Wikipedia talk:Tutorial (historical)

OK, the first 4 pages are mostly done. I might break up the links page into one on internal link, and one on external links (and put in some discussion of when/why/where to use them as opposed to just how,) but that's about it. I think that gets us through the most basic elements of Wikipedia. Here's a list of further topics I was thinking we might include, not necessarilly in this order. I'm sure there are some things I'm overlooking.

Things I'm pretty sure should be included

• NPOV basics.
• Wikiquette basics.
• When to mark edits as minor.
• Creating new pages.

Things we can consider including:

• Using page histories.
• Tables
• What links here
• Recent Changes
• Watchlists
• Deletion procedures (I personally don't think we should include this, but some might)

I think we should include at least some of the "optional" material above, but having all of it would make the tutorial long. It occurs to me that we might have two tutorials, one basic and one advanced. Then the last page of the basic tutorial says something like "OK, you've learned the basics now. If you'd like to learn about more features, keep going to our Advanced Tutorial." Comments, anyone? Isomorphic 03:19, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Great work so far, Isomorphic -- please continue! I added a few notes and examples to the links page -- please edit freely.

Do you want to keep this a simple "how-to", or do you want to include "best practices" that we've reached a consensus on? i.e., "you can do it this way or this way, but in the past we've generally considered it best to do this..." (I'm thinking of issues like principle of least astonishment, etc.)

I agree, both a basic and advanced tutorial might be a good idea. There are many existing pages that can serve as pages in an advanced tutorial, and there have been several attempts to organize them -- see the Yellow Pages, Utilities, the many links on the lower portion of the Community Portal.... I'd consult with others about how best to integrate them into the tutorial, to avoid duplicating others' work as well as to avoid having information in more than one place that may (will!) get out of synch over time....

Best of luck -- this is something we need! Catherine 00:58, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The main goal is to have a single, unified, multi-page document that gets someone started on Wikipedia. So the real question is, what do we all think it's most important for newcomers to know? If this includes some "best practices" then we can include them in the tutorial, but mostly I expect this will be a how-to, plus an explanation of the most basic guidelines (wikiquette and NPOV.) Isomorphic 07:39, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

1) Great job. 2) Should get links from pages like the Community Portal as soon as it is deemed ready (which it may well already be). 3) Adding user name/date isn't just for "Talk" pages--I think it's good practice on most pages that aren't articles or documentation pages like these tutorial pages (other than the sandboxes on the bottom). Maybe add a paragraph above the "Here's an example of well-formatted discussion." one, something like:

In addition to the talk pages, signing your comments helps in any page with a discussion. If you're not sure, just follow the lead of the previous contributors.

4) The sandboxes at the bottom are a great idea. 5) I tend to agree that beginning/advanced is probably best, and that most best practices would land on the latter. 6) I assume by Deletion procedures, you are referring to VfD, Cleanup, etc. I agree they probably don't need to be covered in detail in the basic tutorial, but perhaps at the bottom of what is currently page 6 (Conduct/Editorial policy), there could be a statement to the effect of If you find a page that you feel violates these guidelines, see [some appropriate page] on how to report it.

Navigation: I think all the pages should also have navigation links at the bottom (I'd make it just like the top one, or maybe [previous] Frontpage [next]). However, to avoid conflicts with the sandboxes, they should probably be generated by HTML from the msg:tutorial at the top (I'm assuming that is possible--I'm not very knowledgable about the full capabilities of HTML). Niteowlneils 21:17, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Glossary: I was going to suggest a link to the glossary, but it's fairly overwhelming. Maybe add a tutorial page with a very abbreviated glossary (and a link to the full one for the adventurous). I'd limit it to the main basics, like Admin, article, Disambiguation, Google test, Stub, User page. Maybe InterWiki, MediaWiki, Redirect, Vandalism, Vanity page, and/or WikiProject.

