Mastering the Art of Editing Wikipedia

Wikipedia has been an installment of the internet culture for the better part of the past 15 years or so. As a non profit website, Wikipedia has been run entirely on donations and volunteer work in order to stay relevant and operational. The massive encyclopedia has become the one stop shop for just about any information anyone could want and has accordingly gotten attention as a scholarly source, despite its open source platform. While there are tens of thousands of editors registered on Wikipedia only a fraction of them are ever actively editing. For those interested in leaping into the world of Wikipedia editing, there are a few things to know.

The Manual of Style
New users who plan to edit on Wikipedia for the long haul are best served navigating over to Wikipedia’s in house manual on how to function behind the scenes. The Wikipedia Manual of Style, or MoS, is a dense article that serves as a tool to learn the ins and outs of basic editing. There are rules on grammar, punctuation, citations, rules of writing and so on. While the article is completely comprehensive most users would be best served bookmarking the page and then going to it as needed. Simply reading the MoS front to back would yield little long term success as there is simply too much information to contain.

Rules of Voice
Wikipedia writers must capably learn how to handle the voice of their writing. Keeping to a specific tone and style is of the utmost importance when editing on Wikipedia. Any casual browser of the encyclopedia will quickly come to learn that the website has a consistent tone despite the fact that there are thousands of contributors editing all at once. This is because Wikipedia is strict in their enforcement of unbiased writing. Editors must comply with the neutral point of view rules as well as the style rules that keep writers on point. An author should not stand above their content and be noticeable and thus should be considered more scholarly as a result.

Get Your Wiki
Users must also resist the temptation to add their own personal pages to the Wikipedia. Adding a personal page would undermine the integrity of the encyclopedia. If a user is notable enough to deserve an entry on Wikipedia then they can turn to a service like Get Your Wiki. Get Your Wiki is a Wikipedia editing service that specializes in posting and updating original content with the rules of Wikipedia firmly followed.

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