Wikipedia – one of the Wikimedia family of projects

This post is adapted from: This Wikimedia UK page and gives some direction to ways people might get (quickly) contributing to Wikimedia projects!  It’s also worth having a look at 60 ways to help new editors.

Quick tasks (while the coffee’s brewing)

• Use wiki-todo to look for little jobs on random articles (it suggests what you can fix!)
• Choose a category related to where you are or what you’ve studied, and click through to copyedit (less random but still short)
• Pick any article that the Guild of Copy Editors thinks needs help, and help it
• Play the WikiData Games
• Find citations needed and improve the quality of sourcing in articles
• Have a go at transcribing the text from photographs (of things like foundation stone inscriptions)
• Go to recent changes on Wikipedia, look at the edits by users with redlinked talkpages, welcome those who make good edits and revert and warn the vandals.
• Add an image to an article. We have a list of UK articles without images, for roughly half of which there will be an image on Commons if you look.
• Update yourself on the situation around systemic bias, and consider what one thing you might do differently in future editing

Medium tasks (Making & drinking the coffee!)

• Go to the Wikipedia Reference Desks, find a question within your area of expertise, and answer it
• Know another language? Look for articles needing translation from English or translation into English
• Can you tell maps and building plans from other images? We need people to find maps amongst a million British Library images so they can be geotagged and added to Wikimedia Commons

Longer tasks (afternoon in the café?)

• Take photos of locally significant buildings, landmarks etc and share them via Wikimedia Commons. Checkout WikiShootMe for articles near you needing photos
• Write a biography, or significantly improve a stub.
  • Women are particularly under-represented. Improve or create an article from this list of women without biographies or this one; look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Women’s History for more ideas.
  • Take a look at the list of requested ‘biography’ articles, e.g. LGBT figures or UK citizens
  • Or choose someone from the category of biographies needing attention.
• Improve a topic area:
  • Choose an open task from the wikiproject that exists to counter systemic bias. This list is mostly articles to create, improve, or review.
  • Take a look at the list of requested ‘topic’ articles, e.g. on LGBT topics
  • Have a look at articles which exist in other encylopedias, but are missing in Wikipedia
• All the basics of contributing to Wikipedia can be learned in two hours.