FWIT, I'm willing to do some of the leg work on my suggestions, but don't want to step on toes, nor duplicate efforts. Also, even tho' I'm closing in on 2,000 edits, I've only been here 6 weeks, so I have a pretty fresh memory of the newbie challenge. Niteowlneils 21:32, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Feel free to be bold in editing the tutorial and implementing any of your suggestions. If someone disagrees it can always be modified again. It's not live yet, but I think it's getting close. The last page (page 7) should have a lot of links to other pages. I think the Glossary should be among them. Isomorphic 21:44, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I am bold in many areas on WP, but I'm not ready here yet--I've only had a couple hours to begin to digest the concept and its current vision, and even my thots about additions aren't fully gelled. For the time being, I think I'll explore my ideas on subpages of my talk page. The two I've started so far are a shorter glossary (altho' I think an even shorter one might be better for the basic tutorial, or maybe divide it between fairly simple concepts (EG page, stub), and more complex ones (EG Infobox, Transwiki), and a page about registration. I'd be tempted to get out an HTML reference, and see if I can play with my footer-navigation idea, but I don't even know how to edit anything "msg:". On the otherhand, I may decide to be bold with a couple things I think could be added to the policies page). Niteowlneils 23:32, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Before this goes public, I think we should consider changing the page titles to words, instead of numbers, in case people have many ideas of other topics to add--renumbering regularly could be quite cumbersome. Niteowlneils 19:21, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Good thought. I'm not sure what to call them but if you want to rename, go ahead. To change the index message at the top, just edit the Mediawiki message at Template:Tutorial. Isomorphic 22:11, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I've done the moves (still need to circle back and see if it needs any cleanup), and Template:Tutorial looks right, but the msg links on the pages still get page numbers. Help? Niteowlneils 01:12, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Nevermind. The names show up using IE, so Mozilla must just be showing me cached pages. On to clean-up. Niteowlneils 01:17, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

OK, cleanup is done (took less than an hour, including cleanup, documentation, and two smoke breaks). I updated the links from places like the Village Pump, but left the ones on User pages and User talk pages, as it is my understanding we aren't supposed to edit other people's User pages. Niteowlneils 01:51, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Since it involves moving pages, I want to bounce my name ideas off people before I make any changes. My main concern is, are some of these too long?

Tutorial (Basic editing)

Tutorial (Basic formatting and headings)

Tutorial (Linking to other Wikipedia articles)

Tutorial (Linking to external sites)

Tutorial (Talk pages)

Tutorial (Some things to keep in mind)

Tutorial (Namespaces)

Tutorial (Links for more information) Niteowlneils 22:47, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, a bit long. How about:

Tutorial (editing)

Tutorial (formatting)

Tutorial (wiki links)

Tutorial (external links)

Tutorial (talk pages)

Tutorial (keep in mind)

Tutorial (namespaces)

Tutorial (more info)

LUDRAMAN | T 03:52, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I second Ludraman's proposed names. Isomorphic 00:47, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I didn't see this until I came here to report being done with the moves. However, I did mostly use his suggestions. Other than make the first letters caps, the only two that are different are the third page, which I named Wikipedia links, and the last one as Wrap-up and more info. I can move them again if these titles aren't acceptable. Niteowlneils 02:32, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Comment:

Nobody will get upset if you screw up an experiment here, so play around and see what you can do. (Page 1)

I assume this means "no one will get upset if you screw up an experiment here on Wikipedia", not "here in this tutorial." The meaning's pretty ambiguous, though -- you might want to change it just so that people don't think that they're getting an invitation to experiment by editing the tutorial itself.

(Oops, please disregard that -- I hadn't yet seen the mini-sandbox at the bottom of each page!) — Adam Conover † 00:06, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)

I tweaked the text a bit to make it clear that the experiments are being encouraged in the sandboxes. Niteowlneils 02:40, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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I think it would be good to take the material on the sister projects section from the Keep in mind page (currently #6), and the language and Meta stuff from the Cross-server links of the Namespaces page (currently #7), and combine them into a new page "Linking to related sites"?, and placed between the Wikipedia link page (currently #3), and the External links page (currently #4), as I think there is an advantage to addressing all three types of links at the same time. Since it involves a structural change I would like feedback in case I am missing something. My proposed new page prototype is at User:Niteowlneils/mergesisters. If I don't hear any objections, I'll probably insert it in a couple days. Niteowlneils 03:42, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

OK, it's in, altho' I still want to cycle thru the pages and make sure no links or redirs elsewhere were negatively effected. Niteowlneils 02:40, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks good. The new organization makes more sense. Isomorphic 02:50, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks. I also updated all the page names at Wikipedia:List of pages in the Wikipedia namespace. There are three more things I want to work on:

1. Moving the indenting info to the formatting page.
2. Brief intro to "namespace" concept at top of Talk page article.
3. Try to squeeze in a very abbreviated Glossary page near the end.

