Wikipedia:Contribute where qualified

This is an essay, a page containing the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints, and they may be heeded or not based upon your judgement and discretion.

By its very nature as the biggest encyclopedic informational resource ever written, Wikipedia is produced by thousands of contributors with widely different backgrounds, knowledge, and motivations. Wikipedia is not, could not be, and should not be written by just a few people – it needs diversity of views in order to achieve neutrality, diversity of knowledge in order to achieve accurate information, and diversity of access to resources in order to achieve verifiability.

Contribute to Wikipedia only within your own field of knowledge, or, if you post on discussion pages or other non-article venues that fall outside your own body of knowledge, note this clearly and visibly. Never claim to know someone or something when you don't, and never claim to be someone or something that you aren't. Contributing where qualified is simply good practice, demonstrates responsibility, and helps to develop accuracy on Wikipedia in all its forms – accuracy to create a better, more reliable resource for the free use of all the world's people.

Contribution does not refer only to contribution to articles; it also refers to participation on discussion pages and other non-article venues.