Here you can digest how to use Wikipedia, in bite-sized morsels. The tips listed below were created for the Tip of the day project, or the Styletips project, but are listed here by title and organized by subject area for your convenience.
What are portals? "Doorways to knowledge." Wikipedia's coverage of subjects can be extensive (mathematics, for example, is covered by tens of thousands of articles on Wikipedia). Portals are an alternative entry to a subject (besides its main article), and to that subject's coverage in the encyclopedia, in a way similar to how the Main Page provides sample fare from Wikipedia as a whole.
Portals may include features such as Selected article sections, Selected image, news, points of interest (Did you know?, Anniversaries), and links to related Wikimedia. Portals are more diverse than the Main page, and may include features such as panoramic banners, slide shows, category trees, topics lists, and whatever else portal designers can come up with.
A secondary purpose of portals is to provide bridges between reading and editing, and between the encyclopedia and the Wikipedia community. They may provide links to the related WikiProjects, Wikipedia's Reference desk, and so on. Portals are a hybrid between encyclopedia pages and project pages, and occupy their own special namespace, the Portal namespace. Therefore, all portal titles are preceded by the prefix "Portal:"
The list of all completed portals is Portal:Contents/Portals. A list of all portals, including those under construction, can be found at Category:All portals. The Portals WikiProject is dedicated to collaboratively building and maintaining portals, and further expanding on the Portal concept, such as with automated features, and is always looking for new participants.
All Wikipedia pages, including articles and user pages alike, have a corresponding Talk page. To switch to the current page's Talk page, click on the "Talk" tab above the page's title. At the very top of the page there is always a link to your Talk page.
All content and conduct issues should be discussed at either the article's or user's Talk page before requesting dispute resolution.
You can {{ping}} specific editors whom you would like to notify of your message post. Though there is no need to ping someone when you've edited their Talk page, because the Wikimedia software automatically notifies that user.
For a listing of current collaborations, tasks, and news, see the Community portal. For a listing of ongoing discussions and current requests, see the Dashboard.
