Wikiprojekt:Tłumaczenie metastron/The Missing Manual/Pierwsza edycja

Każdy może edytować Wikipedię, także Ty. To prawda. Nie ma żadnych opłat i nie musisz się rejestrować. Nie musisz nawet mieć e-maila (lecz jeśli czytasz tę książkę, prawdopodobnie masz jedno). Jak wprowadzenie wyjaśnia, wszystkie artykuły Wikipedii są owocem wspólnej pracy. Możesz po prostu wejść i dodać swoją wiedzę za pomocą kilku kliknięć.

Ten rozdział wyjaśnia co zobaczysz w oknie edycji artykułu Wikipedii i jak trenować, podglądać i zapisywać swoje edycje. Nauczysz się także kilku podstawowych zdolności edycyjnych - jak tworzyć link z jednego artykułu do drugiego i jak edytować tylko sekcję artykułu, a nie cały artykuł. Jak już posiądziesz te umiejętności będziesz gotowa/gotów na pierwszy krok w prawdziwym edytowaniu Wikipedii: identyfikowanie artykułu, który wymaga edycji.

Wskazówka:

Możesz od razu zacząć edytowanie bez zakładania konta na Wikipedii (to znaczy, uzyskania nazwy użytkownika). Jednak są powody, dla których warto mieć swoje konto - zwiększona prywatność oraz możliwość tworzenia nowych artykułów i własnej strony użytkownika. Masz więc wybór: możesz podążać kolejno za rozdziałami lub przeskoczyć do rozdziału 3, ustawienia konta i miejsca pracy i najpierw pozyskać nazwę użytkownika, a później przeczytać ten rozdział i rozdział 2, dokumentowanie źródeł.

Edytowanie na Wikipedii

Doświadczeni użytkownicy rozumieją główną zasadę, stojącą nad wszystkimi innymi: Wikipedia jest współpracą. Nie ma potrzeby obawiać się, ponieważ masz wsparcie całej społeczności. Przestrzeganie następujących punktów pozwoli Ci na efektywne edytowanie:

• Nie potrzebujesz wiedzieć wszystkiego o Wikipedii aby edytować artykuł. Wikipedia ma dosłownie setki stron zasad, wytycznych i samouczków na tematy takie jak kategoryzacja, cytowanie, prawa autorskie, litery z obcych alfabetów, nagłówki, wcięcia, odnośniki, listy, neutralność, szablony, a to tylko kilka z nich. Jeśli nie zrobisz czegoś zupełnie poprawnie, nie martw się - nikt inny nie robi zawsze zupełnie poprawnych rzeczy.
• Nie musisz wiedzieć wszystkiego odnośnie swojego tematu aby edytować artykuł. Jeśli dodasz coś konstruktywnego, poprawnego w 90%, jest to wiele lepsze niż nie zrobienie nic. Tak jak w sporcie, nie musisz zdobywać punktów w każdej rozgrywce, aby być dobrym współgraczem. Jeśli dodasz coś niezupełnie poprawnego, ktoś inny może pomóc Ci naprawić błędy lub dokończyć artykuł.
• Możesz wnosić wkład bez dokonywania edycji. Jeśli widzisz problem w danym artykule, ale (jeszcze) nie wiesz jak go naprawić lub wiesz jak go naprawić, ale nie możesz tego zrobić (czasem artykuły są zabezpieczane, zazwyczaj na krótki okres czasu), możesz nadal pomóc poprzez zostawienie konstruktywnego komentarza na stronie dyskusji artykułu. (Rozdział 8 opisuje strony dyskusji w pełnych szczegółach.) Jeśli nie chcesz lub nie możesz edytować artykułu wprost, nadal możesz przyczynić się go jego poprawy.

Nauka w brudnopisie

Nawet jeśli dokonałaś/dokonałeś dużej liczby edycji z różnymi typami oprogramowania w przeszłości, potrzebujesz trochę wprawy w narzędziach Wikipedii. Na szczęście, Wikipedia ma stronę o nazwie brudnopis, gdzie użytkownicy mogą ćwiczyć bez zamartwiania się o wyrządzenie szkód. W tym rozdziale będziesz raczej edytować w brudnopisie niż pracować nad rzeczywistymi artykułami.

