A list of things that every contributor to Wikipedia can do with minimal effort, but that will make a great difference to the project in the long run. Please add more ideas.
A lot of the ideas are interesting because they are directly related to you, but this is more likely to upset our neutral point of view. Just keep in mind that opinions should be stated as such.
Add to Wikipedia:
- Universities: What's the bet that most of you attended some sort of university or college? Go to your alma mater's website to get the basic data, then write it up at Colleges and universities.
- Countries: You live in a country, right? Countries of the world needs a lot of wikifying.
- Provinces: Within your country, do you live in a state or province? Even if we already have an article, there is a lot both you and Wikipedia can learn from a simple web search.
- Counties: Within that state or province do you live in a county? We desperately need write-ups on these. Any info you can add would be helpful.
- Cities: Within that county, maybe you're in a city? Check if it's listed in City listing and fill in the details if not. But be fair - if you live in a one-horse town and the horse died last year, start up a Town listing instead. There are also over 30,000 U.S. cities in Wikipedia. Search for your town or go to U.S. Counties (if you know the county it is in) to see if it is included.
- Birthdays: Use this link to look up who was born, who died and what else happened on your birthdate: http://www.google.com/search?q=this+day+in+history . Now go and fill all that in at Historical anniversaries.
- Sports: Are you some kind of sports fan - particularly a less well-known sport? Write an article about it, or fix up an existing article!
- Current Events: Scan a news site, (Google News (http://news.google.com/) compiles them nicely) and dig up some info for background encyclopedia articles. List them on the current events page in wikified form.
- Public Domain: Proofread, wikify, update, and de-bias Public domain resources, and incorporate the material into articles.
- Other Resources: Research subjects from libraries, encyclopedias, and online resources. Write what you discover in an original article. (Do NOT copy. You and the whole Wikipedia are in jeopardy when this happens.) If you can cite authoritative non-enyclopedia sources, all the better.
- Learn: Find something you are interested in. Do a search on it and make our coverage of it comprehensive as you learn more about it. See also how to write a great article.
- Suggest: Add to the list of basic topics[?], complete list of encyclopedia topics, help desk and requested articles. Even if you don't help us get any new info, we'll at least know what we lack and what people are interested in.
- Homework: Most people have done "way too much" homework. Add it to Wikipedia if its suitable. It's a good idea, though, to wait a while after your classes are over so no one thinks you plagiarised. Also, you can't pass off contributions from other Wikipedians as your own work.
- Describe: Search for pages that are not specifically for lists, but have them, anyway. You can often form very good prose by describing the items in the lists. Don't delete the content, though.
- Stubs: Look for stubs and elaborate on their topics. See Special:Shortpages and Wikipedia:List of stubs.
Organize Wikipedia:
- Event lists: Cross-reference the events by month and year with the events by day and month. See February 11 for what is possible. Did you know that so many composers even existed?
- Birth/Date Lists: Look at the biographies in the index to add the birth or death dates at the top of the articles to their date pages.
- Lists of incumbents: Make a list of presidents, governors, mayors etc. for the place where you live, with the years that they ruled. Add it to Lists of incumbents.
- Biographies: Search for biographies and add them to the biographical listing.
- Categories: File pages in our category schemes.
- Wikify: Many people will write excellent prose without the accidental links. Put brackets around the words that deserve it.
- See Also: Look for related pages and link them to each other. It's preferable if you add a sentence or two about the relationship.
- Disambiguate: Check out the list of disambiguating pages and the page on disambiguation. Change all links to disambiguating pages so that they point instead to the correct specific pages (links to specific pages are listed in their disambiguating pages). Note the handy link called "What links here" in the menu.
- Subdivide: Break large articles into more manageable pieces. You can use Special:Longpages to help you find them.
See also: