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Wikipedia:University of Edinburgh/Events and Workshops/Scottish Castles and Witchcraft

< Wikipedia:University of Edinburgh | Events and Workshops
Long Boi, a celebrity duck in York (now deceased) has a page on Wikipedia but 1,000s upon 1,000s of notable women still do not. We can change that. #WeCanEdit!
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Info about the event

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Did you know that most volunteer Wikipedia editors are male, and that there are fewer and less extensive articles on Wikipedia about women and issues important to women? There are thousands of notable women who meet Wikipedia’s standards for notability but don’t yet have a page. Come and help us add more Scottish Castles to Wikipedia on Friday, 27 September 2024!

Your 1,2,3,4,5 to get started!

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  1. Create your Wikipedia account
  2. Once you have created your account join the Wiki dashboard
  3. Have a look at the suggested worklist below of pages to create/improve below and decide who you want to work on. More redlinks can be found on WikiProject Women in Red's crowdsourced and Wikidata-driven Redlist index. Once you have decided who to work on Add your chosen page here.
  4. Little edits can make a big difference. Have a look at all the new pages created since Vote 100 in 2018 in the Women's Suffrage in Scotland timeline.

Schedule

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  • 1:00 pm – 1:10 pm: Everyone log in and housekeeping
  • 1:15pm – 2:15pm: Welcome and Wikipedia training from Ellie Whitehead
  • 2:15pm – 2:30pm: Break with tea and coffee
  • 2:30pm - 4pm: Research and Wikipedia article writing and editing! With aim to publish by 4.30pm
  • 4pm - 4:20m: Publish articles with help from Ellie.
  • 4:20pm - 4:30pm: Event recap and close

Join us as we help make Wikipedia better!

Editing

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Questions about editing? Read the Wiki-editing FAQ!

Use the PrepBio tool

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Worklist - Ideas for Articles to Create and Improve

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Cite what you write! 50–100 words or more written with a neutral point of view AND backed up with citations from reliable published secondary sources is enough to get a new article published. e.g. Example of minimum requirements

Articles to edit:

Heritage locations and Witches

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  • Crichton Castle – expand on the Earl of Bothwell’s links to the North Berwick witch trials. Ultimately the reason why the castle was abandoned.
  • Craigmillar Castle – the Preston family’s involvement in the Niddry witch trials. Agnes Sampson and the Dovecot and the connection between the castle and the North Berwick witch hunts. Expand upon the earl of mar.  Y
  • Dirleton Castle – in 1649 six witches were accused of witchcraft in Dirleton and held in the castle pit prison  Y
  • Brodie Castle – Alexander Brodie of Brodie’s involvement in the case of Isobel Gowdie.
  • Newhailes House – James, first Viscount Stair and his debate on witchcraft and the law.
  • St Magnus Cathedral – site of Orkney witch trials. Mentioned on Witchcraft in Orkney page but no mention on cathedral page.  Y
  • Culross Palace – George Bruce Laird of Carnock’s [builder and owner of the palace] involvement in trials in Culross
  • Culross – expand mention of witchcraft. At least 44 cases in this town. Stuart Macdonald, The Witches of Fife: Witch-Hunting in a Scottish Shire, 1560-1710 useful resource.
  • Falkland Palace – James VI’s proclamation and the 1597 witch panic.  Y
  • Gladstone's Land – expand upon mention of William Struthers and involvement in the trial of Marion Muir  Y
  • Kellie Castle – Alexander Erskine’s role as an investigator in Margaret Guthrie’s case.  Y
  • Pollok House – the Pollok witches! Six men and women accused of witchcraft in 1677 for attempting to murder Sir George Maxwell of Pollok through magical means. Pollok family also involved in other witch hunts.  Y
  • Alloa Tower – Two Erskines of Mar were involved in witchcraft prosecutions: John Erskine, second earl of Mar and Sir John Erskine of Otterstoun  Y

