User blog:Sannse/Taking Your First Steps on FANDOM

This blog is for all you readers out there. You've looked around some of the 300,000 wikis on FANDOM, looked at some News and Stories, found some great reads on the wikis, and maybe even visited Discussions. So what's next for you?

Well, one thing you've probably noticed is the rich community on FANDOM. Each fandom is its own community, and then there is the overall community on Community Central and the other language versions of this wiki.

Building Your Identity
To join a community, the first thing I would always suggest is to make an account. You can do some things on FANDOM without being logged, including reading, editing, and commenting on articles. But logging in gives you the ability to do much more. You can move pages, upload images, comment on blogs and message walls, participate in Discussions, create a wiki, and chat with others on the wiki.

But more importantly, by giving yourself a nickname and logging in, you give yourself an identity. IPs often change, depending on your ISP and their set-up. So your edits won't be attributed to one "person" but a mix of different IPs. It's not easily remembered. Who would you rather talk to? DaveLovesSimpsons or 2505:106F:C:5BAB:GF35:822C:CEB5:C5DD?

When working together to make a wiki or build a vibrant Discussions area, a consistent identity allows you to work together over time and build trust and respect.

Making Your First Contribution
Once you have your username, the next thing is for you to make that first edit! Remember that whatever you do is published straight away, so it's not okay to write TEST all over an article! Instead, look for a small contribution that you are sure will improve an article.

My first wiki edit was to change "aren't" to "are" on a Wikipedia policy page - I wouldn't recommend starting with a policy page though. An ideal first edit is to fix a spelling error in an article or add some more facts to a small article that needs filling out. Whatever you do, be sure to add an edit summary and watch carefully to see if anyone makes changes afterward. You can learn a lot by seeing what others do.

Discussions, Another Way to Join In.
If you are the sort of person who likes to talk about your fandom rather than write about it, you might want to go directly to Discussions. You have to be logged in to use Discussions - another reason to create an account and make yourself recognizable.

Discussions tend to be about questions and opinions about the topic of the wiki, So it's different from the wiki, which usually deals in facts rather than opinions. Both types of interactions are valuable, and both can be a vital part of bringing a community together to work on their common goals.

Let's Talk!
So that leads to my third suggestion for a reader becoming a contributor - talk to people. That can be on message walls, article comments or talk pages, or even edit summaries! The key is to start to make connections with your fellow fans. After all, you have something big in common, your fandom, so you have something to talk about straight away!

So why not take the plunge, make your account, and improve your experience on FANDOM? A whole new community is waiting for you.

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