So you want to become a Wikipedia editor and join the fight for truth and fairness? Excellent, we are looking for a few good men (and some great women). But before you begin, here’s some friendly advice:
Stage 1
* Don’t start with Scientology, the War in Iraq, Israel, terrorism, or any other controversial topic. Start with a neutral topic, one that you know well. Any topic will do, TV programs, music, or gardening might be a good topic. Also consider something you are very familiar with, such as your city, state, university, or company.
* Create a username that is neutral and ordinary, AndyM or ejnelson sound more like rational people than JihadGuy or 67BordersForever.
*Do not, as a new editor, write anything in your personal home page or talk page. Reason is, there are highly politicized editors out there gunning for you. New editors who start by creating a home page identify themselves as old hands and probable sockpuppets. This is likely to get your banned. Do not try at this point to improve controversial Wikipedia articles on the Armenian Genocide or the Gaza flotilla raid.
* Now find an article on something neutral, like a favorite band. Read it and until you find an error. If its a typo or misspelling, correct it and you have the perfect first edit. Your next step is to look for something to add to this article or to another. A simple piece of accurate information works. Just add it. Don’t use a proper footnote, genuinely new users rarely do. Simply add the accurate info and log out.
*Add more info or correct more minor errors (grammar, punctuation) for a few days. Or add information with a footnote formulated less than correctly, for example, with a book title enclosed in (parentheses) or a web link enclosed in [brackets]. At some point an experienced editor will notice you and a banner will pop up telling you that you have a message on your talk page. Read it. Now follow the advice and begin making edits with proper footnotes. Editing topics in today’s headlines is especially likely to get you noticed and offered friendly advice on editing. Not editing properly (with well-formatted citations) makes you look like an ordinary, innocent new user. Wait until someone writes to you on your talk page offering links to how-to edit on Wikipedia pages, then begin editing with the proper format.
* Find a non-controversial topic that you have a genuine interest in ( the Nixon-Kennedy campaign, Mad Men, cooking – almost anything) and begin editing as often as you like. Reason is: Wikipedia editors who edit only on a single, controversial topic are disliked and are more likely be banned. Even if you begin to edit regularly on a controversial topic and continue to do so for years, you will be more effective if you are seen to be editing regularly and responsibly on non-controversial topics.
* You will have noticed that your user name is in red letters while most other users are in blue. After you have been editing for a while, you can turn your name from red to blue by creating a user page. Click other people’s user names and look at the range of user pages. Some fact pages are incredibly elaborate, they do not need to be. It can be as simple as a few words. “I’m here to express my passion for New Orleans jazz.” The advantage of having your name in blue letters is that you will be taken more seriously in Wikipedia debates. User pages are also a good place to indicate topics you are interested. Just for fun, many editors also add user boxes which indicate interests.
Stage 2
*Now that you have gotten comfortable with the editing process, you can move slowly into more highly contested topics.
* Sooner or later you will notice that something that you regard as a simple fact, like the fact that Mt. Hermon is located in Israel, will be deleted by an editor who doesn’t agree with your worldview. Click (view history) on the toolbar and you will see beside the edit removing your information the notation (undo) . If you click that, it will automatically restore the information that was taken out. Then the editor who removed Mt. Hermon from the page has the option of going to your edit and clicking (undo). Then you can go back and (undo) what he has just (undo)ne. This is called an edit war. Don’t do it.
* Clicking (undo) three times on the same page in a 24 hour period will get you banned for a day or so. Doing it repeatedly will get you (your IP address) banned forever.
*What you want to do is to restore the deleted information and under “edit summary” write something like, “replacing sourced information, see talk.”
* Then click the button on the toolbar marked “discussion” and write a brief explanation of the fact that Mt. Hermon is in Israel and give several reputable sources.
*Keep in mind that there have been lengthy edit was over the monumentally trivial topic of hummus. An edit war can break out on any topic at any time. Some anti-Israel editors will start an edit war with a pro-Israel user with the intention of making the pro-Israel editor so angry that he will do something stupid and get himself banned.
*There are roving gangs of anti-Israel editors looking to pick a fight. Some of them hope that if they show up on every page you edit, remove your edits (but not more than once per day), challenge every fact you add, argue endlessly, and generally making your life as an editor difficult, you will simply get fed up and go away. You might call this the hazing of new pro-Israel editors. (The founder of this blog, Wikipedian, became distraught with this situation and decided to start this blog to address it)
*Keep your cool. Answer politely and calmly. Log off and come back tomorrow. They will usually back off.
*While you are making a lot of effective edits, the anti-Israel gangs may take it to the next level. They may begin posting messages on your talk page falsely accusing you of being combative, of slander, of being a banned user who has returned under a new name, of bringing unreliable sources, of starting edit wars, or other violations of Wikipedia rules.
*They are trying to provoke you into doing one of several things that can get you banned. It can be really hard to keep your temper in the heat of an edit war.
* Let’s imagine an interminable debate on the topic of Mahmoud Abbas’s doctoral dissertation. You want to include a well-substantiated discussion of Abbas’ Holocaust denial and Holocaust minimization. Perhaps you want to move the dissertation from the bottom of his pageand include a better description. A persistent editor or a phalanx of editors are opposing you. At some point there is a proposal to remove all mention of the Holocaust from the discussion of the dissertation, leaving only a sentence about cooperation between Zionist organizations and Nazis. They have you outnumbered, all agreeing to bowdlerize Wikipedia by removing discussion of Abbas’ Holocaust denying thesis. DO NOT lose your cool and accuse the opposing editors of bad faith. DO NOT get stupid, log on under a new user name at Starbucks (different IP address) and immediately enter the debate under a new identity (sockpuppet). DO NOT accuse anyone of anti-Semitism. Doing these things can get you banned. (Wikipedian accused someone of anti-Semitism and was threatened with being banned, but was able to rally a few supporters to keep the account active)
Your options are to:
- List the debate on the discussion page at Wikiproject Israel.
- Walk away from the topic. Sometimes on Wikipedia all you can do is to wait to fight another day.
- E-Mail Wikipedianthrough the contact form on this blog with a link to the page so your situation can be made public (we will try to be discrete on how we found the emerging war, but there is always some risk someone might figure out which editor it was and try to ban you)
Stage 3
*It is possible to fight and win edit wars. This is done on the discussion pages. Winning is a straightforward but sometimes exhausting process of never losing your temper, being unfailingly polite and respectful (even to idiots and liars), and having reliable, trustworthy facts and sources.
Did we scare you off?
The point of this is not to discourage you from editing. Quite the contrary, we hope you take this information to heart and get out there to make a difference. Wikipedia is one of the top information sources in the world. We all need to make sure we put the best, most accurate information out there for the world to enjoy.
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There was a video on the front page of the http://www.jpost.com/ today on editing Wikipedia, called “Wikipedia crash course” I don’t know how to past the actual link as it is something called “Direct TV”. Looks like you guys are on the cutting edge! This is going to cause some serious consternation at the Project. They will try to get rid of any editor that even has a faint odor of being pro-Israel. One has one’s work cut out!
If you want to edit safely on Wikipedia, you may have a complete run of the place and may be blockproof if you pose as a White, British, Christian Female. After that, just avoid making piercing comments, and you may be able to do anything you want. Creating an identity as described is paramount. Most wikipedia admins are likely to be soft if you have that identity, and that is what will help you avoid getting banned.
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