CIS-A2K/Outreach Program Handbook/FAQ

What is Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia and 5th most visited website in the world. It is created and maintained by more than 100 thousand contributors from around the world. Every month Wikipedia receives over 388 million unique visitors. Wikipedia features more than 16 million articles in over 270 languages including 19 Indian languages such as Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Hindi, Sanskrit etc.

Who writes on Wikipedia?

Everything on Wikipedia has been written by people like you. In fact, Wikipedia would not be the world's largest online encyclopedia without millions of people contributing information on regular basis. Anyone can write on Wikipedia, including you.

Who decides what gets published? An editor-in-chief, somewhere?

Wikipedians create so many new articles and edit existing articles so often that it would be almost impossible to have editor-in-chief(s) to review and validate every single change made to the encyclopedia. Instead, Wikipedia relies on input from contributors around the world to create the world's largest repository of encyclopedic content.

How do you know if the information is correct?

Given that anyone can edit any article, it is, of course, possible for biased, out-of-date, or incorrect information to be posted. However, because there are so many other people reading the articles and monitoring contributions, incorrect information is usually corrected quickly. Thus, the overall accuracy of the encyclopedia is improving all the time. You are encouraged to help by correcting articles, spellings, punctuations, validating content, and providing useful references.

Why do volunteers edit on Wikipedia?

Each editor would have his/her own reasons to contribute. Some the reasons would be:

To provide free knowledge to everyone all around the world.
To increase their knowledge or hone their writing skills, critical thinking, research skills etc.
To preserve their culture, customs, language and heritage.
Contributing on Wikipedia is both an entertaining and rewarding exercise.
Simply because they enjoy it!

Can I contribute too?

Yes, you can! :)

How do I contact you to know more?

You can contact any of the Wikipedia volunteers. We'd be more than happy to provide you more information or answer any of your questions. Here are our contact details:

<<Contact Name, Email, Phone No.>>