Pamiętaj, idąc przez książkę (lub kiedykolwiek dokonując edycji), jeśli napotkasz właściwość, której do końca nie rozumiesz, możesz zawsze zajrzeć do brudnopisu i zrobić parę testów. Niczego nie zepsujesz i możesz eksperymentować do czasu aż w pełni zrozumiesz funkcjonowanie danego mechanizmu. Możesz także pracować duplikując aktualne edycje pokazane w tej książce.

Z każdej strony Wikipedii możesz przejść do brudnopisu w prosty sposób:

• W polu wyszukiwarki, na górze strony po prawej, wpisz WP:B i naciśnij enter. Upewnij się, że piszesz z dużych liter i nie wstawiasz spacji po dwukropku.

[[Plik:TMMWikipediaBrudnopis.png|thumb|640px|right|'''Obrazek 1-1.''' Góra strony brudnopisu w normalnym widoku. W normalnym trybie możesz przeczytać treść znajdującą się na stronie, ale nie możesz wprowadzać do niej żadnych zmian. Aby edytować, po prostu kliknij zakładkę ''Edytuj''.]]

Wskazówka:

WP:B to skrót, zobaczysz takich więcej w trakcie czytania tej książki. Jeśli uważasz, że potrzebujesz spalić troszkę więcej kalorii, możesz wpisać w wyszukiwarce pełną nazwę (w tym wypadku Wikipedia:Brudnopis). Zauważ także, że kombinacja klawiszy Shift+Alt+F [Shift+Control+F na komputerach Mac] przeniesie Cię bezpośrednio do wyszukiwarki.

Obrazek 1-1 pokazuje brudnopis przed rozpoczęciem edycji.

Rozpoczęcie, Podgląd i zapisywanie Twojej edycji

Edytowanie na łamach Wikipedii jest podobne do używania bardzo prostego edytora tekstu, z kilkoma słowami kluczowymi wewnątrz tekstu. Wpisujesz tekst w okno edycji i klikasz przyciski w celu podglądu, a ostatecznie zapisania twojej pracy.

Dodawanie tekstu

Edytujesz artykuły Wikipedii w wielkim, białym obszarze pośrodku okna. Aby dostać się do tego obszaru, musisz przejść do trybu edycji.

1. W wyszukiwarce na górze strony wpisz WP:B i wciśnij enter, aby przejść do brudnopisu.

Całą swoją pracę w tym rozdziale będziesz wykonywać w brudnopisie, wiec nie dokonasz zmiany na żadnym z artykułów Wikipedii.

2. Na stronie brudnopisu (Obrazek 1-1) kliknij zakładke "Edytuj".

Jesteś teraz w trybie edycji, zawierającej obszar edycji pokazany na Schemacie 1-2.

[[Plik:Wikipedia-The Missing Manual I mediaobject1 d1e1041.png|thumb|294px|right|'''Figure 1-2.''' The sandbox, in edit mode. The text in the box (the ''edit box'') is only an example—what you see will depend on what the other editors have just done to the page. The ''edit toolbar'' along the top of the edit box is standard; it provides one-click options for the most common kinds of formatting of content. Also standard is all the text between the sentences "It will be deleted" and "Your changes will be visible immediately."]]

Wskazówka:

Jeśli dolna część Schematu 1-2 wygląda strasznie, nie przejmuj się: zazwyczaj redaktorzy używają około dwóch tuzinów przycisków, poza nadzwyczajnymi, rzadkimi przypadkami. Jeśli jesteś ciekaw, co oznaczają wszystkie przyciski, zajrzyj do dodatku A, który opisuje wszystki przyciski znajdujące się na dole strony widocznej na Rysunku 1-2, jak również ikony umieszczone na pasku.

3. Usuń wszystko poza linijką z indtrukcją.

Zawartość okna edycji powinna wyglądać jak na Rysunku 1-3. W tym miejscu napiszesz tekst, który będzie zawierał również wytłuszczenia i pochylenia oraz nagłówki sekcji.

