Wikipedia:Instructional material

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This page provides links to instructional material useful for Wikipedia users, especially new users. The intent is to provide a central directory of all such materials Wikipedians have found useful, including tutorials and manuals on Wikipedia itself, and books, videos, and documents available outside Wikipedia.

Because Wikipedia runs on the MediaWiki software, much of the training material for new Wikipedia users is also useful for users of other MediaWiki wikis, and vice versa.

Contents

Tutorials and guides [edit]

  • A number of tutorials appeared in the weekly internal newsletter, the Signpost. The January 14, 2008 issue had first of these.

Lectures [edit]

Main page: Wikipedia:Lectures

As of late January 2008, a series of "lectures" was being planned, initially using a logged irc channel, so that editors who aren't present can still get transcripts. There also might be some live lectures at Wikimania 2008.

Screencasts [edit]

See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Screencast

About Wikipedia [edit]

  • "Heavy metal umlaut: the movie", from Infoworld, January 2005. The video traces the changes in a Wikipedia article, giving a good sense of how articles can build over time, as well as how they are edited.

Editing Wikipedia [edit]

Available screencasts on how to edit Wikipedia
Subject/link Length Author Date
Creating a new user account (WP version) 2:35 BillWedemeyer December 8, 2008
Start editing 7:15 BillWedemeyer December 8, 2008
Creating a new article 3:42 BillWedemeyer December 9, 2008
Cheatsheet 3:26 BillWedemeyer December 9, 2008

MediaWiki [edit]

Main page: Wikipedia:Instructional material/MediaWiki training videos

An administrator of a public wiki recorded some MediaWiki training videos, to help people learn how to edit on his wiki. Most of the material in the videos applies to any MediaWiki site, including Wikipedia; many of the examples actually feature Wikipedia. You can view the videos from the wiki page, or download the videos in high resolution (.avi files), or download lower resolution files in Quicktime format.

In addition, there are some screencasts posted to YouTube.

Videos [edit]

  • "Wikis in Plain English", May 2007. In this case, "plain" may be a bit repetitive, but for those who prefer pictures to words, this is a good, brief introduction to the concept of a wiki. (And no, editing a wiki isn't normally done in rotation, as the video happens to show.)

Books [edit]

About Wikipedia [edit]

English [edit]

  • John Broughton. Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. O'Reilly books. Published January 2008. ISBN 978-0596515164. As available online in the form of a set of Wikipedia help pages.
  • Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews & Ben Yates. How Wikipedia Works. San Francisco: No Starch Press. Published September 2008. ISBN 978-1593271763.
  • Andrew Lih. Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. Hyperion. Published March 2009. ISBN 1401303714

German [edit]

Other languages [edit]

MediaWiki [edit]

  • Mizanur Rahman. MediaWiki Administrators' Tutorial Guide: Install, manage, and customize your MediaWiki installation. Packt Press. Published March 2007. ISBN 978-1904811596
  • Daniel Barrett. MediaWiki (Wikipedia and Beyond). O'Reilly. Published October 2008. ISBN 978-0596519797.

See also [edit]


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