Using Wikipedia

Introduction to Wikipedia

First, understand the purpose and philosophy of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is quite unlike anything conventional. It's a volunteer effort on a global scale coordinated mostly asynchronously via the Internet to create a large collection of quality, multimedia entries to rival any academically or commercially produced encyclopedia. All of this to give it away! What's even stranger is that anyone can contribute given a computer. Imagine if you could walk into an organization's office, say Public Library of Science, rifle through drawers, peruse memos, read through computer files, and just start or help complete some project you thought was important and useful. That's the essence of Wikipedia. Before you can begin however, you have to understand what is desirable, and what is not.

Before it's possible to know what's going on, you have to know where you are, what's available, what's useful, and where to find it. The 'where you are' is the easy part. (yadda yadda yadd)

The Main Page contains the following lists each with its own collection of links:

Selected Articles
Encyclopedia
- Philosophy and Mathematical and Natural Sciences
- Applied Arts and Sciences
- Social Sciences
- Culture
- Other Category Schemes

Community
- Writing Articles
- About the Project
- In Other Languages
- Sister Projects

- Wikipedia:Category_schemes
- Copyrights

Next, learn the basics of the technology behind the website.

After, learn the basics of having an account and communicating with others.

Then, learn more about etiquette.

To follow, learn something about the style.

Finally, have at it!
- Contributing FAQ

Reference

Village Pump Scuttlebutt, gossip, questions, and debate.
Reference Desk Questions? Answers!
Boilerplate Text contains some templates for copying and pasting. Very useful and creates systemwide consistency.