[[Plik:Wikipedia- The Missing Manual 0103.png|thumb|640px|right|'''Figure 1-3.''' The edit box after deleting all but the top three lines. Now the edit box is ready for you to add text. Of what remains, the first line is a ''template'' (see [[Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Editing, Creating, and Maintaining Articles/Editing for the First Time#Understanding and Using Templates|the section about templates]], below), and the second and third lines are an ''invisible comment''—visible, that is, only when you're in edit mode.]]

Wskazówka:

Jeśli ktoś inny usunął linijkę z instrukcją z Rysunku 1-3 nie martw się - kroki, które wykonasz na tej stronie nadal zadziałają poprawnie bez nich. Możesz także je przywrócić, aby pomóc innym korzystającym z brudnopisu.

Jeśli porównasz Rysunek 1-1 z Rysunkiem 1-3, mogą dziwić Cię pewne rzeczy: Jaka jest przyczyna stosowania nawiasów klamrowych (Pierwsza linijka okna edycji z Rysunku 1-3), i czemu tekst na Rysunku 1-1 nie jest jednoznaczny z tekstem widocznym na Rysunku 1-3?

Odpowiedź na oba pytania jest taka sama: klamrowe nawiasy używane są do wstawiania szablonów, których podstawowym zadaniem jest dodawanie standardowego tekstu na stronie. Ponieważ szablony są bardzo ważne - znajdziesz je wszędzie na Wikipedii - stworzona została osobna sekcja omawiająca szablon, dalej na tej stronie.

4. Wpisz tekst pokazany na Rysunku 1-4 (prócz pierwszej linijki u góry, która powinna już tam się znajdować) w oknie edycji.

Dla tego przykładu, nie musisz wpisywać całego tekstu, jeśli nie chcesz. Możesz wpisać także tekst według własnego pomysłu, pamiętaj jednak, żeby zawierał:

• Nagłówki sekcji. Wpisz dwa znaki "=" na początku i na końcu linii. (Jeśli tworzysz przynajmniej cztery nagłówki, Wikipedia automatycznie wstawi spis treści, jak samemu się przekonasz za kilka chwil.)
• Pogrubienie. Wpisz trzy apostrofy (') przed i po każdym kawałku tekstu, który chcesz pogrubić.
• Pochylenie. Wpisz dwa apostrofy (') przed i po każdym kawałku tekstu, który ma być pochylony.

[[Plik:Wikipedia-The Missing Manual 0104.png|thumb|617px|right|'''Figure 1-4.''' Typing this text into the edit box is a quick lesson in the three most common types of Wikipedia formatting. Putting equal signs on both sides of text turns it into a section heading (after you save your edit). Text surrounded by three apostrophes gets bolded; text surrounded by two apostrophes gets italicized.]]

Wskazówka:

Nigdy nie pozostawiaj pustego miejsca na początku linii, jeśli nie chcesz aby tekst posiadał wcięcie (czego nie będziesz robić w tym artykule). Zostawienie pustego miejsca na początku sprawi, że Wikipedia umieści tę linijkę w ramce o niebieskim tle. Jeśli jest to długi tekst, wyjdzie on poza krawędź strony. W tym wypadku, aby przeczytać ten tekst trzeba będzie przewijać stronę.

Podgląd

Jedna z najważniejszych rzeczy po napisaniu edycji jest podglądanie jej - aby zobaczyć, jak będzie wyglądać po zaakceptowaniu. Dla edycji, w której stosowane jest formatowanie, jest to niezbędne. Lecz jeśli dodałeś tylko czysty tekst, nadal zobacz podgląd, aby nabrać nawyku stosowania podglądu zawsze.

Doświadczeni redaktorzy często pomijają podgląd, jeśli wprowadzają małe, rutynowe zmiany. Zazwyczaj jest to ok, ale czasem, ku ich zaskoczeniu, gdy przekonają się jak strona wygląda po zapisaniu stwierdzają, że muszą dokonać kolejnej edycji aby naprawić swoje błędy. Dopóki więc nie staniesz się doświadczonym redaktorem używaj podglądu swojej pracy zawsze.

