how to edit an article on wikipedia

• How to edit a page

Originally from Wikipedia .

• Wikipedia:Introduction
• Wikipedia:Tutorial
• Help:Editing
• Help:Starting a new page

Wikimedia projects are Wikis , which means that anyone can easily edit any unprotected page and save those changes immediately to that page. After your first edit, you are a Wikipedia editor! To request a change to a protected page, you may use any {{ Editprotected }} template .

Introduction

Editing most Wikipedia pages is not very difficult at all. Simply click on the " edit this page " tab at the top of a Wikipedia page (or on a section-edit link). This will bring you to a new page with a text box containing the editable text of the original page. If you just want to experiment, please do so in the sandbox , not here. You should write a short edit summary in the small field below the edit-box. You may use shorthand to describe your changes, as described in the legend , and when you have finished, press the Show preview button to see how your changes will look. You can also see the difference between the page with your edits and the previous version of the page by pressing the "Show changes" button. If you're satisfied with what you see, be bold and press the Save page button. Your changes will immediately be visible to other Wikipedia users.

You can also click on the " Discussion " tab to see the corresponding talk page , which contains comments about the page from other Wikipedia users. Click on the " + " tab to add a new section, or edit the page in the same way as an article page.

You should remember to sign your messages on talk pages and some special-purpose project pages , but you should not sign edits you make to regular articles. In page histories , the MediaWiki software keeps track of which user makes each change.

Minor edits

See Minor edits

Major edits

All editors are encouraged to be bold , but there are several things that a user can do to ensure that major edits are performed smoothly. Before engaging in a major edit, consider discussing proposed changes on the article discussion/talk page. During the edit, if doing so over an extended period of time, the {{ inuse }} tag can reduce the likelihood of an edit conflict. Once the edit has been completed, the inclusion of an edit summary will assist in documenting the changes. These steps will all help to ensure that major edits are well received by the Wikipedia community.

Wiki markup

The wiki markup is the syntax system you can use to format a Wikipedia page; please see Help:Editing for details on it, and Help:Wikitext examples for a longer list of the possibilities of Wikitext.

Links and URLs

Only images that have been uploaded to Wikipedia can be used. To upload images, use the upload page . You can find the uploaded image on the image list .

See the Wikipedia's image use policy as a guideline used on Wikipedia.

For further help on images, including some more versatile abilities, see the topic on Extended image syntax .

Character formatting

No or limited formatting - showing exactly what is being typed.

A few different kinds of formatting will tell the Wiki to display things as you typed them - what you see, is what you get!

Table of contents

At the current status of the wiki markup language, having at least four headers on a page triggers the TOC to appear in front of the first header (or after introductory sections). Putting __TOC__ anywhere forces the TOC to appear at that point (instead of just before the first header). Putting __NOTOC__ anywhere forces the TOC to disappear. See also compact TOC for alphabet and year headings.

There are two ways to build tables:

• in special Wiki-markup (see Help:Table )
• with the usual HTML elements: <table>, <tr>, <td> or <th>.

For the latter, and a discussion on when tables are appropriate, see Wikipedia:When to use tables .

(See also Help:Variable )

NUMBEROFARTICLES is the number of pages in the main namespace which contain a link and are not a redirect, in other words number of articles, stubs containing a link, and disambiguation pages.

CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN is the genitive (possessive) grammatical form of the month name, as used in some languages; CURRENTMONTHNAME is the nominative (subject) form, as usually seen in English.

In languages where it makes a difference, you can use constructs like {{grammar:case|word}} to convert a word from the nominative case to some other case. For example, {{grammar:genitive|{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}}} means the same as {{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}}.

