Help:Introduction to editing with VisualEditor/All
 | This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus. |
Opening the editor
A note about editing on mobile devices: Most Wikipedians prefer to edit from a computer, as the editing interface works better there. You can edit from a mobile device, though. See this page for more information.
VisualEditor is a What You See Is What You Get-style editor for Wikipedia. It's very simple to learn. It is an alternative to the Source editor, the primary editing interface which works more like a plain text file and allows you to directly edit the wiki markup text (wikitext). While VisualEditor is simpler to use, the Source editor can be more effective for some tasks.
This tutorial introduces the basics of using VisualEditor. Full instructions can be found in the VisualEditor user guide. You can enable VisualEditor through the Editing tab of Preferences: At subsection "Editor", make sure the checkbox "Enable the visual editor" is selected, and simply save your settings.
VisualEditor is still in development and so has some limitations and bugs. Most notably, it is slower to load than editing the source code, and is available for article pages but not talk pages. If you spot any problems, you can leave comments and suggestions at the Feedback page.
Opening VisualEditor
After you've enabled VisualEditor, you can edit any page that uses it by clicking on the "Edit" tab at the top of the page. (A long page may take a few seconds to load.)
You can also open VisualEditor by clicking on the "edit" link on any section of an article. You can also toggle between using VisualEditor and Source Editor whilst editing most pages.
Toolbar basics
The VisualEditor toolbar appears at the top of the screen when you begin editing.
The 
buttons Undo and Redo the changes you have made.
The Paragraph 
or Headings drop-down menu allows you to use standard text formats, for example to create headings and subheadings. Normal text format is called "Paragraph"; the main page sections are called "Heading", and subheadings are "Heading 2", "Heading 3", etc.
The A drop down menu contains additional formatting options including bold (B), italic (I), underline (U), superscript (x2), and subscript (x2). This formatting is applied to any text that you've selected. For example, an article's subject should be written in bold the first time it is mentioned.
The 
allows bulleted and numbered lists, and the Ω menu contains special characters.
Links and wikilinks
Links (particularly wikilinks) are one of the key components of Wikipedia. A wikilink connects to another page on the encyclopedia and ties the whole thing together.
In general, wikilinks should be added for the first occurrence of important concepts for the topic that are not commonly used English words or major countries/cities. Links can be added through the 
menu, or by using the shortcut Ctrl+K.
Using the linking menu or shortcut creates a dialog box that allows you to search for relevant internal links within Wikipedia. Pressing ↵ Enter or the "Done" button causes the link to appear on the VisualEditor page.
External links (to other websites) can be created using the "External site" tab, and entering a URL in the box. In articles, this is generally appropriate only in the External links section, at the bottom of the page. (To insert a URL as a supporting reference in an article, see the references tutorial)
To edit or remove a link already on a page, just click on the link.
Publishing changes
Once you're happy with your changes, it's time to publish them (the same as saving). When you publish your edits, they immediately change the Wikipedia page you were editing. To cancel your edits, just close your browser tab without clicking 'Publish changes'.
When you're done editing, click the blue Publish changes button in the toolbar. This will open a dialog box where you should summarise your edits. This summary helps other editors understand what you've changed, and why.
If you just made uncontroversial spelling or formatting changes, marking your editing as minor can be helpful to other editors (this option isn't available unless you're logged in). Also, if you want to be notified of further changes to the page, you can add it to your Watchlist (again, only available to those who are logged in).
The Review your changes button shows you the Wiki markup source code for the changes you've made, if you want to check. The Resume editing button returns you to the page you were editing, where you can make more changes (you can publish all of your edits later).
Creating new articles
Wikipedia already has 7.1 million articles, so most of the time you'll likely be updating and improving existing pages. Sometimes, however, you may want to create a completely new article! Before you do so, there are three criteria you need to know:
Notability
Is the topic notable? Topics need to be sufficiently important to be included in Wikipedia. This means that the subject must have received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, such as newspapers, magazines, scholarly journal articles, and books.
Reliable sources
Are there reliable and verifiable sources to back up any claims? Before you start writing an article, you should gather a set of independent, reliable, verifiable sources to cite as references. These are essential for ensuring that the contents of Wikipedia remain accurate, verifiable, and trustworthy.
Conflicts of interest
Do you have a conflict of interest (COI)? It is best to avoid writing articles about yourself, your company, or someone you know personally. This is because it is difficult to avoid bias and achieve a neutral point of view on these topics. Even if you cannot write the article yourself, you can always request that someone else write it and provide them with reliable sources to use.
Where to create a new page
It is typically best to create a new article as a Draft (e.g. "Draft:Example"). This allows you to write and develop your article before it gets moved to Wikipedia's mainspace.
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The Article Creation Wizard will walk you through the steps of creating a new draft article and notify experienced editors to review the article and provide feedback. |