Wikipedia:Eight simple rules for editing our encyclopedia

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.

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This page in a nutshell: A quick overview of some of Wikipedia's most important policies.

Even though there is a huge number of policy and guideline pages, you can get a good sense of how to edit Wikipedia by following these eight simple rules.

To some, Wikipedia can seem very bureaucratic. There are hundreds of policy and guideline pages, a virtual "alphabet soup" such as WP:V, WP:OR, WP:NPOV, WP:RS, WP:THIS, and WP:THAT (not to mention over 1600 like this one). However, if you start out by following these eight simple rules, the rest should come naturally.