Zanim klikniesz przycisk "pokaż podgląd", powinieneś także wpisać opis edycji. Powinieneś zrobić to teraz, a nie później, ponieważ podgląd pokaże również jak wygląda ten opis. Pomyśl o opisie edycji jako wytłumaczeniu swojej pracy dla innych redaktorów. To wytłumaczenie może być bardzo krótkie (np. "usunięcie wandalizmu") lub dłuższe (maksymalnie 200 znaków). Staraj się opisywać najkrócej, jak się da, jednak na tyle długie, jak potrzebujesz.

1. In the "Summary" box (Figure 1-5), type a few words to describe the purpose of your edit.

In other words, follow the instructions in fine print: "Briefly describe the changes you have made." For example, in this case you might type Test edit – first time using the Sandbox. (See the box below for information about edit summaries.)

Once you've added an edit summary, it's time to check your work.

[[Plik:Wikipedia-The Missing Manual 0105.png|thumb|640px|right|'''Figure 1-5.''' When you add an edit summary, make it descriptive but concise. (The checkboxes for "This is a minor edit" and "Watch this page" are visible ''only'' if you're a registered user who is logged in.)]]

2. Click the "Show preview" button just below the edit window (the button is shown in Figure 1-5) to see what the Wikipedia page will look like after you save your edit.

A Wikipedia preview screen has three parts. The very top of the screen (Figure 1-6) shows a warning that you're not looking at a saved version of the page. The middle and bottom of the screen (Figure 1-7) show both what the page will look like after you save it (if you don't change it further) and the edit box and related tools.

[[Plik:Wikipedia-The Missing Manual 0106.png|thumb|566px|right|'''Figure 1-6.''' At the very top of the preview screen there's always a warning, in red, that you're looking at a preview, not something that has been saved.]]

[[Plik:Wikipedia-The Missing Manual 0107.png|thumb|502px|right|'''Figure 1-7.''' The middle and part of the bottom half of the preview screen, showing how the edit from '''Figure 1-4''' looks after saving the page. Wikipedia automatically adds a table of contents for articles that have four or more section headings. At bottom is the now-familiar edit box, so you can make corrections or improvements to your article.]]

3. Now's your chance to fix mistakes before anyone else can see them. Just make any changes you want in the edit box, and click "Show preview" again.

When you're satisfied with what the preview shows, it's time to save the edit, which will change the version that readers see when they come to the page.

Saving

Click the "Save page" button (see Figure 1-5 for the location of this button, if you need to). At this point, one of three things happens:

• Most of the time, the page changes, incorporating your edit. That is, the page looks like it did when you looked at it in preview mode, except now there is no preview warning on top. Your edit is complete; you're done.
• You might see a cached version of the page. You'll see a version of the page that looks like it did before you edited the page. In this case, you should refresh the page in your Web browser; typing Ctrl-R (⌘-R on the Mac) does the trick in most browsers. Once you see your edit has taken effect, you're done. (In the rare case where refreshing in your browser doesn't work, you need to tell Wikipedia's servers to refresh their cache as well. See the page Wikipedia:Purge; shortcut WP:PURGE.)
• The worst case scenario is that Wikipedia refuses to make the change because someone else changed the page while you were editing it. Figure 1-8 shows what the page will look like in case of an edit conflict.

[[Plik:Wikipedia-The Missing Manual 0108.png|thumb|640px|right|'''Figure 1-8.''' The top of a page when there's an edit conflict. If you're logged in, you see only the top paragraph of information.]]

The "edit this page" non-issue

"Edit this page" is non-destructive and non-contentious, depending on your clicking the Cancel button. It has basically the same effect as if it had displayed "View Source". Don't hesitate. It's OK.

It's best to press the Cancel button as soon as you're done viewing, in case you accidentally alter the wikitext source and then accidentally press "Save page". But be bold and feel free, for vandalism is more likely than viewing accidents. Even if you ignore the edit screen and browse away from it, it's probably going to be OK, even if you come back to it later and then accidentally press the Save page button. If this happens and there was a change to your page version and there was a change on the server's version, this would trigger an Edit conflict screen. But it's OK, because the default of an Edit conflict screen makes Save page do the same thing as Cancel: nothing. You can "edit" (view) the busiest, most content-changing page, and have it be completely harmless. Just use the Cancel button.

To truly edit, you complete 1) an alteration, 2) an editing comment, and then 3) an activation of the Save page button. Because intentional editing is so common, the <Enter> key becomes a shortcut to the Save page key at step-2. So now you know how Save page can get accidentally triggered.

To "edit this page", then, is really just to "view source". To get a feel for this reality, you could edit a watchlist. There is no "Cancel" option. Finally, there is the rare case of the Copyrights article, where administrators changed "edit this page" to "view source". So when editing a page, make some effort to press Cancel, but don't worry about it if you forgot.

Dealing with an Edit Conflict

Some articles are very (temporarily or permanently) popular with editors—perhaps the article is about a current event (say, a hurricane) or a person suddenly in the news. Such articles may be edited as frequently as once every minute or two. For such an article, if you as an editor take a while to do an edit—say, you begin editing, then do something else for five minutes, then come back to editing—your chances of an edit conflict are quite high when you attempt to save your edit.

If there is an edit conflict, the Wikipedia screen has four parts:

• The warning at the top (Figure 1-8).
• A text box with the text for the current version of the page. It's Wikipedia saying "Here's what you can edit—the current version," plus all the other editing stuff (edit summary box, buttons, wiki markup symbols, and so on.)
• A Differences section that shows how your version (the one you saw in "show preview") now differs from the existing page (the one revised by someone else while you were working on your revision).
• At the very bottom, an additional text edit box, with your edit in it (Figure 1-9).

[[Plik:Wikipedia-The Missing Manual 0109.png|thumb|640px|right|'''Figure 1-9.''' When there is an edit conflict, your screen will have an ''additional'' edit box, at the bottom of the screen, with the label "Your text." (Not all the text in '''Figure 1-4''' is shown here, but all of it would be in the edit box.)]]

The best way to handle an edit conflict depends on the circumstances. Here are two common approaches:

• If you were adding information, then you should copy that information from the lower text box to another place (a word processing document, Windows Notepad, TextEdit, or similar.). Once you have the information in a safe place, go back to the page (in reading mode) and review whether what you were adding still needs to be added. If so, edit the section or page again (this time more quickly, if possible), do a quick preview, and save the edit.
• If you were doing a small amount of copyediting, just go back to the page (in reading mode), go into edit mode, and do your edit again (more quickly). Of course, before you go into edit mode, you should check that what you were trying to fix still needs to be fixed.

Basically, you haven't lost any text that you added (you can simply copy it), but if you did a lot of copyediting, you may have to do that over again, because the alternative is to overwrite what another editor or other editors just did. You absolutely don't want to do that, assuming that the other editor(s) improved the article.

Of course, the best way to settle a conflict is to avoid it in the first place. You can avoid edit conflicts entirely by using the following techniques:

• Edit a section of an article, not the entire article (editing of sections is discussed in the section about Article Sections).
• Click the "history" tab to see if an article is getting a lot of edits; if so, do a series of small (quick) edits rather than trying to do a lot of changes within a single edit.
• Prepare lengthy additions offline, in a word processing document or Windows Notepad or something similar, or on a subpage (see the section about creating your personal sandbox). After the text is ready, you can then go into edit mode for the article, copy and paste the text into the edit window, preview, and save, all in a short amount of time.

Wiki Markup: From Edit Box to Screen

Earlier in this chapter, you learned how to create section headers, and to format text as bold or italic (see Figure 1-4). Such formatting is called wiki markup. As you continue through this book, you'll learn about every type of markup you're likely to encounter. As a new editor, though, you need to learn three things right away: to recognize the types of markup, how templates are used, and how to create links between articles.

Types of Markup

Besides headings, bold, and italic text, you'll encounter the following types of markup as you edit articles:

• {{template}}. The double curly brackets indicate a template. An example of a template can be found in Figure 1-3 and was discussed immediately thereafter (see the section about adding text). Templates are discussed in more detail later in this chapter (the section about templates).
• [[Article name]] or [[Article name|other name]]. Double square brackets create internal links (wikilinks), which are hyperlinks between pages in Wikipedia. They're described in the next section.
• [http:url] or [http:url some text]. Single square brackets around a URL create external links. This formatting is discussed in Chapter 2, Documenting Your Sources (see the section about external links).
• <ref> text possibly with a URL </ref>. These are footnote tags—the text between the tags is the footnote itself. Later in the article will be an instruction as to where to display the footnotes, which will look like this: <references />, or like this: {{reflist}}; normally that instruction is in a section titled "References". Footnotes are described in detail in Chapter 2, Documenting Your Sources.
• <blockquote> text </blockquote> and <math> numbers and symbols</math>. In articles, you'll find a few other types of paired tags besides the <ref> tags for footnotes; blockquote and math tags are among the more common. Tags normally come in pairs, and the ending tag must have a slash character ("/") as its second character if it is to work properly.

