Here you can digest how to use Wikipedia, in bite-sized morsels. The tips listed below were created for the Tip of the day project, or the Styletips project, but are listed here by title and organized by subject area for your convenience.
When asking a question at the Help desk, Teahouse or the Reference desk, please include all the facts needed to answer the question. Give a link to the page you are asking about, or provide context to your question. For example, do not ask "who was president in 1900?" without mentioning the country you are interested in. This prevents volunteers having to ask follow-up questions before providing answers.
Friendly reminder: the Help desk and Teahouse are for questions on how to use and edit Wikipedia, while the Reference desk is for questions about anything else (real world questions).
Bare URLs used as article references (citations) are subject to link rot. The usability of a bare URL depends entirely on the target WWW site retaining its chosen site structure, which it is under no obligation to do.
A full citation, in contrast, gives the author, title, publisher, publication, and date of the work. So, if the web site address changes, the additional information may assist in finding the new location. If the source is no longer available on the internet, then the additional information may assist in tracking down the source if it is in printed form, microfiche archives, article/paper collections, published as books, and the like. Fully dressed citations may be filled in manually, or there are semi-automated tools online, such as: reFILL (can be installed as a Toolbox link or as a Bookmarklet), or Yadkard. For Google Books, try the: Wikipedia Citation Tool for Google Books.
For a listing of current collaborations, tasks, and news, see the Community portal. For a listing of ongoing discussions and current requests, see the Dashboard.
