Adding and editing articles on Wikipedia can be a little confusing for the average Internet user.  It took me two tours through their tutorial to feel comfortable enough to start editing a page, and even then I had keep flipping back and forth to the FAQ to be sure I was doing things correctly.

Luckily, the tutorials are very complete and if you read through them you can become an expert Wikipedia contributor in no time.

The best way to start is to Sign in or Create an Account.  After signing in, take some time to get to know Wikipedia before jumping in and creating an article. In many cases, new articles should not be created so you may wish to browse through the Articles of Creation Wizard for recently registered Wikipedians.  Otherwise, the best way to start is to find a topic that you are passionate about and slowly begin editing and contributing relevant facts.

After you are signed in the best place to start is their Help section, specifically the Introductions page.  It encourages you to jump right in and test out editing the page.  The Help section guides you along the rest of the ins and outs of Wikipedia and I encourage you to read through the whole thing. The section talks about experimenting in the Sandbox and don’t worry, the Sandbox is wiped clean everyday so nothing you write will be set in stone.  Feel free to test away.

The main Help section will guide you to the Tutorial which is what I fully recommend.   Wikipedia has their own editing system so if you are familiar with HTML, it will take a little getting used to.

For instance, to italicize text you would add two apostrophes before and after the text, like this:

‘‘text’’
text

To bold text, you would use three apostrophes before and after the text, like this:

‘‘‘text’’’
text

Links are done in brackets. 

There is definitely a small learning curve but bookmark their handy Cheatsheet so you won’t get stuck.

Go slow, remember the special Wikipedia conventions (you did read that tutorial, right?), and have fun exploring and contributing!