• <!-- Your comment text goes here -->. This markup turns the text inside into an invisible comment; an example appears in Figure 1-3. "Invisible" means that the text doesn't display in normal viewing mode; you can see it only in edit mode.
• {| bunch of stuff with lots of vertical lines |}. This formatting creates a table. Chapter 14 goes into the details.
• One or more rows starting with an "*" or a "#". These characters create lists within an article (the "#" numbers the list, while the "*" just puts a bullet at the beginning of a line). Chapter 14 goes into the details.
• [[Category:Name]]. This markup looks like a wikilink, and it is, in a way, but it puts a category link at the bottom of a page. Chapter 19 goes into the details.

How to Create Internal Links

Linking one article to another is very easy—with good reason. Links to other articles can add a lot of value to an article because readers can follow the links whenever they come across a word they don't know a lot about. Good places to add internal links include the lead sections of articles and at the beginning of new sections within articles. A reader should always be able to get to important, related articles via a link.

In the edit box, just place paired square brackets around the name of the article you want to link to, for example: [[Winston Churchill]]. Figure 1-10 shows the sandbox again, in preview mode with some internal links sprinkled in.

[[Plik:Wikipedia-The Missing Manual 0110.png|thumb|549px|right|'''Figure 1-10.''' Compare what's been typed into the edit box (bottom) to what's in the preview portion of the page (top).]]

Another kind of internal link—a piped link—is extremely useful for situations where naming varies by country. For example, you've typed the following sentence in your article: "San Francisco has an extensive public transportation system," and you want to link the words "public transportation" to the relevant article. Trouble is, there's no article in Wikipedia named "public transportation." There is, however, an article named "public transport," which was probably written by someone who speaks British English. You don't care what it's called, you just want your readers to be able to go to that article. Here's how to create the link while having the article read "public transportation": San Francisco has an extensive [[public transport|public transportation]] system.

Understanding and Using Templates

As mentioned in the section about making an edit, if you go into edit mode and see some text surrounded by two curly brackets, like this: Szablon:Tlf, you're looking at a template. A template tells the software to get text and formatting instructions from another place and insert that formatted text into the article when the article is displayed.

Here's a common example: If you see the {{Fakt}} template in the edit box when you're editing an article, it's telling the software to go to the page [[Template:Fact]], get the text there (including formatting), and insert that text into the article when the article is displayed for readers. The {{Fakt}} template, displays the following text: Szablon:Fix .

Templates are widespread for a number of reasons:

• Consistency. Every cleanup template looks the same, each type of infobox (see the section about article appearance) looks the same, and so on. Editors don't have to constantly figure out how to present a particular type of information in an article.
• Time savings. You don't have to type out standard information, and you don't have to know how to format information in standard ways (such as superscript or message boxes). You just have to find out the name of the template and put it in double curly brackets. The software does the rest.
• Automatic updating. If the Wikipedia community decides to change a template, changing just one page—the template page itself—automatically changes what's displayed on every other page that uses the template. (High-use templates are protected from being changed by normal editors, to prevent easily-done extensive vandalism.)
• Categorization. Templates can include text that puts a page into a category (see Chapter 18, Better Articles: A Systematic Approach). Then you and other editors can go to the category page to find, for example, all articles that have been categorized as needing copyediting.

