Wikipedia has plenty of ways to contribute. The obvious one is to add content or edit pages. There are also many “WikiProjects” There’s something for everybody’s taste.
Some of the projects cover different topic areas: Bacon, Batman and Birds
An assignment for a class last year sent me looking for a WikiProject. I found the Maintenance project Citation Cleanup and then I specialized into “Pages with broken reference names” It’s fairly esoteric and the list of things to do on the projects is unbounded. Knock down one page by fixing its citations and there’s ten more waiting for attention.
It’s interesting to learn the inner workings of Wikipedia. I don’t have to do anything more than read it, but by contributing I take a little bit of (mostly anonymous) ownership.
I learned that there are robots that go through the encyclopedia that identify likely vandalism. Others find citations that look similar for a person to make them consistent. There is a robot flotilla helping out. There are guidelines for making your own robot.
As I looked more and more into the inner workings of Wikipedia, it seems to be more of a community. I don’t have to worry about “breaking” it and I can, in my own small way, make a contribution.
W. Smith 