Wikipedia: What it is and How to Use it

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia written by contributors from all over the world. It is written in more than 100 different languages and contains information on just about any subject imaginable, ie music, art, history, mathematics, politics, religion, technology, current events, the list goes on and on. Anyone is free to add information to Wikipedia or edit information already on Wikipedia. Since its start in 2001, Wikipedia has become the largest reference website found on the Internet. As of today, there are over one million articles written in English.

Wikipedia is hosted by a non-profit organization called the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation also hosts several other sister projects to Wikipedia, such as Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikispecies, Wikisource, and a few others. Information on these sister projects can be found on Wikipedia.

To search for information on Wikipedia you can either type in the information you're looking for in the search field or you can click on any one of the numerous category headings listed on the main page and search for what you're looking for from there. Each page on Wikipedia contains links to other Wikipedia pages that contain similar information, so your resources are endless.

If you'd like to edit information on Wikipedia all you need to do is click on the 'edit this page' link on the page you would like to edit. But first, before just jumping in and editing the page, if you've never edited anything on Wikipedia before, there is an area where you can practice editing so you don't end up messing up an original page. It's called the sandbox. The sandbox offers tutorials on how to edit pages and also allows you to practice editing as much as you would like. The information you edit in the sandbox does not stay permanently however. The sandbox is cleaned out every 12 hours. The edit feature allows you to edit existing information on a page, as well as allowing you to add your own information. Be sure to read the policies and guidelines before editing or adding text to Wikipedia.