This book is divided into four parts, starting with the basics and working through all aspects of Wikipedia.

Part I looks at Wikipedia from the reader's point of view. Chapter 1, What's in Wikipedia? describes the type of content Wikipedia contains and the basic policies that determine what content is included. The site's history is explored in Chapter 2, The World Gets a Free Encyclopedia; in particular, we look at the way that Wikipedia unites three historical strands: encyclopedias, wikis, and free software. How to search and browse the site (including an explanation of the sidebar and main page) is detailed in Chapter 3, Finding Wikipedia's Content, and Chapter 4, Understanding and Evaluating an Article covers the structure of an individual article and methods for evaluating article quality.

Part II turns to editing the site. A basic explanation of how to edit a page and an introduction to wikisyntax are in Chapter 5, Basic Editing; this chapter forms the foundation for the next chapters in this part. Chapter 6, Good Writing and Research covers how to start a new article and explores encyclopedic writing, research, and collaboration techniques that are useful for working on any article. Formal processes for maintaining content, including collaborative editing drives and cleanup projects, WikiProjects, and article deletion and promotion processes are covered in Chapter 7, Cleanup, Projects, and Processes. Chapter 8, Make and Mend Wikipedia's Web explains how articles are linked together through Wikipedia's category structure, disambiguation pages, and redirects, along with how pages are maintained through merging, splitting, and moving. More advanced syntax, including image formatting, tables, templates, and special characters, is covered in Chapter 9, Images, Templates, and Special Characters. Chapter 10, The Life Cycle of an Article steps through the life cycle of a newly created article.

Part III covers Wikipedia's elaborate social side. We begin with how to sign up as an editor, including setting up an account, setting preferences, and using your personal user and talk pages in Chapter 11, Becoming a Wikipedian, in which we also describe Wikipedia's administrator system. Wikipedia's culture and the ways editors communicate (including a list of forums for asking questions and discussing problems) are covered in Chapter 12, Community and Communication, and the policies that govern Wikipedia and how these policies are created are described in Chapter 13, Policy and Your Input. Finally, Chapter 14, Disputes, Blocks, and Bans discusses how the dispute resolution process works—and how to avoid disagreement in the first place.

Part IV steps back from the English-language Wikipedia to cover other Wikimedia Foundation projects, including editions of Wikipedia in other languages in Chapter 15, 200 Languages and Counting and Wikipedia's sister projects, including Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikispecies, and Wikiversity, in Chapter 16, Wikimedia Commons and Other Sister Projects. Finally, we cover the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia's parent organization) and how work at the Foundation level is coordinated in Chapter 17, The Foundation and Project Coordination.

Appendix A, Reusing Wikimedia Content includes information about reusing Wikipedia's content under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License and examples of reuse (the GFDL itself, under which this book is licensed, is included starting on Section 1, “PREAMBLE”). We provide a brief guide for teachers using Wikipedia in the classroom in Appendix B, Wikipedia for Teachers; Appendix C, Edit Summaries Jargon contains a glossary of jargon commonly used in edit summaries; Appendix D, Glossary has a glossary of jargon frequently used on the site; and, finally, Appendix E, History is an index of Wikipedia pages quoted in the book.

The basic principles we describe for reading articles, editing pages, and collaborating with others will provide a good foundation for working on any Wikimedia wiki project. But although the Wikimedia projects all share the same general philosophy, any specific policy or custom mentioned here might not apply outside the English-language Wikipedia. If you're interested in exploring another project, remember that each wiki website represents a unique collaborative community, which may have its own rules.