Welcome to Wikipedia!
editHello, {{subst:PAGENAME}}, and welcome to Wikipedia! Wikipedia is one of the world's fastest growing internet sites. We aim to build the biggest and most comprehensive encyclopaedia in the world! To date we have over four million articles in a host of languages. The English language Wikipedia alone has {{subst:NUMBEROFARTICLES}} articles! But we still need more! Please feel free to contribute your knowledge and expertise to our site.
Here are a few good links for newcomers:
- The five pillars of Wikipedia
- How to edit a page
- Help pages
- Tutorial (this is really great for getting used to editing Wikipedia)
- How to write a great article
- Manual of Style
Also, don't worry too much about being perfect. Very few of us are! It might be a good idea to read this to see how you can avoid making common mistakes, though.
Just to give you a really basic overview so you don't make any mistakes early:
- Wikipedia keeps a neutral point of view policy, meaning that all contributions must not be biased one way or the other. Even if both biases are presented, it is still not allowed on Wikipedia.
- Only public domain resources can be copied directly to Wikipedia without permission — this does not include most web pages.
- Be bold! In my opinion, this may be Wikipedia's most important policy. Go ahead and edit a page! Don't worry about "ruining" other's work, this is a wiki! (Of course, major changes should probably be proposed on talk pages to achieve consensus, but don't be scared!)
We hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please always sign your name on talk pages (but not articles!) using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the time and date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! ~~