Templates are everywhere in Wikipedia. In this book, you'll find discussions about templates in a number of chapters, for example:

• Formatting footnotes (smaller font size, multiple columns) (Chapter 2, Documenting Your Sources, the section about citation templates)
• Putting information about yourself, using userboxes, on your user page (Chapter 3, Setting Up Your Account and Personal Workspace, the box about userboxes)
• Marking a new article as needing categories (Chapter 4, Creating a New Article, the box about categorization)
• Posting warnings to users about vandalism and spam, and reporting vandalism (Chapter 7, Dealing with Vandalism and Spam, see the section on issuing warnings and the section on reporting vandalism)
• Using an archive box to neatly organize links to archived talk pages (Chapter 8, Communicating with Your Fellow Editors, the section about creating an archive page)
• Indicating that an article is within a topic being worked on by a group of editors (a WikiProject) (Chapter 9, WikiProjects and Other Group Efforts, the section about WikiProject recruitment)
• Marking text as needing a source, and notifying the editor who posted the unsourced information about their mistake (Chapter 10, Resolving Content Disputes, the section about proper sourcing)
• Posting warnings about personal attacks (Chapter 11, Handling Incivility and Personal Attacks, the section about community enforcement)

That's a lot of uses of templates, and that's just in the first 11 chapters. At the moment, you just need to know these two main principles of templates:

• Templates add text and formatting, which are stored on another page. To add a template to an article, you type its name between double curly brackets, at the place in the wikitext where you want the template to appear.

[[Plik:Wikipedia-The Missing Manual I mediaobject1 d1e2307.png|thumb|235px|right|'''Figure 1-11.''' A common use for templates is ''infoboxes''. Here's the infobox template for the article ''Winnowill'', viewed in edit mode, on the top, and what it actually looks like in the article, on the bottom. The template has 15 parameters; the first two are for putting an image into the infobox, and are not being used here.]]

• If the template contains parameters, you can edit the text that has been added to those parameters just like you can edit other text in the article, without understanding any of the complexities of templates. For example, take a look at Figure 1-11, which shows a template with a lot of parameters:

In Figure 1-11, each parameter has a name that ends with an equal sign. The infobox will display only the text that follows the equal signs. You can edit text that appears after the equal signs, including adding text, but don't mess around with a parameter name. Also, be careful not to delete or add a parameter separator (the vertical bar symbol "|"), which marks the beginning of each parameter.

Editing Article Sections

Inexperienced editors often work on entire articles in edit mode even though they're making changes only to one section of that article. Not only does this make it more difficult for other editors to understand what an editor did, but it also significantly increases the chances of an edit conflict (see the section about edit conflicts, above). So, an important rule of editing is: Don't edit an entire page if you're changing only one section of the page.

Editing One Section

[[Plik:Wikipedia-The Missing Manual 0112.png|thumb|441px|right|'''Figure 1-12.''' An article with three sections that can be separately edited. To edit a specific section, click an "edit" link on the right side of the page.]]

You'll know an article has sections if you see a table of contents near the top of the article. Even if there is no table of contents, if you see headings within an article, then the article has sections that can be edited. Figure 1-12 shows an article with no table of contents but with three headings that indicate sections that can be edited.

If you click one of the three "edit" links in Figure 1-12, then the edit box shows only the text in the section, not the text of the entire article. That makes it easier to edit (less text in the edit box), and it significantly lessens the likelihood of an edit conflict, because if another editor is editing a different section, your two edits can't collide.

Editing the Lead Section

From the previous section, you know the importance of editing only a section rather than an entire article, whenever possible. But you may have noticed that in Figure 1-12 there was no [edit] link for the first sentence in the article, what Wikipedia calls the lead section. So, it appears that if you want to edit that section, you have to click the "edit this page" tab, just as if you wanted to edit the entire article.

In fact, it is possible to edit only the lead section of an article, though most editors don't know how. There are actually three different options:

• The manual way is to click the [edit] link for a section below the lead section, then go to the URL at the top of the screen and change the number at the end of the URL to "0". (The lead section of an article is always numbered section "0".) Press Enter, and you're then editing the lead section.
• The most complicated way is to add JavaScript code to your personal JavaScript page (see the section about your personal JavaScript page), to give you either a special tab (the "0" tab) or an "edit" link. You can find these scripts in the "Navigating to Edit page" section of the page Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts (shortcut: WP:JS). (Note: To do so, you must be a registered editor; see the section about reasons for registering.)
• The easiest way is to click the "my preferences" link on the upper right of the page (which you won't see unless you have a registered account and are logged in), go to the "Gadgets" tab. Select "Add an [edit] link for the introduction section of a page", and then click Save button. Thereafter, whenever you're editing an article, you'll see something similar to Figure 1-13.

