Editing and Contributing to Wikipedia: Asian Studies

In Wikipedia there are two options for editing. The first one is the Visual editing which lets you edit the text on the screen just as it appears on a Wikipedia page. Another one is Source editing which lets you see the underlying Wikicode, which resembles HTML.

For beginners Visual editing is easier one to start with because there is no need to do any coding and the editing basics are very similar to any other editing platform like Wordpress etc. It simplifies the process of adding text, citing sources, linking to other Wikipedia articles, and formatting your article. 

To choose between the Visual editing and Source editing just click the pencil icon at the top right of your sandbox page.

• Paragraph: This button allows you to set the style of your text (paragraph, heading, sub-heading etc). You can also use it to offset block quotes.
• A : It allows to format text with bold, italics, etc. By pressing “More” you can find more options such as underline (U), cross-out text (S), add code snippets ( { } ), change language keyboards (Aあ) etc.
• Links: You can highlight and link important words to other wiki articles or external sites. The Visual editor will automatically suggest related Wikipedia articles for that word or phrase. This is a great way to connect your article to more Wikipedia content. Be careful that important words should be only linked once, usually during the first time they appear. 
• Cite: The citation tool is used to format your citations. You can add citations in several ways, but the simplest way is to paste a DOI or URL, so that the Visual editor automatically fill in all necessary fields for you. Be sure to review the citation and fill in missing fields manually if necessary. It is also possible to manually add add books, journals, news, and websites.
• Bullets: This button adds bullet points or a numbered list to your text.
• Insert: This tab lets you add images, tables, graphs, templates and many other kinds of media.
• Ω: This tab allows you to add special characters, such as those found in non-English words, scientific notation, and a handful of language extensions.

If you choose source editing as an option, you can edit a page using wiki markup. Wiki markup is Wikipedia's own formatting language, also called wikitext. It consists of the syntax and keywords used by the MediaWiki software to format a page. 

Wiki markup can initially seem intimidating and as a beginner it is more than enough for you to use visual editing instead. However, to use a Talk page or make changes in source editing mode, you'll need to learn a little Wikicode.

Here are the basics:

• The Wikicode for bold text is like this:

'''bold''' = bold

• Creating a link to another article on Wikipedia looks like this:

[[bold]] = bold

To add links, use 2 brackets on each side of the words you want to link to an entry.  That link to the article Bold will redirect you to Emphasis (typography). To link to an article with a different name than the text, put a | (a “pipe”, inserted with ''shift + \'' on most keyboards) in between the code and the word you want to appear on the page. Like this:

[[boldness|bold]] = bold (with the link to Boldness)

If you would like to learn how to use source editor, you can check the link in Guides and Cheat Sheets for more information.