The MediaWiki software used by Wikipedia has support for templates. This means standardized text chunks (such as boilerplate text) can be inserted into articles. For example, typing {{ stub }} will appear as " This article is a stub . You can help Wikipedia by expanding it . " when the page is saved. See Wikipedia:Template messages for the complete list. Other commonly used templates are: {{ disambig }} for disambiguation pages, {{ spoiler }} for spoiler warnings and {{ sectstub }} like an article stub but for a section. There are many subject-specific stubs for example: {{ Geo-stub }}, {{ Hist-stub }}, and {{ Linux-stub }}. For a complete list of stubs see Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types .

More information on editing wiki pages

You may also want to learn about:

• How to make a new page
• Informal tips on contributing to Wikipedia
• Editing tasks in general at the w:Wikipedia:Editing FAQ
• w:Wikipedia:Cheatsheet
• Rename pages boldly, at w:Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page
• Preferred layout of your article, at Guide to layout
• Style conventions in the w:Wikipedia:Manual of Style
• An article with annotations pointing out common Wikipedia style and layout issues, at w:Wikipedia:Annotated article
• General policies in w:Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines
• w:Wikipedia:Naming conventions for how to name articles themselves
• Help on editing very large articles
• If you are making an article about something that belongs to a group of objects (a city, an astronomical object, a Chinese character...) check if there is a WikiProject on the group and try to follow its directions explicitly.
• w:Wikipedia:Namespace
• Discussion pages
• Request pages
• Policies and guidelines
• Information and statistics

Participate:

• Meta-Wiki discussion page

• Pages using ISBN magic links
• Pages using RFC magic links
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How to Change the Title of a Wikipedia Article

Last Updated: August 24, 2023 Tested

wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 22 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. The wikiHow Tech Team also followed the article's instructions and verified that they work. This article has been viewed 59,246 times. Learn more...

Are you frustrated by a really badly titled Wikipedia article? If there is a badly worded title that you know needs changing, follow the steps in this article and you'll be on your way to making the article a better-named article.

• If you haven't created an account there already, create a Wikipedia account. (Visit the English Wikipedia Page for details.) While the sign-up process is similar to the sign-up process for wikiHow, your username for wikiHow is not transferable to Wikipedia.

• If you are unsure of what a better title should be but know it should be changed, be sure to submit a suggestion and reason why you think it should be moved to the article's Discussion page.

• What reason you type in the "Reason" box will differ on a case-by-case basis, so no one title change will ever have the same reason.

• Do not fiddle with "Watch source page and target page" unless you are planning to watch the article for further edits after your title change has gone through.

• Click the link above the list that is titled "Show redirects only". You'll need to change all these to the current article's title name. Open each of the article pages listed on the resultant page, and change the article title listed within the square brackets (the same concept as redirects here on wikiHow) to the new name you've moved this article to.

Community Q&A

• If you need help coming up with a good name for an article, read over the directions about Wikipedia's naming conventions on their site here . If you are still stuck with coming up with a good name, open the WP:RM link, browse to the list of requested articles, and type the article and provide details with why you aren't moving (retitling) it, but provide as many factual reasons as possible to explain the scenario. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• For other articles that are requesting a title change, you can find the "requested moves" page here . Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If you need administrator help in a simple page-move situation that is blocked by history at the target of the move, the easiest way is to tag pages that need to be deleted to make way for the move (the target) with {{db-move|page to move from|reason for move}}. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• Unless you created the article and made a mistake in naming, don't change any Wikipedia article title unless you understand the naming conventions and capitalization rules. Take it for granted that the person who originally wrote the article probably did come up with the best name for the article (if the article is well-established over several years). Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Wikipedia does not allow you to change the title of an article to one of a wide variety of featured articles that change every day from the Wikipedia home page. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• It is never acceptable to move a page without reading the discussion page of the article, and the notes provided on the requested moves page (without taking any other action: such as making additional edits to clarify the article even further). If you are not sure, rather skip the article, and let someone else handle it. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Don't just copy and paste the article content from the original article to a brand new article's page. Doing so doesn't preserve the history of edits that have made their way onto the page. Contributors hold their copyrighted licenses, and by doing so, you're breaking their license and law. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Moving_a_page - research source

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