Valfarly chanced upon wikipedia and thought "that'll never work"... but after using it a few times, he eventually got sufficently annoyed by a typo to do something about it and on 15th March 2004 hit edit. From there it was a slippery slope to writing articles for things he found no-one else had written about and adding tidbits, factoids and other nuggets of information to previously covered topics. Finds himself correcting spelling and grammar far too often!
Sometimes, it might be useful to look up a subject in the same way you would do so in a book—in the index. Wikipedia has an index. To use it—it is available at the editor's index to Wikipedia.
Although it is called an "editor's index", it is really intended to be an index for anyone involved with Wikipedia in other than the role of a reader. Most of the topics are directly relevant to editing of articles, but some topics are less directly relevant to editing.
Machado de Assis (1839–1908) was a Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer, widely regarded as the greatest writer of Brazilian literature. In 1897, he founded and became the first president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He was multilingual, having taught himself French, English, German and Greek later in life. Machado's work shaped the realist movement in Brazil and the birth of the Brazilian republic made Machado become more critical and an observer of the Brazilian society of his time. Generally considered to be Machado's greatest works are Dom Casmurro (1899), Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, also translated as Epitaph of a Small Winner) and Quincas Borba (also known in English as Philosopher or Dog?). In 1893, he published "A Missa do Galo" ("Midnight Mass"), often considered to be the greatest short story in Brazilian literature. This photograph of Machado was taken by the Brazilian photographer Marc Ferrez in 1890.Photograph credit: Marc Ferrez; restored by Adam Cuerden