How Wikipedia Works is a guide to the inner workings of Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopaedia. Though deeply flawed as an academic tool, Wikipedia is certainly a very popular hobby, and a great many people — the author of this review included — enjoy making occasional edits to Wikipedia articles. The basics are generally very easy to pick up, but beyond a certain point some understanding of the underlying Wiki technology becomes useful, particularly once the editor switches from tweaking existing articles and starts writing entirely new sections or articles.

The book is divided into four sections, entitled Content, Editing, Community, and Other Projects. Broadly, the first section introduces Wikipedia and describes the types and quality of material to be found there. The Editing section focuses on the nitty-gritty of producing articles, covering everything from basic textual edits through to uploading images and the use of templates. The third section looks at the Wikipedia community, primarily the forms of communication between them, the policies Wikipedia editors are meant to follow, and how arguments between editors are settled. The final section is about the family of projects to which Wikipedia belongs, including the different language versions and the popular Wikimedia Commons free media library. Each of these sections is subdivided into chapters, of which there’s seventeen in total, plus a trio of appendices.

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