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It's easy to take pot-shots at Wikipedia, but take a good look at the site and you may be surprised how broad the range of content and how high the general standard is.

But if you do find a duffer, an unfinished stub or a worthless article crammed full of errors, omissions or bias, you don't need to leave it how you found it. Give something back and get involved.

As long as the article isn't protected (denoted by a padlock in the top right hand corner of the page), even an anonymous user can make changes to an article by clicking on the 'edit this page' tab at the top of the page or any of the 'edit' links alongside each section.

You simply run through the text in the edit box and make your changes, then leave a clear one-line précis of your changes in the edit summary box. Then click either the Show Preview or Show Changes button to check your amendments, or the Save Page button to update the live page. It really is as easy as that.

If you want to add advanced formatting, add internal or external links or embed an image, the toolbar at the top of the edit box makes this simple, and has tool-tips to help you out. Start off simple with a few basic changes, and you can steadily work your way up. Wikipedia: How to Edit a Page has plenty of tips to help you get started.

Unless the article is a mess or a stub, go gently

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with your edits. By now, most major pages are already organised in sections, and it's best to add or correct the details within these sections at first, rather than crashing in like a bull in a china shop. Take the latter route, and you'll find your work quickly reverted in any case.

Remember Wikipedia's core principles. Present points of view with evidence to back them up, don't push them from an 'I know best' perspective. Add citations wherever possible in the Notes section at the foot of the article, following the Wikipedia style. Unless you're presenting indisputable facts, this is a key part of making your edit authoritative. If you're planning anything potentially controversial, discuss it in the talk page (click the Discussion tab at the top) first.

Stick to what you know

Which articles to edit? Think about your own personal, academic or professional areas of interest and search for the items you think should be covered. Try joining a WikiProject: a scheme designed to improve the encyclopaedia's coverage of a specific area. WikiProjects on .NET, networking, programming languages and early Web history may be relevant to PC Pro readers.

Check Wikipedia: Contributing to Wikipedia for updated lists of articles that need expanding, fixing or verification. Kick off with basic clean-ups, updates and copy-edits, go on to edit stubs and fix style issues, then progress to requests for new articles. Even if you don't know a subject beyond its basics, you may be able to pull enough together from respected, notable sources to at least get an article kicked off (note: this does not mean plagiarism is acceptable).

Flawed it may be, but Wikipedia has the potential to be an information cathedral of our age. Wouldn't you like to be able to say that you have had a hand in building it?