 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
There are three stages to learning how to both use and contribute to Wikipedia.
- When you start out, it is safe to Ignore all rules, since nothing you do can permanently hurt the encyclopedia.
- Over time, you can start to learn how other people have thought about things in the past. In this period of time process is important.
- After about 2–3 months, you start to get an idea about how people interact, and how they think or expect things to be done. You can then try to follow the actual wiki way, and try to stick as close to Wikipedia:Consensus as possible instead. Traditionally, this is when you got noticed and got nominated for administrator, though that process seems to have changed somewhat, recently.