If you haven’t already, I suggest you make an account on WP so that you can have a user page, communicate with other editors easily and so your edits are saved against your username. On the main page of WP there is a “Create account” link in the top right hand corner. It’s also possible to edit with making an account (i.e. anonymously).

I use my user page to keep a record of articles I’ve worked on, and a “to-do list” of articles I’d like to add to or start. You can see it at User:MurielMary. Other editors can write a message on the “talk” page of your userpage, and you’ll get an email notification that someone has done that.

When starting out, I think it’s easiest to work with stub articles which already exist in the encyclopaedia. Stub articles are on subjects which are agreed to be notable, but they only have a few lines of writing and one or two references. This means you don’t need to deal with the formatting of a page, and instead you can focus on writing the content. To find a stub that interests you, search in the Wikipedia search box for a category like these ones (there are many more similar categories):

• Category:Stub-Class Women artists articles
• Category:New Zealand people stubs
• Category:Stub-Class Women scientists articles
• Category:Stub-Class Women's cricket articles

Browse around and find an article that interests you. Do some reading and research:

• Click on the link to the reference(s) in the article (in a new tab) and read a bit more.
• Open a new tab and go onto Google and search on the name of the subject.
• Think laterally and search on related subjects – e.g. if it’s a woman from history, you could try searching on “wife of X” (using the husband’s name); or if it’s a woman from a particular organisation you could search on the name of the organisation and her name.
• Search in Google Books, and also Google Images. You might not be able to use the image, as copyright applies, but it might take you to a page with information about the person/subject.
• You might have some books at home which have information about the topic, or you might get some from the library.

When you’ve got some extra information, go back to the article and edit it. There are two ways to edit on WP: “Edit” is called Visual Editor and you stay on the familiar WP screen while you’re editing. “Edit Source” takes you to the text/programming screen and you edit with symbols and notations. Either one is fine, whichever you prefer. There are some things you can only do in “Edit Source”, such as add Categories, but otherwise they are the same.

• It’s WP etiquette to write a few words about what you did to a page when you save it. When the “save” box comes up, write something like “added date of birth” or “removed irrelevant information” or just “expanded”. Everyone who has previously worked on that article will get an email notification of your editing, so it’s helpful for them to see a summary of what you’ve done.
• It’s also a good idea to check the article’s Talk page – on the top left hand corner of the screen there’s a tab “Talk”. This is where people discuss the article, suggest significant changes, leave notes for other writers etc. It’s also where the article’s tags to Wikipedia Projects belong. When an article is tagged to a WP Project, the people who are writing specifically in that area see the article in their category. They can then get involved with editing the article as well as yourself. If there are no WP Projects listed on the Talk page, it’s good to add some e.g. ((WikiProject Biography)) for a person or ((WikiProject New Zealand)) for anything to do with NZ. One article can be tagged to many WP Projects.
• If the article is about a person, you can also add an “infobox” which appears on the right hand side of the screen on a desktop view, and the middle of the screen on a mobile phone view. This summarises the main points of the article, and can only be added in “Edit source” editing.
• Once you have edited an article, the WP system will send you an email notification the next time someone else also edits the same article. It’s a good idea to visit the page when you get a notification so that you can check whether the other editor has improved it or added an error. If you don’t agree with the new editing you can undo their edit and put a note on the Talk page explaining what you did and why.

• On a talk page, you can tag (or “ping”) another editor to ask them a question about the article and they will get an email notification that you have mentioned them. For example, to tag me you would write @MurielMary: and then your question/comment. Or, you can just write the question and wait for someone to see it and answer it.
• There is a page called the Teahouse on WP where new editors can ask questions and experienced editors answer them. Find it by typing into the WP search box WP:Teahouse It’s useful to name the article you’re working on in your question so the person helping you can look at it. I’ve found people on this page very friendly and helpful and they often answer questions pretty quickly!
• There is a page for New Zealand WP writers to ask each other questions about sources or writing etc. Go to the “talk” page of WP:NZ

If the article you want to write doesn’t exist on WP, you can create a new article. Type the exact title of the page you want to write, including correct capital letters, into the WP search box. Check the list of related pages that come up in case there *is* a page on the topic but under a slightly different name e.g. a person’s maiden name or full name. If there is definitely no page in the encyclopaedia, go ahead and click on the red link and start a new page. As soon as you save the new page for the first time, other editors can see your work, and an experienced editor will check your page to see if it’s on an appropriate topic for the encyclopedia (this is called “patrolling” and you’ll get an email to say “your page has been patrolled” when someone has reviewed your page). Sometimes a page is patrolled only a few minutes after it’s been created. For this reason, I write as much as I can into the page, definitely including a couple of reliable references, before saving it for the first time.

Write a lead paragraph which summarises the whole page/subject. Then write some details. Next put in the heading for References ==References== and then on the next line ((reflist)) (this will automatically create the reference list from your citations).

Add some categories at the bottom. If it’s a person you can add [[Category:People from Auckland]], or [[Category:1990 births]] or [[Category:People educated at Timaru Girls' High School]] etc. If you put in something which isn’t a category, you’ll get a red line on your page. It’s good to look at similar articles to yours to check which categories are most useful. You need to use “Edit Source” to add categories.

Create the talk page by clicking the red “Talk” tab at the top left hand corner of the article. Add some project groups that you think would be interested in the article e.g. a country or an interest group: ((WikiProject Biography)) or ((WikiProject Politics)) or ((WikiProject Australia)). If it’s a woman born before 1950 you can add ((WikiProject Women's History)) or for a woman born after 1950, ((WikiProject Women)) A person who works on that project will read your article and give it a rating on their project e.g “start class” and “mid importance” etc. It might take days or weeks for the ratings to be added as some projects have backlogs of articles to be rated. Again, good to look at similar articles to yours to check which project groups are most useful.

Make sure your article has wikilinks to other pages, and has wikilinks to it from other pages. This means that the article has blue links to other pages and that other pages have a blue link back to your page. Otherwise it’s considered an “orphan” page and you’ll get a notification that your page needs to be linked up. If your page is about a person, you might put in wikilinks on their place of birth or work, or to/from people they are related to or worked with.

For more ideas on subjects to write about, you can look at the WikiProject Women in Red (a notable topic or person which doesn’t have an article in WP can be written in red instead of blue, so Women in Red is about all the women who are named in red on WP because they don’t have articles). The editors on this project organise monthly edit-a-thons where they list notable women or women’s topics (books, movies, plays by women etc) who don’t have articles and invite editors to “turn the redlinks into blue” by writing articles on those topics. Find the project pages by searching up WP:Women in Red

Also, there are lots of other parts of Wikipedia to get involved in:

• Discussing which news stories get featured on the main page under “In the News” – go to WP:ITN/C
• Discussing which biographies get featured on the main page under “Recent Deaths” – also go to WP:ITN/C for this discussion
• Discussing articles which have been suggested for deletion – anyone can suggest that a subject isn’t noteworthy and that the article should be deleted. Sometimes the subjects are not noteworthy to the editors discussing it, but might well be noteworthy to someone else, so an extra voice can make a difference in the decision to delete or keep. Browse the log at WP:Articles for deletion