Thank You/Melisa Parisi

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I started editing Wikipedia when I was 15 years old. They say "write what you know" &mdash; so I turned to my favorite television show, The Simpsons, and got started.
In the five years since, I've written 300 articles about The Simpsons… and learned nearly everything there is to know about the show. I also write about celebrities (like Brad Pitt!).

When I started out, I had no idea how Wikipedia worked. Some of my first edits were deleted because they didn't follow the guidelines. I got frustrated; I almost quit.

But another Wikipedia editor came to my rescue. He was even younger than me, but he knew all about Wikipedia. He showed me how to format my edits and include reliable sources. Thanks to his help, I kept going.

And that's the spirit of Wikipedia, in a nutshell. The whole project is built on cooperation and collaboration. We’re all in this together. So as soon as you make your first edit &mdash; and even before &mdash; there will always be someone there to help.

Wikipedia is a powerful source of knowledge. The best part is, it's free. You don't have to buy it, and you don't have to pay for access.

But you are always welcome to lend a hand. Make an edit. Donate a few dollars. Write whatever you know.

Everything counts.

 &mdash; Melisa Parisi

''Melisa Parisi has been editing Wikipedia since 2007. While she still writes about pop culture, she's expanded her focus to topics like books, biographies, plants, animals and historic places, frequently translating from English and Spanish. She works as a professional translator and copy editor, and is training to become a flight attendant. She lives in Argentina.''

Image Attribution: by Victor Grigas, under [//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported], from Wikimedia Commons.