Editing and Contributing to Wikipedia: Editing

• Contributing is easy: see how to edit a page. For a quick summary on participating, see the Plain and simple guide. The Cheatsheet will remind you of basic wiki markup. Wiki markup is required on some pages, such as Talk Pages, but you can use the spiffy new Visual Editor for most editing.
• You can practice editing and experiment in a sandbox.
• Be bold in improving articles! When adding facts, please provide references so others may verify them. If you are affiliated with the article subject, please see the conflict of interest guideline.
• If you're looking for places you can help out, the Community portal is the place to go.
• How to Edit Wikipedia Brochure

Tips for Editing using Wikipedia Code:

Basic formatting:

• To create a section, use = on each side of the title.  Different numbers of = affect weight/size of header in hierarchy.
  • If an article has at least 4 headings, a Table of Contents will be automatically generated.
• To create a bulleted list, use * in front of each item.
• To create a numbered list, use # in front of each item. Numbers will be automatically generated.

• To add a reference, put your cursor in place and then hit the Reference button.  A pop-up window will appear where you can enter your citation information.  References will automatically number.
• Referencing for beginners
• Identifying reliable sources

Ways to begin

• The Community portal includes lists of editing tasks you can work on including adding images, fixing links, and more.
• Template messages\Cleanup: These messages are used to notify other editors that an entry could use some work.

Like to write?

• Wikipedia articles that need copy editing
• Stubs are articles that need to be written
• Articles to be expanded are more than stubs, but still need work

Like to do research?

• Fact and Reference Checks
• Articles with Unsourced Statements (citation needed)
• Articles Lacking Reliable References
• Articles Lacking Sources
• Articles Needing Additional References

Of Local Interest

• A group of Wikipedians has organized to improve Cornell University-related articles as a Wikiproject.  Look under "Articles" for lists of project articles needing clean-up and other improvements.
• Here is a list of Cornell University-related stubs.
• The Finger Lakes Portal includes a list of articles that need work or have been requested (see "Things you can do" area)
• The Cornell University article needs a few improvements, too.
• The Ithaca, NY article links to a few non-existent articles on local entities, and needs to be updated.

• The Wikipedia Library helps editors access reliable sources to improve Wikipedia.
• From Library holdings, special collections and archives in the Wikipedia Library:

"While primary source materials are not appropriate sources for Wikipedia, including references to archival collections in an article can be an excellent way to lead interested researchers to rich collections as further resources. However, care should be used when linking to archival collection descriptions or finding aids—if the editor is affiliated with the holding institution they should only include links to collections which would provide the best information about a topic. The editor should take care to include links to other important collections located at other institutions. Links to archival collections can be included in the 'External links' section of an article, and if there are enough links to archival collections, it might be appropriate to call attention to this group of links by adding a subsection titled 'Links to archival collections'"

• Once you've created an article, see Writing better articles for guidance on how to improve it and what to include (like reference citations).
• Check Your first article to see if your topic is appropriate, then the Article wizard will walk you through creating the article.
• For contributing images, audio, or video files, see the Introduction to uploading images. Then the Upload wizard will guide you through that process.
• Article development guide

Tips:

• To create a section, use = on each side of the title.  Different numbers of = affect weight/size of header in hierarchy.
• To create a bulleted list, use * in front of each item.
• To create a numbered list, use # in front of each item. Numbers will be automatically generated.

• Watchlists: "Watching pages allows any logged-in user to keep a list of 'watched' pages and to generate a list of recent changes made to those pages (and their associated talk pages). In this way you can keep track of and react to what's happening to pages you have created or are otherwise interested in"
• Follow Twitter accounts that track anonymous edits by IP addresses:
  • @congress-edits tweets anonymous Wikipedia edits that are made from IP addresses in the US Congress. 
  • @valleyedits tweetsanonymous Wikipedia edits from Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, and Wikimedia Foundation IP addresses.