[[Plik:Wikipedia-The Missing Manual 0113.png|thumb|400px|right|'''Figure 1-13.''' After you've selected the option to add an edit link for the lead section on the Gadgets tab of the "My preferences" page, you see a new edit link to the right of the title of every article. Clicking that link will open the top section of the article for editing. (If you don't see such a link, make sure you bypassed your browser's cache as described at the bottom of the Gadgets tab.)]]

Editing for Real

Now that you've read about the basics of editing, and (hopefully) followed the step-by-step instructions for doing a sandbox edit, you're almost ready to start editing actual articles. Before you do so, you need to understand a bit more about the rules of Wikipedia. Then you'll be prepared to find some articles that you can improve.

Wordsmithing Versus Adding Information

Taken to an extreme, there are basically two kinds of edits (other than removing vandalism, spam, and other problematic material):

• You can change the wording and/or formatting of an article, leaving the information in the article more or less intact.
• You can add new information.

But before you start adding new information, you should read Chapter 2, Documenting Your Sources, "Documenting Your Sources." If you want to jump right into wordsmithing, read on.

A Few Words about Content

Wikipedia has three core policies for content. Two of them, no original research and verifiability, are discussed in the next chapter. The third, neutral point of view, is worth mentioning now, because wordsmithing is often about a point of view.

Consider, for a moment, the goal of the people doing public relations or in a marketing department: to write about organizations, products and services, and leaders in a way that casts them in the best possible light. Or consider the wording of a press release by a political party, which tries to make the opposition look as bad as possible. In both of these situations, the writers have what Wikipedians call an extreme point of view (POV). By contrast, Wikipedia's policies require editors to follow these principles:

• Present significant viewpoints in proportion to the (published) prominence of each. Fringe theories, for example, deserve much less space (word count) in an article than mainstream/conventional theories.
• Represent fairly any differing views about a topic. Fairly means presenting the best case for each view, while avoiding extreme rhetoric from either side.
• Write without bias. The best way to do this is to write about facts, not about opinions. For example, instead of saying "X murdered Y," which is an opinion (was it self defense?), write "X was convicted of murdering Y," a documentable fact.

Wikipedia has much, much more detail that you can read about this policy (type the shortcut WP:NPOV in the search box on the left of the screen). Many (probably most, maybe even all) editors at Wikipedia have very strong opinions about one thing or another—cultural values, religion, politics, science, whatever. Good editors avoid problems by either focusing on making articles as factual as possible or working on articles where their potential biases aren't triggered. So if you're absolutely, positively sure you're right about a topic where many, and possibly most, other editors at Wikipedia wouldn't agree with you, it's a good idea to work on the other three million (or so) articles in Wikipedia that aren't about that topic. (Keep in mind that there are lots of places on the Web—blogs, personal pages, wikis other than Wikipedia, and more—where proactive opinions are welcome.)

Selecting a Random Page

Ready to edit? If so, you'll want to find articles that you can improve with copyediting. One way is to click the "Random article" link on the left side of the screen (see Figure 1-14).

[[Plik:Wikipedia-The Missing Manual 0115.png|thumb|148px|left|'''Figure 1-14.''' The "Random article" link. Click this to go to one of the about three million articles in Wikipedia.]]

When you click this link, there's a good chance you'll get a very short article (a stub), or a list, or a page that starts "XYZ may refer to ..." followed by a list of related topics (a disambiguation page), or a very specialized article. You can edit these, of course, but you may want to try again. When you get an article that you're not interested in editing, just click the "Random article" link again. (Do this twenty or so times, and you get a reasonable sense of the variety in the over three million articles in Wikipedia.)

Working on a Known Problem

An alternative to using the "Random article" link is to go to articles that other editors have identified as problematic. Several good places to find such articles are:

• Wikipedia:Pages needing attention (shortcut: WP:PNA)
• Wikipedia:Requests for expansion (shortcut: WP:RFE)
• Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating (shortcut: )
• Category:Wikipedia maintenance (shortcut: )

When you see the name of an article that seems interesting, just click the article name to go to it and start editing as described earlier in this chapter.