Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Political Research Seminar/Resources

Getting started

These printable PDF documents have instructions related to the basics of Wikipedia.

Wiki markup quick reference – This one-page quick reference (included in the Welcome to Wikipedia brochure) helps you to remember the most frequently used wiki markup codes.
References – This handout explains why references are important, what the expectations for sourcing on Wikipedia are, where to place references, and the basics of adding "ref" tags.
Reference formatting – This handout explains in more detail how to create footnotes for citing sources, and how to cite the same source multiple times.
How to get help – explains the recommended way to get help and feedback. It also includes a glossary of additional help resources you can avail yourself of.
Plagiarism – explains what plagiarism is on Wikipedia—including "close paraphrasing"—in addition to why and how to avoid it.

Wikipedia:Tutorial - General introduction to Wikipedia
Wikipedia:Article wizard - Walkthrough of the requirements for articles, including notability and sources
Wikipedia:Picture tutorial - Explains how to insert pictures into Wikipedia articles using wikitext
Wikipedia:Graphics tutorials (advanced) - advice about advanced image editing

Starting a sandbox article	Basic editing: bold and links	How to use a watchlist	How to use talk pages

How to start an a sandbox page to play around with wiki markup or start an article draft (2m 11s)	How to use the most basic features of wiki markup to create bold text and links to other pages (3m 37s)	How to use a watchlist to keep track of pages you are interested in or have edited (2m 10s)	How to interact with other editors using talk pages, including article talk pages and user talk pages (2m 30s)

Basic editing: citing sources	Citing sources with RefToobar	Uploading files to Wikimedia Commons

How to add citations using "ref" tags (2m 3s)	How to use the "Cite" tool for inserting automatically formatted references (2m 25s)	Uploading files such as images to Wikimedia Commons, using the upload wizard (2 min 48 sec)

Moving out of your sandbox – walks through how to move an article draft from a userpage sandbox into Wikipedia.
Submitting an article to the Did You Know process – walks through how to submit a new or newly expanded article to the Did You Know process so that it will appear on the Main Page.

Article creation	Article improvement	Article assessments	Article evolution

A demonstration, recorded live, of how to create a Wikipedia article (7 min 50 sec)	A look at how to assess the shortcomings of an article and improve it (4m 22s)	An exploration of the standard article assessment system, with examples of each quality level (11m 30s)	A trip through the history of an article, from humble beginnings to Good Article status (6m 25s)

Wikipedia article traffic statistics – a tool for charting how many hits any given article gets, great for comparing different kinds of articles at different times, e.g., Genetics (in the school year) vs. (in the summer), or YouTube (with weekend spikes) and Simpsons (with spikes when new episodes come out). Students can also use it to see how many people are reading their articles over the course of the class (and beyond).
Edit counter – a tool for charting how many edits you've made over time, which types of pages you've edited, and which pages you've edited most.