Also, maybe sprinkle in a few more informative links, like maybe some of the specific tutorials.

Oh, and part of why I want to get all the formatting and various linkage styles up front, is to provide a better segue from general site-wide topics, to the specific namespace usages. Niteowlneils 13:33, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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I got rid of the mini-sandboxes at the bottom of each page, and replaced with a unique sandbox for each tutorial page that used to have an experiment space. That makes more sense than the original configuration, because we won't have to be always checking to see if someone's changed the actual content of the tutorial. I didn't want people to have to use the main sandbox for the tutorial, because that'd make edit conflicts more likely. Also, it seemed useful for people to see the old experiments on the same topic. Isomorphic 21:40, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Direct link to wiki markup reference page?

This tutorial is very well done but I think the link to the How_to_edit_a_page is not enough. There should be another link somewhere, and preferably directly to the wiki markup part of the page. I think that part of the page is really important but I took ages to find it because I didn't want help on "how to edit a page". I don't know if you see what I mean, but well...

Menu template

I updated the menu templat {{tutorial}} to look like {{WikipediaFAQ}}, but it needs a stylistically-related graphic instead of the FAQ graphic. Who/where to ask? Amgine 18:30, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia introductory pages

A more holistic discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:Welcoming committee. Interested editors may wish to add their opinions there. Niteowlneils 16:21, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Tutorial reduction plan

Wikipedia talk:Tutorial/Tutorial v2 Niteowlneils 01:22, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the tutorial reduction plan..why can't we keep it simple so that it's easier for people to understand..especially beginers like me..However, I think it will be best if tutorials are put in terms of modules, i.e each module should be based on a certain topic.. J.J Kamuhanda - HWU -045003989

Deletion and general procedures

I've just started to actually contribute to Wikipedia, and I found a page that probably needs to be deleted. It took me over 30 minutes to figure out where the deletion procedures were and how to use it (since it's not linked off the main tutorial). The tutorial doesn't necessarily need a large chunk on deletion, but a link/reference to it would be nice. Oh, and explanation of common place practices (like dating and naming via tildas) along with what are good edit summaries would be nice so we don't learn bad habits. Janet13 3 July 2005 07:46 (UTC)

Templates

I've come across a couple of newbies doing weird things while trying to use templates - when I explained to them how they worked they asked why there was nothing in the tutorial to explain how they're used... and I must admit that's a very good question. Should we have a very short section explaining how to use templates, and also how to add images - perhaps on the Wiki links page of the tutorial? Grutness...wha? 5 July 2005 14:06 (UTC)

Tutorial on west african craton

Tutorial on west african craton sir

        i need online summary of Tutorial on west african craton so i can little information about it now

Profoundly hearty?

IMO, the profoundly hearty greetings line is awkward and corny. I'm deleting it, but please add a different greeting. Does anyone have ideas?

Maths

How to write a mathematical formula ?

Redesign

I'm doing a redesign of this tutorial to bring it in-line with Wikipedia:Introduction. I aim to make the two areas flow together as I believe the new user should use both; first do a bare bones overview with the intro, then the tutorial gives some more specific help (then maybe the Help:Portal or something else even more in depth , but that's a future project). - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 03:40, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Comment: Hmmm, I hope you do a very good job in improving the tutorial, I use Wikipedia alot and I really want to explore into all its features. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.0.155.82 (talk • contribs) .

Looking better :)

Can we change/getrid of that "bootcamp" link? the newcomers help page is not the contextually expected content... (a bootcamp would be a series of structured exercises that one is guided through). -Quiddity 18:13, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

That 'glossification' was causing ugly overlaps, making some links entirely unusable, when I reverted it in January, and it is still causing overlaps, since it's come back in June, but now I can't just revert to the usable pages because the whole tutorial is hard protected. Why is it protected, and please restore a usable version. Niteowlneils 02:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Il Piz deu Ifendore

Le Hitoiría deu ilez Angloirones e ilez Noromaxones

Link to this page from the Editing Template?

Could there a link to this page be added to the actual document editing template? 99% of the time that's where I am when I need to refer to this document. --Irrevenant 12:18, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Good morning Don,

I will not be available Tuesday May 23, 2006 as I am needed in Markham to assist in the absent of my colleague. I will be available Wednesday May 24 to continue with the assessments and certifications. Thx.