User:Tomcloyd/Resources for WEP Region 9 faculty & students

Learn basic Wikipedia article editing

You're new to Wikipedia, and you want to acquire a base of knowledge fast, so you can get on with editing content, yes? Good! It can be done, using an incremental, structured approach, coupled with some already existing study and practice aids. How fast? In thirty minutes or less. Read on...

1. Remember - this is a wiki. That means that it's really hard to break things. Here, we can virtually always go back to an earlier version of a document, before some personally engineered disaster occurred! Here, you do get do-overs!

2. Download and read: Welcome to Wikipedia. In 18 well-organized pages it promises to teach you how to:

• Understand how Wikipedia works
• Create a Wikipedia user account
• Understand Wikipedia's user interface
• Understand the different ways you can contribute to Wikipedia
• Communicate with other users through your My talk page
• Understand how an article evolves in Wikipedia
• Know the attributes of a quality article
• Create a new article

3. Do this brief Wikipedia editing tutorial. It's a great overview, a good basic training, or a nice brushup for the experienced, depending upon your level of knowledge.

A suggestion for getting started immediately: As soon as you have created a user account, go to your User Account page (search for "User:{...}" to find it, if you need to - replacing {...} with your Wiikpedia account name). Click the edit link on your account page, and add this text to the page, which will be blank, initially:

[[User:{your Wikipedia name}/My sandbox|My sandbox]].

Save the page. You should now see My sandbox on the page. This is a link, but to a non-existent page. To actually create the page, click the link. You can now use this page as a test area, as you read through the materials here.

Here is the link of this sort I have created on this page, just to show you - My sandbox - it's a live link, and you can go to the page if you wish.

4. Download and keep handy this one-page Wiki markup quick reference to the most frequently used wiki markup commands.

5. If you're an academic, get some expert advice - Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia tells scientists (and therefore other scholars and experts) how to contribute to Wikipedia.

6. Learn about the reliability of Wikipedia, so you can talk about it knowledgeably with your associates!

Learn about writing (as distinct from "editing") in Wikipedia

• Wikipedia:Article_development - A useful review of the stages of Wikipedia article development.
• Attitude: You're advised at Wikipedia to BE BOLD! - This is a very useful page for beginning editors (who be overcome with timidity, at times) to read. The Wikipedia editing community takes it seriously, and respects intelligent, good faith boldness.
• Article quality - A topic of much concern in the Wikipedia editor community. For a quick orientation, read:
  • Good article criteria - Wikipedia articles can be qualitatively ranked. The top ranking is Featured article, and Good article is right below that, in the ranking. It's a good goal to aim for when you become seriously involved with an article.
  • Defending article quality - Discusses maintaining article quality, once it's achieved.
  • Quality control - Reviews the several ongoing systems which act to monitor and improve article quality.
• Plagiarism - "Wikipedians are more vulnerable to accusations of plagiarism than are most writers...", so learn how best to manage this problem.
• Content licensing - Essential knowledge about copyright, copyleft, and other commonly used licensing frameworks. While a bit long, and certainly rather legalistic, this is essential information - at least to the extend that you should know where to find it in case you need it.
• About Wikipedia classroom projects - Learn about past and ongoing Wikipedia classroom projects which have been undertaken at various universities, worldwide. In this article are guidelines for how to bring Wikipedia editing in the classroom, contact people who can help facilitate the process, and much more.
• Dispute resolution - It is not unusual for people with divergent points of view to edit the same article. Disputes break out - this is a common part of the Wikipedia editing experience. This article will help you better manage yourself and your point of view when this happens.

Get a free comprehensive how-to book - AND a reference book

Wikipedia: The Missing Manual - Written by John Broughton in 2008, and published by O'Reilly, this book was reissued under a license compatible with Wikipedia in 2009.

• Read it at:Google books
• Purchase it for $30 at O'Reilly, or for $20 at Amazon OR....
• Read or DOWNLOAD IT FREE at its WikiProject Wikipedia-Books page. What's really interesting about this version of the book is that it's been updated, since the publication of the 2008 edition, by both the author (an experienced Wikipedia editor with thousands of edits to his credit) and the general community of Wikipedia editors. It thus is the most current version available, and will continue to be updated in the future.

Such a deal!

How Wikipedia works: and how you can be a part of it - Written by Phoebe Ayers; Charles Matthews; Ben Yates, and published in 2008 by No Starch Press. This brief article on the book suggests that it may best serve as a detailed reference work, rather than a how-to manual.

• Read it a Google books, or
• Download it free at the Internet archive.

Get some editing aids

After you have some basic editing experience, you may wish to try out some tools which can make editing go faster and more smoothly. You can do this by adding "gadgets" to your account. A "gadget" is "...a JavaScript and/or a CSS snippet that can be enabled simply by checking an option in your Wikipedia preferences (<= click here to see and edit your account preferences). When added, your editing interface changes in some way that is considered useful (at least by some of us).

Here are some gadgets you may wish to consider adding to your account:

WikED	ProveIt
"...a full-featured integrated text editor. It's available for Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome" - it will greatly elaborates your editing interface. Compare this with the default interface you are most likely using right now. (CLICK IMAGE to enlarge)	"a powerful GUI tool for viewing, editing, adding, and inserting references"
Screenshoot of WikEd interface.	Screenshot of ProveIt software.