Wiktionary: Welcome, newcomers
From open-dictionary.com - the free dictionary.
Hello and welcome to Wiktionary. Wiktionary is a free multilingual dictionary and thesaurus that's being written collaboratively on this web site. Anybody can edit any article, and a record of changes is kept. Since December–2002, we have created 0 definitions or articles.
Ordinary smart people, like you, are building this project very actively; as you are reading this, someone might well be editing an article. There will soon be a lot of Ph.D.s and graduate students and other very smart and knowledgeable people at work here — but everyone is welcome. You don't even have to be logged in to contribute, but we'd like to know who you are. Anyway, you can just dive right in and work on any page you like. Please drop in as often as you can. If you're the kind of person that many of us are, you'll soon be addicted to the "Recent Changes" page. You can (and should) be bold in updating pages.
And above all, play nice.
One of the most important things you should know is that we (the existing community such as it is at inception) have borrowed some cultural norms from the sister Wikipedia project that you should respect. We try not to argue pointlessly. This isn't a debate forum. After civilized and reasonable discussion, we try to reach a broad consensus about what entries should say to accurately present neutral summaries of all relevant facts for future readers. We try to make the entries as unbiased as we can, which means that the definitions or descriptions, even on controversial topics, are not meant to be platforms for preaching of any kind. Bear in mind that this is a dictionary, which means there are many things that it is not. If you feel uncomfortable with making changes to someone else's work, and you want
to add your thoughts, questions or comments about an article, the place to do that is the article's talk page (click on the 'Discuss this page' link in the sidebar or at the bottom of the article, depending on the skin of your preference). Again, though, we generally try to avoid discussion for its own sake. There are also some other community norms codified via some links listed below.
You might expect Wiktionary to be a low-quality product because it's open to everyone. But, perhaps it's the fact that it is open to everyone that has the potential to make a lot of these definitions pretty good, and ever-improving. To alter a now-famous catchphrase: "Given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow." We tend to cater to the highest common denominator — "lower denominators" tend politely not to touch articles they know nothing about! We hope you have fun.
Many Wiktionarians may also be Wikipedians.
There is more introductory information:
- How to explore Wiktionary
- How to start a page
- How to edit a page
- Staying cool when the editing gets hot
- Most common faux pas
- Why Wiktionary is so great
- Wiktionary FAQ
See the Community Portal for more policy and style guidance.
de:Wiktionary:Willkommen eo:Vikivortaro:Enkonduko pt:Wikcionário:Bem-vindo vi:Wiktionary:Chào mừng người mới đến zh:Wiktionary:欢迎，新来者
