edit before anyone has a chance to read it, then block you. It’s a waste of your time, as well as that of everyone who is trying to genuinely improve the encyclopaedia. As long as you’re well-intentioned and contributing positively, you should be fine.
Picking your topics
There are over 7 million Wikipedia articles, covering thousands of different topics, so it can be quite difficult to decide where to start. In general, there are two main categories of edits you can make to Wikipedia: the first and most obvious is content edits, like adding a paragraph to an article, or correcting a fact. The second is maintenance edits, which do more behind-the-scenes admin work. If you want to help with maintenance, there are lists of tasks to do and the articles where they need doing, including work such as merging articles which cover similar topics, categorising articles, assessing the quality of articles, and much more. I would suggest trying out a few of these and seeing which ones you like best – you end up working on extremely random topics, which can be quite fun to learn about.
If you want to add/improve content on the encyclopaedia, there are a few ways you can go about choosing what to work on. If you have a specific area of interest in mind, you can look for the relevant WikiProject – a group of editors who work on a single topic, which usually has a list of articles which need improving or creating.
It can also be fun to just press the “Random article” button and see where you end up. Loads of Wikipedia articles are what are known as “stubs”, with very little information. (7) Pick a stub and research as much as you can about it to add to the article.
My favourite articles to work on are subjects that I am interested in, but not very familiar with, as if I already have substantial knowledge on a subject, I am often tempted to add certain pieces of information that I have in my brain but cannot attribute to a specific source. This is generally bad, as unsourced information from one’s own experiences is against Wikipedia’s policy, known as “original research”. (8) If I can find a topic that I want to learn about but don’t already know much on the subject, I can pick up facts as I’m writing the article, and all my knowledge is based on reliable sources that can be cited in the article.
Asking for help
As I mentioned earlier, Wikipedia is a big place, and it can be hard to get started. But don’t worry, there are plenty of people who are willing and able to help you – each new user is assigned a mentor, an experienced user who you can ask questions through a button on your home page. (9) Depending on their availability, they should answer within a few hours to a day.
You can also ask at the Wikipedia Teahouse, which is a forum for new editors to get help from more experienced users. (10) Since anyone can answer, it’s usually faster than asking your mentor, but responses are not always as high quality and some users can be a bit hostile to newcomers.
Give it a go
This article cannot cover the many facets of Wikipedia; it’s just something you need to experience for yourself. Wikipedia isn’t for everyone, but if you’re like me, you’ll become addicted within a few weeks and won’t be able to stop.
References
1. Atroszko, Bartosz. (2015). Do young people trust Wikipedia?. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281736660_Do_young_people_trust_Wikipedia
2. Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Task Center. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Task_Center
3. Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Village stocks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_stocks
4. Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Be bold. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold
5. Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Notability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability
6. Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest
7. Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Stub. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stub
8. Wikipedia. Wikipedia:No original research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research
9. Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Mentorship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mentorship
10. Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Teahouse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse
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