Create

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Heritage Locations
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Castles
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  • The Bass Castle – famous 16th century castle on the Bass Rock just off the coast by North Berwick, lighthouse built on top of it in the 20th century.  Y
  • Burn’s Mother’s Well – just outside of Haddington, well dedicated to Agnes Broun as Burns’ family lived and worked on the Lennoxlove estate
  • Poldrate Mill – 18th c. mill in Haddington, on the site of the medieval Kirk Mill. Home of the Lamp of Lothian Trust.  Y
  • Drumlanrig Tower - oldest building in Hawick, houses the town museum. 16th century L-shaped tower house.
  • Logie House Garden, Forres - original house 17th century but renovated in Baronial style. Home of the digestive biscuit! Now a garden and visitor attraction.  Y
  • Ardvreck Castle - 15th c. ruin. Article could have more detail. Who were the owners?

To improve:

Useful resources

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Here are some useful links to help you with your editing:

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    A speedy guide on where to find the different buttons on Wikipedia, and explaining what they do – useful for complete beginners!
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    Very straightforward step-by-step instructions on how to add a piece of information to an existing Wikipedia page – useful for complete beginners!
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    A guide to elements to include in a wiki-biography, with a checklist to ensure you include as many as you can when editing.
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    A guide to adding infoboxes (those handy things on the right side of a page with a summary of key info).
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    A complete beginner's introduction to adding information onto Wikidata. If in doubt, take a look at someone else's Wikidata entry for inspiration!
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    Steps to adding a photograph to Wikimedia Commons so you can use it in a Wikipedia article – the picture has to be your own for you to add it.
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    Guide to creating your Wikipedia userpage to introduce yourself to other editors.
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    Using talk pages
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    Citing your sources
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    Avoiding plagiarism
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    Classroom handout – moving out of your sandbox
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    Polishing your articles
  • You can add pictures for use on Wiki-pages and beyond on Wikimedia Commons. Your Wikipedia account will work on Commons too – as well as all the other Wiki-projects and different language versions of Wikipedia.

Here are some ways to keep track of your edits:

  • You can view all your contributions to Wikipedia by clicking "Contributions" (in the top right of this page).
  • The Pageviews tool is a great way of measuring how many people are looking at the page you created/edited. You can even export the data if you'd like it for reports, etc.


Join WikiProject Women in Red

Join WikiProject Women in Red by registering in the box at the top of the WIR page. You can then add a userbox to your user page.

Things to remember – anyone can edit BUT cite what you write!

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  1. Wikipedia is a tertiary source. Articles are backed up by facts from reliable, published secondary sources. Primary sources tend not to be used. A breadth & depth of quality sources helps demonstrates notability which is an important yardstick for articles staying on Wikipedia.
  2. Write with encyclopedic content in mind. Not academic essay. Strip back your writing to the facts.
  3. Write accessibly with a lay audience in mind. Any jargon needs explained the first time it is mentioned.
  4. Write with a neutral point of view. Split text up into sections with headings.
  5. Cite everything you write. Keep a note of urls (open access if possible), Journal articles DOI identifiers, Book ISBN numbers. Page numbers, volume numbers and book chapters should be included in your citation information too.
  6. Draft content in your sandbox draft space first. Wikipedia is a work in progress for sure but you can prepare articles or new sections for articles in peace in your personal draft space (the sandbox) and migrate it when ready.
  7. Write in your own words as much as possible. Even close paraphrasing counts as copyright violation. Short quotes can be included but need to be attributed.
  8. Links in the main body of the article should only be to other Wikipedia pages. You only need to add links when the term is first mentioned in the article. Linking every time is considered overlinking. Sites outside of Wikipedia should be linked in a separate section at the foot of the page with an External links heading. No more than 5–8 links to websites outside of Wikipedia – we are not a link farm!
  9. Images have to open-licensed to be allowed on Wikipedia. CC-0, Public domain, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA licensed images are allowed and are hosted on sister project, Wikimedia Commons. Open images can be searched for using search aggregator tools such as CC Search.
  10. Want to learn more? Go to our website, join/email Wikimedia UK


