Welcome to the Gene Wiki project - dedicated to applying community intelligence to the annotation of gene and protein function. The Gene Wiki is an informal collection of pages on human genes and proteins, and this effort to develop these pages is tightly coordinated with the Genetics taskforce of Molecular Biology. Its specific aims are:
To ensure each notable human gene has at least a stub Wikipedia page
To make those articles as well written and informative as possible
To invite participation by interested lay editors, students, professionals, and academics from around the world
To make sure that Gene Wiki articles are linked from existing Wikipedia content, increasing the value of both
The Gene Wiki, in aggregate, comprises over 10,000 distinct gene pages, spanning 2.07 million words and 82 megabytes of data. These pages are viewed over 50 million times per year and edited over 15,000 times per year.
Remember, go ahead and be bold with your edits. You can't do any irrevocable harm, and any mistakes can be fixed by other editors. You can always ask questions on the talk page.
How do I start editing the gene articles on wikipedia?
• How to make your first edit (in two minutes or less) (video)
• Find your favorite gene page. You can do that by searching directly here at Wikipedia (search box in the left-hand bar), and in most cases you can also find it by searching at Google or by using our Entrez Gene ID lookup tool.
• Read the article, and identify an improvement you can make. This can be as simple as correcting a typo or as complex as summarizing a recent paper. Note some distinctive text around the place you're going to make your edit (to be used below).
• Click the "Edit" tab at the top of the page
• You may now be viewing the "source code" of the gene page, which can often be a bit intimidating. If you are, switch to visual editing by clicking the pencil icon to the top right.
• Make your edit. You can pretty much type text and it should appear roughly how you intend it. For more powerful editing options, see the help pages.
• Click the "Show preview" button at the bottom. Confirm that your edits look correct.
• Add a brief Edit summary, and then click the big, blue "Publish changes" button. You're done!
• How to add a reference to the "Further Reading" section
• Find the Pubmed ID of the article you want to add. Obviously, use Pubmed.
• Find your favorite gene page. You can do that by searching directly here at Wikipedia (search box in the left-hand bar), and in most cases you can also find it by searching at Google or by using our Entrez Gene ID lookup tool.
• Click the "Edit" link to the right of the "Further Reading" section header.
• Click the pencil icon in the top right to enter source mode.
• Add a new line after the "{{refbegin | 2}}" and before the "{{PBB_Further_reading" lines (use your browser's search function if necessary).
• Click the "Cite" button in the header marked with double quotes. Select "Automatic" and enter the Pubmed ID, then click "Create" and "Insert".
• Remove the <ref> and </ref> tags from either side of the citation you just generated.
• Click the "Show preview" button at the bottom. Confirm that your edits look correct.
• Add a brief Edit summary, and then click "Publish changes". You're done!
• How to add an inline reference
• Find the Pubmed ID of the article you want to add. Obviously, use Pubmed.
• Find your favorite gene page. You can do that by searching directly here at Wikipedia (search box in the left-hand bar), and in most cases you can also find it by searching at Google or by using our Entrez Gene ID lookup tool.
• Click the "Edit" link at the top of the page or next to the section header.
• Move your cursor to the location you want to add the inline reference
• Click the "Cite" button in the header marked with double quotes. Click "Automatic", enter the Pubmed ID, then click "Create" and "Insert".
• Click the "Show preview" button at the bottom. Confirm that your edits look correct.
• Add a brief Edit summary, and then click "Publish changes". You're done!
• How to add a redirect from a synonym/alias to a gene page
• Enter the gene alias in the Wikipedia search box and hit "Go" or return.
• If Wikipedia reports that "No page with that title exists.", click the "Create the page" link in the middle of the page.
• Make sure that you are in source mode by clicking the pencil icon to the top right. Otherwise Wikipedia will interpret what you add below as normal text.
• Add the text #redirect [[Gene name]] to the page to which you want this synonym to redirect.
• Click the "Show preview" button at the bottom. Confirm that the target link looks correct.
• Add a brief Edit summary, and then click "Publish". You're done!
• How to create a new Gene Wiki article
• Go to the GeneWikiGenerator and enter the Entrez id for your gene, then click "Search by Symbol or Accession"
• The top frame contains the Code Creator. It does a series of checks to make sure your gene doesn't already exist. If the Template and Article titles are marked as "missing", we can proceed.
• To create a new Protein Box template, simply click "create" under the Template section. An indicator will let you know that the template is being created and uploaded to Wikipedia.
• To create a new Gene Wiki article, click on the title you want to use from the suggestions, or enter your own. Click "Check" to make sure your title doesn't conflict with a page that already exists. If it doesn't, click "Create '<article name>'". Once it says "Created (reload page)", you may visit your brand-new page on Wikipedia.
• (Please note that the Code Creator is still in beta. If you find any bugs or annoyances, please let the developer know about it on his talk page.)
Will my manual changes be overwritten by automated edits?
Generally speaking, no, your manual changes will not be overwritten. Most edits that you will want to do will be in the "free text" section of the page, and those sections are ignored by our bot. The information in {{GNF_Protein_box}} may be overwritten when new information is propagated by ProteinBoxBot, but fields in that template that are often edited by humans (such as the image and image_caption fields) are not changed unless they're blank. If you want to prevent the bot from overwriting anything, just include the {{nobots}} flag. For more specific questions, please post on the talk page.
RSS