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Welcome to the Help desk for Deshipedians

Welcome to Deshipedian 2008 help desk!

It's nice to have you aboard. We're glad you wish to help develop this encyclopedia. We hope you enjoy participating in the contest. As a new contributor, you may feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer size and apparent complexity of this project, of which this contest is only a part. But don't worry, it will become easier and clearer as you go. If you feel you need assistance, experienced Wikipedians are available to help you learn the basics and get up to speed. We've included some resources below to help you get started. Good luck and have fun. -- The Organizing Committee

One of the best places to get started is Help:Contents/Getting started.
Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date.

In case you get stuck, the following people have volunteered to assist new contributors, to give a helping hand and help you learn the ropes:

Even more volunteers are standing by to answer your questions on the following pages. You can usually expect an answer fairly quickly, often within just a few minutes:

To learn more about the contest, the Bangladesh project or Wikipedia policies and guidelines you can post your questions below.

Getting started

  • Gather information about the subject.
  • Collect resources like books, journals, news articles, website, pictures about the topic.
  • Make a numbered list of information about the resources. Suppose for book you should make the numbered list with book name, author name, publisher, year of publish, edition, ISBN etc.
  • Read the resources and collect the information and do mark the information with proper reference number. If you find same information in more then one resource mark with all reference number.
  • Know what should be put into in an article.
  • Do search for similar kind of articles.
  • Study the articles. You should care about intro, sections of the article, section titles, contents, caption of the pictures, visual style of the article etc.
  • Start writing at Wikipedia
  • Study the existing contents of the article.
  • If there is any reference in the article then these are bonus to you.
  • Put your reference list at the discussion page, so that others can know from which sources you are using.
  • Discuss with others and ask help for collect sources/reference on particular information.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Here are answers to some commonly asked questions:

Q: Since the judgement is so subjective, how do I know that it is not a fluke and the winners are not already selected?
A: There are clearly established benchmarks of article quality (Good Article and Featured Article). So the evaluation of performance is not as subjective as it sounds. The best competitor should be able to indentify himself / herself from others through clear demonstration of quality of work which will be evaluated using Wikipedia's established and proven peer-review mechanism.

Q: How do you confirm that the participants are not cheating?
A: If cheating means activities not allowed on wikipedia like posting copyright violation materials in the article, the seasoned judges should be able to detect that. And serious intentional copyright violation may result in disqualification of the participant. On the other hand, if the form of "cheating" is simply taking help from others - then we rather encourage that. This is not a an exam or contest of individual merit, rather a way to encourage people to participate in wikipedia with the help of all possible resources.

Q: How will the reward be handed over?
A: BDOSN (Bangladesh Open Source Network) office in Dhaka will be used as the on-the-ground contact point for the competition. Winners will need to go there to present the proof of their identity and collect the rewards. Competitors other than winners will need not go to the office.

Q: Who is funding the competition?
A: The active wikipedians from Bangladesh on English Wikipedia are funding the competition with donations. Corporate sponsorships are not sought as that is against Wikipedia principles.

Q: If another user contributes to the article I am working on, how would you judge my contributions?
A: Every article has a history section, which helps identify edits made by each user.

If you didn't find what you were looking for here, please, post your question here. One editor or other will make a reply as soon as possible.