Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Poverty Justice and Human Capabilities (Diana Strassmann and Michael Emerson)/WikiProject Contribution/Initial Contribution to Sandbox for Workshop

Assignment: Writing Your Entry for Peer Workshop

Due Date: Friday, March 16

The next step in creating your Wikipedia contribution is to begin writing directly for Wikipedia.

1. First, carefully consider the advice you have been given, both to your proposal when it was reviewed and graded, and to your contributions to your Project and Talk pages by any Wikipedia editors.
2. You may begin by contributing to the entry directly in Wikipedia’s main namespace, or you may start your work in your Sandbox. The latter is a good choice for big chunks of new material (or for a proposed new entry), but is not appropriate for proposed detailed edits to existing parts of an entry that you plan to revise.
3. All contributions must include an outline of your article. This outline should include all of the sections in your article, as they would appear in a Wikipedia “Contents” outline. If you are revising an already existing article, be sure to indicate which sections, specifically, you are adding or editing.
4. Be sure to continually check your article’s discussion page and any WikiProject talk pages for user feedback and suggestions.
5. Consider using Wikipedia’s Article Wizard. The Wizard is a tool designed to help users creating articles for the first time. To access the Article Wizard, type “wp:article wizard” into the Wikipedia search bar. The Wizard is a six-step process that will ensure that you are ready to create a new article.

Instructions: If Creating a New Entry Using the Sandbox

1. Access your sandbox by clicking on the link created in your user page during one of the previous assignments.
2. From here, begin creating your new article by typing in the text box, making sure to save changes frequently.

If Creating a New Entry Directly to Wikipedia Main Namespace

The easiest way to create a new article on the Wikipedia Main Namespace is to log into your account and then type in the name of your topic into the search box on the right-hand side of the main page. If no article exists, you will be prompted to create one. Click the italicized “Your topic” hyperlink colored red. This link will take you to a large text box where you can write your article. When changes are complete, press the “Save page” button.

If Revising an Existing Entry Using the Sandbox

1. If you are contributing to and revising an existing entry, you will need to copy the existing article into your sandbox to begin editing. Before editing, save the pre-existing article as a PDF along with your final entry. You will be required to submit the relevant sections of the original article, without your edits, with your final contribution.
2. To begin, go to the Wikipedia article you intend to edit.
3. Next, click on the “Edit” tab in the top-right corner of the article page and copy everything located within the editing text box.
4. After copying the article contents go to your user page sandbox, click “Edit,” paste the material from the original article’s editing text box, and click “Save page.”
5. At this point your user page sandbox should look identical to the existing entry, except for the title. With the contents of the existing article now contained within your sandbox, you can make edits to the page and add content as you see fit.
6. Finally, note that Wikipedia takes its version history of pages very seriously. The history section of any article is meant to track all changes to that page and provide old versions chronicling the page's development. In pasting the article into your sandbox for editing purposes, you are potentially missing any changes made to that page in between the time that you begin editing and the time that you move your changes to the live Wikipedia article. In order to avoid discontinuity between version histories, make sure to check the article you are editing regularly for new edits added by users. You will later be expected to either include the edits made by other users or provide a rationale for their exclusion in the discussion section. Best would be to recreate your additions and deletions from scratch when you begin posting into Wikipedia’s main namespace, considering any new changes to the site as you do so.

If Revising an Entry Directly to Wikipedia Main Namespace

The easiest way to revise an existing article on Wikipedia is to log in to your account and then type in the name of your topic into the search box on the righthand side of the main page. Then click on the “edit” tab at the top of the Wikipedia page. This will bring you to a new page with a text box containing the editable text of the current page. You can now insert your changes from the sandbox area by copying and pasting the relevant sections, or (where appropriate as noted above), you can edit the text of the current article. When changes are complete, press the “Save page” button.

If you choose to use this option for all or part of the assignment, you must take regular screenshots of your updates to the Wikipedia page as soon as they are made. For example, if you edit a section, be sure to immediately take a screenshot of your edits on the actual Wikipedia page. As before, be sure the font is large and legible.

These screenshots will act as proof of your edits in the event that another editor deletes or changes them.

How to take screenshots:

If the page you are viewing has unnecessary information, please use a selected screenshot instead of a full screenshot as this will make the image larger and, therefore, more legible.

To zoom-in on the screen:

In Firefox and Google Chrome, you can zoom in by simply pressing “Control” or “Ctrl” and scrolling up. Then you can take your screenshot and the font will be larger.

On a MAC: For a selected screenshot, hold “command” and “shift” and then press 4. Use your cursor to then select the area to screenshot. For a full screenshot, hold “command” and “shift” and then press 3.

The screenshots save to your desktop and can be renamed to .jpg or .pdf (they default as .png files).

On a PC: please follow the steps provided at this link: http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-in-Microsoft-Windows

Technical Details for New Entries and Revisions to Existing Entries

Plan your article to include a number of short sections. Headings allow a reader to jump around and find the information they want easily. (When you include a heading, a table of contents will be automatically generated when you later post to Wikipedia.) Wikipedia allows the creation of article headings with relative ease. (Refer to the Wikipedia Editing Cheatsheet.)

Include links in your article. The links to related pages is one of the greatest assets of Wikipedia articles. Once you upload to Wikipedia, a link will appear blue and take you to the correct page. A link to a page that doesn’t exist will appear red.)

Include citations for your research. When something in your article needs to be cited just type <ref>your citation information</ref>. Anything between the <ref> and </ref> will be read as a citation. It will not appear at that point in the article, but will appear at the bottom of the article as a citation instead. (For more information refer to Wikipedia:Citing sources)

If you are editing live on the main Wikipedia namespace, be sure to add the course-supported banner to your article’s Talk page (if you haven’t done so already). Instructions for adding the precise SWGS 322 course banner can be found on the Article Discussion handout and on Owl-Space.

Your proposed entry or revised edits should be a minimum of 2000 words, not including references. If you are working with a partner, your joint contribution should be 3500-4000 words minimum.

Submit to OWL-Space by Friday, March 16th, 5 pm

If you revise or create an entry using the Sandbox, submit your completed proposal and outline to the relevant assignment tab on OWL-Space. For full credit, the files you submit must be labeled as follows: <LastName> WorkshopEntry.doc (or .pdf) and <LastName>Outline.doc

If you revise or create an entry directly to the Wikipedia Main Namespace, submit your completed proposal and outline to the relevant assignment tab on OWL-Space. For full credit, the files you submit must be labeled as follows: <LastName>WorkshopEntry1.pdf; <LastName>WorkshopEntry2.pdf, etc. and <LastName>Outline.doc.

Please note that OWL-Space limits the number of attachments to 4, so if you have more than 4 please use the additional assignment space on OWL-Space titled “Sandbox Contribution for Workshop: Extra Attachments.”

For ALL entries you must also: Email a copy of each file to each of your group members.

Be sure to include page numbers (in Word documents) and to proofread and double-space all text, except the outline, which may be single-spaced. For pdf entries, be sure the font size is legible. Points will be deducted for proposals that do not follow these instructions.

Licensing

Initial contribution to sandbox by Diana Strassmann is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.