Hello, and welcome! Wiktionary is a multiple-language (multilingual) free dictionary and thesaurus, being written collaboratively on this website. Entries are edited by anyone—records of changes are kept. We have created 330,641 articles since starting in December, 2002, and we're growing rapidly.
Ordinary people like you are very active in building this project. While you are reading this, it is likely someone is editing some entry. Already at work have been many knowledgeable people, but everybody is welcome! Contributing does not require logging in, but we'd like you to, as it facilitates the administration of this site. You can dive right in and add to, fix or create any page you like. If it pleases you, we invite you to drop in as often as you can! You can be bold, and even should be, in updating pages. You might like the "Recent Changes" page. Above all, play nice.
One of the most important things you should know is that we have borrowed from our sister project Wikipedia some cultural norms you should respect: We try not to argue pointlessly. This isn't a debate forum. After civilized and reasonable discussion, we try to reach broad consensus about what an entry should be in order to present an accurate, neutral summary of all relevant facts for future readers. We try to make the entries as unbiased as we can, meaning that definitions or descriptions, even of controversial topics, are not meant to be platforms for preaching of any kind. Bear in mind this is a dictionary, which means there are many things it is not. At any point, if you are uncomfortable changing someone else's work, and you want to add a thought (or question or comment) about an entry or other page, the place is its talk page (click on the "discussion" tab at the top or the "Discuss this page" link in the sidebar or elsewhere, depending on your preference skin). Though again, generally, we try to avoid discussion for its own sake. You can find out more about our community norms in the links listed below.
You might expect Wiktionary to be a low-quality product because it is open for everybody to edit. But, perhaps the fact it is open to everyone creates the potential for making a lot of these definitions pretty good, and ever-improving. To use a now-famous catchphrase in essence: “Given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow. ” We tend to cater to the highest. "Lower common denominators" tend politely not to touch articles they know nothing about! We hope you have fun.
More, introductory information is on the following pages:
