Notes for a public presentation I shall be giving at the River John C@P site in the library, December 10, 2015 from 6:30pm-8:00pm AST.
Introduction
- Listen to Wikipedia
- The five fundamental principles of Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Five million articles
- Wikipedia is big. There is much more to it than 5,000,000 articles.
- Will be looking at a lot, but in little depth.
- Primarily about the English version of Wikipedia.
Wikimedia Foundation
- They all have their own guidelines and copyright licenses!
Example pages:
- and several others related to software development and project management / development.
A typical Wikipedia page
- Article title; Quality
- Lead section; Disambiguation; Hatnotes; Bold; Context; Wikilinks; Table of Contents; Infobox
- Article body; Section headings and sub-headings
- See also; Notes and references; Bibliography/further reading; External links
- Resources on Sister projects; Navigation templates; Categories
- Search
- Read; Edit; History
- Talk
- Toolbar - What links here; Create a book; Other languages
Other types of articles
- List pages ie List of public art in Halifax, Nova Scotia
- Disambiguation pages ie Clifton
- Redirects ie Einstein
Namespaces
"Namespace" is a reserved word followed by a colon to identify particular types of page. For example:
- Article (no reserved word)
- User:Derek Andrews
- User Talk; Preferences; Sandbox
- Wikipedia:Shortcut directory
- File:WikiProject_Council.svg
- Template:About
- Help:Contents
- Category:New Glasgow, Nova Scotia
Most also have Talk pages associated with them:
- User talk:Derek Andrews
- Always sign your comments on Talk pages by typing four tildes ~~~~ Derek Andrews (talk) 00:48, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
The nuts and bolts of editing
- Edit button
- Cheatsheet
- fixer upper: Skin maceration
Where to start?
- Recommend you start by making minor changes to existing pages:
- Just browse around until you see something that needs fixing, or look for problems that have been flagged:
- Dead-end pages
- Links to Disambiguation pages
- also on that page, see sidebar, Active Wiki Fixup Projects
- join a topic-basedWikiProject that interests you and look for articles there that need improving, i.e. Libraries
- join a task-based WikiProject such as the Guild of Copy Editors, the Graphics Lab or WikiProject Disambiguation.
- Writing better articles
- Manual of Style
- Look for topic guidelines such as WikiProject UK geography/How to write about settlements
- learn how to create your first article
- Try the Article wizard
- Article titles
- Is it encyclopedic?
- Is it notable?
- Can it be verified?
- No copyright violations!
Problems
Outreach
- Wikipedia Zero
- The Wikipedia Library
- GLAM-Wiki initiative (galleries, libraries, archives, museums with Wikipedia)
- WikiTowns: Monmouthpedia (Monmouth Heritage Trail) - Gibraltarpedia
Get involved, you won't be alone