Blue 2.0: Advanced Wikis

Wikipedia is loads of fun. I have read a number of blog posts where people have been interested in it, but have not found anything to change. If you are looking for something to change, try the following:

• Spelling! There are tons of spelling errors on Wikipedia and new ones being created every minute. Some are vandalism, but others are from editors with good content but poor spelling or spellchecking.
  
  Check out the Lists of common misspellings. For example, search for "secratary" or "seperate" to find pages with those misspellings — if the misspellings are still there by the time you get there, fix them and any others you see! Make sure you aren't changing something that's an acceptable variant.


• Sorting! Another minor edit you can make is to make sure that things sort correctly when you look at them in a category. For example, look in the category American writers and scroll down through the list. Note that most of them appear in the correct order, sorted by last name, but some of them do not!
  
  For example, I see:
  
  
  
  • T. Bill Andrews
  • Angela Johnson (writer)
  • Taylor Antrim
  
  So Angela is sorted by her first name instead of her last! If you edit
  her page and add the line:
  
  {{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Angela}}
  
  she will be sorted into the J's as she should be.
  


• Reference Desk! There are a number of reference desks where you can ask questions, or answer the ones there if you know them! My favorite is the Entertainment Reference Desk where people often ask about music and movies.
  
  Make sure you read the rules for the reference desk — don't give legal or medical advice, and try to avoid doing people's homework for them!

The reference desk is a great way to share your expertise, and making minor changes will help you get comfortable with Wikipedia. Happy editing — I hope to hear about your adventures!