Wikivoyage:Tips for new contributors

Absolutely anyone should feel free to plunge forward and share some knowledge on Wikivoyage. If you're starting to find yourself getting more involved, the following tips and tricks might help you get up to speed working on Wikivoyage articles and participating in the Wikivoyage community.

1. You are the most important resource Wikivoyage has. Please join discussions, make comments, or ask questions. Your knowledge makes Wikivoyage a better guide; your comments on our processes makes Wikivoyage a better project.
2. We have a help section with lots of info on how to work with our software, a manual of style with ideas on how articles are formatted and policies and guidelines describe how we work together. Our guide to writing tone describes how we hope to create a lively guide, and to shun dry, encyclopaedic writing.
3. If you have a question about how to contribute to Wikivoyage, you can post it in the Wikivoyage:Arrivals lounge, where it will be answered by one or more of the old hands here.
4. If you have some particular info you want to share, see the guidelines about where you can stick it. Have a look at article skeletons to see what the headings all mean. If you're still not sure, ask, or put it where you think it fits best and someone else will move it to the right place.
5. Please consider creating a user account. Other Wikivoyagers will get to know and trust your work. You can still be anonymous, and you don't even need to give your name. Once you have an account and have made some edits, other Wikivoyagers can spend less time checking and more time improving the guide! You can also create a user page if you want, where you can talk about yourself, places you've been, ideas you have. Or you can just leave it blank. Your choice.
   1. Not creating a user account could lead to contradiction of edits and messages that admins give and warn, and sometimes, when your IP is blocked you need to log in to edit.
6. When you edit an article, you can make a short comment describing your change. If you remove information (say a restaurant has closed), make a note of it there.
7. If you wish, you can add yourself to the List of Wikivoyagers by location. Other Wikivoyagers may collaborate when describing the region you live in.
8. Articles you work on can and probably will be changed by other people. Making changes will often inspire others to make additions to your work.
9. Every article has an associated Talk page where we discuss how best to work on that article. If you're wondering what's up with some article, why it's this way instead of that, check the talk page by clicking the discussion link.
10. Once you have a user account, other Wikivoyagers can send you messages through your user talk page. Immediately to the right of your user name on the top of the page there are two icons, the alert icon and the message icon. When there are new messages on your talk page, the talk icon turns light blue and next to it the text "You have new messages" will appear (with yellow background). You should check to see what someone has to say. When someone has mentioned you (your user name, to be precise), have thanked you for an edit or reverted one of your edits, the alert icon turns red. Click the icon to open a menu, to see what it is; if you've been mentioned somewhere, there is probably a discussion going on that you will find interesting.
11. Wikivoyage is a travel guide, not a travel journal. Try to share what you learned, not what you did. Avoid using first person pronouns like "I" or "we". There is no need to sign or date your contribution.
12. Our goals and non-goals explain what we're trying to do, and what we're not trying to do.
13. There are lots of articles on Wikivoyage that "aren't quite there yet". Don't assume that just because something's left out, misspelled, or weirdly formatted that we want it that way.
14. Other people working on Wikivoyage are here to share their knowledge and make a great website. In dealing with other contributors, assume that people are trying to do what's best for travellers and for the project.
15. Feel free to express yourself in a lively tone.
16. We want to make guides that can be used offline, either as printed pages or with a local copy on a mobile device. Wikivoyage is not just an online guide Web site.
17. Your contributions should be original work, created by you. Please don't copy text or images from other Web sites to Wikivoyage.
18. Wikivoyagers sometimes use Wikivoyage:Jargon in edit summaries or discussion pages.
19. Wikivoyage has a large and active community of people who want to make this project a success. You may not see us at first, but we're here!