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Citation Needed! A Guide to Writing and Editing on Wikipedia

The Process

  1. Create your account and practice editing. Try to make 10 edits before you get started on your assignment. Information on account creation can be found on the ENL 3895 section of this guide.
  2. Find your article and think about what it needs. Make a plan of action! Look at the examples of good articles link in the box below to get a feel for what a Wikipedia page should look like. 
  3. Work on each edit one at a time in your sandbox. Open the article you want to change in Edit mode. (References and other templates will break if you copy from Read mode.) Select the portion you want to work on — a few paragraphs at most — and copy it.
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  4. Open your sandbox in Edit mode and paste the copied article content.
  5. Add an edit summary that says copied from [[article]] with the name of the original article, then save it.
  6. Re-enter Edit mode in your sandbox, make your changes, and publish them.
  7. Repeat steps 3-6 until the you're done with the article. 
  8. Consider saving a copy of your article somewhere to ensure you have an extra copy of it. The 'download as PDF' link on the left is great for doing just that.

Helpful Resources

Practice Editing