Some short video tutorials

  1. Exploring the main page of Wikipedia (4 mins)
  2. How to create an account on Wikipedia (1 min 30 secs)
  3. How to switch on the (easier to use) Visual Editor interface (1 min 20secs)
  4. How to create a user page and play around with formatting (4 mins)
  5. How to create an article on Wikipedia (7 mins)
  6. How to move your drafted article to the main article space on Wikipedia (2 mins)
  7. How to add bold, headings, links, italics to a Wikipedia page (3 mins)
  8. How to add citations and references to a Wikipedia page (3 mins)
  9. How to upload an image to Wikimedia Commons (Wikipedia’s sister project) - 4 mins
  10. How to insert an image from Wikimedia Commons onto a Wikipedia page (3 mins)
  11. How to edit existing pages on Wikipedia (4 mins)
  12. Some printable resources are here.

These are all embedded in our student-created Wikimedian in Residence website here to make the how & why of editing Wikipedia much easier to engage with. Undergraduate student Hannah Rothmann’s work creating this website and the video resources above in lockdown Summer 2020 won an Open Education Global award recently. Because we felt that students, educators and everyone should be able to do this much more simply and have this ‘need to know’ information readily and openly available so I hope this is of use to you.

Images and videos

Video of a seal at Newburgh beach, Aberdeenshire (my home town)
 
Newburgh beach

Wikipedia pages can feel a tad lifeless without an image or short video to help illustrate it. We can change that. We can edit!
Just have a look at the images and videos we have added to the University of Edinburgh library page by way of illustration!

  • You can add pictures for use on Wiki-pages and beyond on Wikimedia Commons. Your Wikipedia account will work on Commons too – as well as all the other Wiki-projects and different language versions of Wikipedia.
  • Openverse.org - You can use image search tools like Openverse.org to find open-licensed images elsewhere on the internet. Just restrict your search for acceptable open-licensed images by filtering to only (1) Public domain, (2) CC-0, (3) CC-BY, or (4) CC-BY-SA images.
  • Wikimedia Commons – Once you have found an image with one of these licences then you can upload this image to Wikimedia Commons (a media repository of over 90 million free to use images, sound clips and movie clips) and it can then be inserted into a Wikipedia page.
  • Commons:Flickr2Commons is a handy tool to help import both an image and its description information across from Flickr automatically using the unique Flickr image ID or Flickr album ID to import an entire album of images. You just need to login to the tool on Mediawiki using your same Commons login details.
  • Commons:Video2commons is another handy tool to help convert video files to acceptable open formats (.ogg and .webm) for Wikimedia Commons and auto import the file to Commons once conversion is complete. You just need to login to the tool on Mediawiki using your same Commons login details.

Why not help document cultural heritage as part of the world's largest photo competition, Wiki Loves Monuments, where thousands of photos of listed buildings and monuments worldwide (interiors and exteriors) are uploaded for the benefit of the global open knowledge community every year




After today

Once you've learned the basics of editing using Wikipedia’s Visual Editor, I hope that you'll stay logged in and edit or create more articles. As a first step you may like to check out what What Wikipedia is not along with its 5 guiding principles: The 5 pillars. Some ways to keep track of your edits

  • You can view all your contributions to Wikipedia by clicking "Contributions" (in the top right of this page).
  • The Pageviews tool is a great way of measuring how many people are looking at the page you created/edited. You can even export the data if you'd like it for reports, etc.
  • Please sign your messages on talk pages with four tildes (~~~~). This will automatically insert your "signature" (your username and a date stamp). The   or   button, on the tool bar above Wikipedia's text editing window, also does this.
  • If you would like to play around with your new Wiki skills without changing the mainspace, the Sandbox is for you.
  • Check out upcoming Wikimedia in Scotland editing events.
  • Check out upcoming Wikimedia UK editing events.

Video guides to editing Wikipedia

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