User:MaximumPinkKirby/Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia website. It will tell you about just about anything, usually in really complicated words... For example, you can read about stuff there to help you with your homework, find out when a video game first came out, or learn what happened at the end of a movie. You can even edit Wikipedia or create your own pages if you want to.

Editing
Did you know that you can even edit pages on Wikipedia, or even make your own? That's because Wikipedia is a wiki, a site that "anyone can edit", and it's actually one of the first wikis ever made. Be careful, though, because people are really strict about what you put on there. If you keep putting stuff that the Wikipedia admins don't like, you might get "blocked", which is the same as being banned on other websites. You can also ask other people to make an edit by posting on an article's "talk" page. You should see a link to that on the top of the page.

Before you edit Wikipedia, you should make an account for safety reasons. If you edit without an account people can see your IP address, which means they can track your location if they want to. That wouldn't be good. Plus, if you don't have an account you can't create your own pages.

Wikipedia uses references, which are things that point to other websites or books talking about the same thing Wikipedia is, to prove their points. If you don't put these in, they might get mad at you. But references are pretty complicated to do, so editing Wikipedia probably isn't a good idea anyway.

A lot of times, Wikipedia doesn't let you make articles about stuff because they don't think it's important enough to talk about. That usually makes people pretty mad too. Everything on Wikipedia is usually free of copyright too, so they have rules about that.

Reading
Sometimes Wikipedia talks in a really complicated way that only adults can understand. If you can't understand what a page on there is talking about, you can scroll through the "Languages" list and sometimes you'll find the page in "Simple English", so click on that and read that page instead. You can also read Wikipedia in other languages if you want, like if you speak Spanish or Japanese or something.

Wikipedia is wrong sometimes! People can put whatever they want on there. Wikipedia is usually right about stuff, but don't always trust it. Sometimes wrong information stays there for months or even years without being corrected.

Sometimes, but not very often, you might accidentally come across some inappropriate stuff on Wikipedia if you're not careful... So don't click the "Random page" button.

"Sister projects"
Wikipedia has "sister projects", which are other wikis run by the same people:
 * Wiktionary is a dictionary of every word in every language.
 * Wikibooks is a collection of textbooks that editors make.
 * Wikiquote is a collection of quotes.
 * Wikisource is a place to read old books and stuff that are free of copyright by now.
 * Wikispecies is a place to learn about living things like animals and plants.
 * Wikinews is a news website.
 * Wikiversity acts like school, basically.
 * Wikimedia Commons is a place where images and videos and stuff are uploaded, often to be used on Wikipedia.