Help: Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

Wikipedia: The Missing Manual is a 2008 book by John Broughton. It is a how-to guide that explains the process of contributing to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. This page is the start page for an online editable help manual using this work as its starting point.

While these pages remain fully editable, the fact they are based on a 2008 source, as of 2026 most information is rather outdated or even obsolete.

Contents overview

• About this book
• Introduction
• Part I: Editing, creating, and maintaining articles
  • Chapter 1: Editing for the first time
  • Chapter 2: Documenting your sources
  • Chapter 3: Setting up your account and personal workspace
  • Chapter 4: Creating a new article
  • Chapter 5: Who did what: Page histories and reverting
  • Chapter 6: Monitoring changes
  • Chapter 7: Dealing with vandalism and spam
• Part II: Collaborating with other editors
  • Chapter 8: Communicating with your fellow editors
  • Chapter 9: WikiProjects and other group efforts
  • Chapter 10: Resolving content disputes
  • Chapter 11: Handling incivility and personal attacks
  • Chapter 12: Lending other editors a hand
• Part III: Formatting and illustrating articles
  • Chapter 13: Article sections and tables of contents
  • Chapter 14: Creating lists and tables
  • Chapter 15: Adding images
• Part IV: Building a stronger encyclopedia
  • Chapter 16: Getting readers to the right article: naming, redirects, and disambiguation
  • Chapter 17: Categorizing articles
  • Chapter 18: Better articles: A systematic approach
  • Chapter 19: Deleting existing articles
• Part V: Customizing Wikipedia
  • Chapter 20: Customizing with preferences
  • Chapter 21: Easier editing with JavaScript
• Part VI: Appendices
  • Appendix A: A tour of the Wikipedia page
  • Appendix B: Reader's guide to Wikipedia
  • Appendix C: Learning more

Publications

• John Broughton (2008). Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". ISBN 978-0-596-51516-4.
• John Broughton (2008). Wikipedia Reader's Guide: The Missing Manual. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". ISBN 978-0-596-52174-5.

See also

• Contributing to Wikipedia – a page that provides information and resources on the basics needed to use, comment on, and contribute to Wikipedia.
• Category:Wikipedia information pages and Category:Wikipedia how-to are the main subcategories listing help pages.