Help talk:Introduction

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Feedback from new editors on the tutorial series is collected here. To leave feedback, please click here. Help:Introduction/feedback was nominated for deletion on 13 October 2023. The result of the discussion was Keep. This page is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (center, color, defense, realize, traveled) and some terms may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Introductory editing tutorials These tutorials explain how to edit with wiki markup (Wikipedia's source code) and with VisualEditor (a user-friendly interface). Starting introduction Policies and Guidelines Editing Referencing Images Tables Editing Referencing Images Tables Talk pages Navigating Wikipedia Manual of Style Conclusion

Archives Archive 1 Archive 2

As I moved down the category tree, I could not see any topic named "templates". Uralunlucayakli (talk) 11:03, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Uralunlucayakli, there's some brief description at Help:Introduction to editing with Wiki Markup/3, but on the whole, this tutorial is about giving you the bare minimum needed to get started, whereas templates are a bit more advanced. I could see us reworking things to add more about them, though — I'm not sure it totally makes sense to talk about tables right now but not templates. Do others have thoughts? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 14:29, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's hard to recommend either for inclusion in a bare minimum tutorial, because whether or not an editor is going to encounter templates or tables in their editing totally depends on the kind of edits they want to make and the kind of articles they want to contribute to. E.g. someone interested in sport articles will immediately encounter both templates and tables (and is likely to require using a wikitext editor at one point or another), but someone interested in philosophy articles can avoid encountering templates and tables for a long time (and can probably manage with using the visual editor only). —⁠andrybak (talk) 00:56, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Introduction to contributing to Wikipedia" seems non-optimal, because it's redundant with the page title, creates some confusion with the menu page, and comes across as a bit dry/lacks enthusiasm. Any suggestions for improving? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:52, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Previously there was three separate introduction pages. They are later merged, so the merged one does not equal to any of them. However, the interwikis were simply combined - they are actually unsuitable for this page, and currectly this contain multiple pages in one same language.--GZWDer (talk) 00:16, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. The blue button 'Return to the tutorial' in the Visual Editor sandbox leads nowhere. Should this be fixed? --TadejM ^{my talk} 14:46, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have been able to find documentation for visual editor, but not for source editor. Given the redirects pointing here, I believe that there should be links here pointing to the source editor documentation. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 19:43, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) § Early Explorations Into Semantic Search: Phase 0. Sdkb‑WMF ^talk 19:49, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Now that Vector 2022 is the default, the contents is at the side; part 2 no longer makes sense. סשס Grimmchild. He/him, probably 10:56, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A brief introduction to the main standard sections relevant to many articles would be helpful.

I am particularly interested in introducing a standard ‘Lay Summary’ section. I believe this could be valuable to help non specialists get a handle on the subject. Also very helpful for inspiring briefer articles for non specialists.

Wikipedia has often been accused of bias. The bias I believe needs most attention is it is easy for specialist articles to ignore wider audiences, especially those less educated on particular subjects.

I suggest Simple English Wikipedias could be a significant beneficiary of such standardised sections and encourage those articles to cross reference to the specialist articles that they used.

A lay summary, perhaps with a note on who a lay person is assumed to be could help.

I have been inspired by medical articles in major magazines having lay summaries.

I don’t know a good way to raise this issue without getting very involved in Wikipedia and all the time and energy that involves, along with how that impacts my personal life. CuriousMarkE (talk) 05:41, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In these 57 edits today (1 February 2026) and another 29 edits in December 2025 I went through all of Special:PrefixIndex/Help talk:Introduction to:

1. drop off-topic sections;
2. archive resolved and stale discussion sections to archives of Help talk:Introduction;
3. move recent-ish discussions here: #Better heading?, #Interwiki links, #Button 'Return to the tutorial', #Documentation of source editor, #Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) § Early Explorations Into Semantic Search: Phase 0, #Vector 2022, and #Standard Sections.

For a more concise view of this centralization, see history of: Help talk:Introduction, Help talk:Introduction/Archive 1, and Help talk:Introduction/Archive 2.

This centralization led to many double-redirects, which should get fixed by a bot. —⁠andrybak (talk) 16:32, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing this! I initially centralized the numbered pages of each section of the tutorial a few years ago, but in retrospect, given the amount of traffic, centralizing everything here is clearly the better option. Cheers, Sdkb ^talk 19:27, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Chaotic Enby, I'm at a conference and someone mentioned that this guide that newbies are linked to in the main welcome template doesn't mention AI/llms etc at all. Any chance we could update it to include this information? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 19:51, 11 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely! @Ldm1954 suggested something similar a few days ago at Wikipedia talk:Welcoming committee/Welcome templates § Add LLM caveat to many Welcome template. I was actually working on Template:Welcomelaws/sandbox with @GreenLipstickLesbian, which includes it! There's quite a variety of welcome templates (maybe too much to keep track of?), and some are more suited to an LLM note than others, although I believe it should be a priority in general.

Since many of them link this guide, adding an LLM-related note here (and making it more prominent, as we currently have ~5 different redundant introduction pages being linked) could elegantly solve this question! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:10, 11 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, great to know! I'll give a courtesy ping to LiAnna (Wiki Ed) so she's aware. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 20:16, 11 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at it closer, I don't really see a natural place to add something about AI. Help:Introduction to policies and guidelines/2 is the closest, but it focuses on very high-level policies (NPOV, V and NOR). Do you think we can add it there, or should we carve it its own page? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:27, 11 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Considering our current norms are pretty expansive, I think it makes sense to put it with the high-level stuff for visibility/importance sake. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 21:13, 11 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Added it to Help:Introduction to policies and guidelines/2! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 23:57, 11 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for raising this, Clovermoss, and for adding, Chaotic Enby! This is definitely a needed improvement to the tutorial. I wonder if we could make it shorter, though. As context, the overall idea of the tutorial is to stay as simple/concise/high-level as possible, since that's the only way to get through a full overview of how to edit without this becoming a literal book. And this is particularly true early on in the tutorial.

For AI, I think this means the only advice we really need to give is just Don't use AI tools (like ChatGPT) to write articles. Anything beyond that, like listing out the exceptions, isn't really essential. Sdkb ^talk 04:12, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, that's probably ideal. I tried to make it around the same length as the other paragraphs, but we can probably make it much more concise – curious where exactly we want it to fit in, or if we maybe also want to shorten the other points. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 04:15, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Verification seems like the biggest issue with AI, given hallucinations, so maybe we could put it in that paragraph? Sdkb ^talk 05:27, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Not just hallucination, something that's been talked about quite a bit at this conference is that the citations might even be real, but the content is not verifiable in it. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 17:02, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]