2. About Wikipedia & Wikimedia
Wikimedia
80-100,000 contributors in 280 languages
and eleven core projects
Image repository, dictionary, news site…
…read by 7% of the world!
Wikipedia
20+,000,000 articles, 4,000,000 in English
6,500 articles and 235,000 edits per day
(…and twelve years ago, this was all fields…)
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3. …so what is Wikipedia?
…an encyclopedia
…written neutrally and verifiably
…using previously published information
…free to use, distribute, or reuse
…a collaborative community
…with no firm rules
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4. …so why take part?
Give back to a valuable resource
Interact with your readers (and vice versa)
Immense reach and exposure
Hundreds of ways to contribute
Editing is the most effective way to engage with the community
…and it’s rewarding!
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5. Content
Content should be neutral, verifiable, and not original research
Not a textbook, journal, or instruction manual
…inform, don’t instruct
Neutral secondary source
…reflects the consensus in the existing literature
…clearly supported by citations to reliable sources
Conflicts of interest
…don’t write about yourself, your employer, your job
…not a promotional tool
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6. Collaboration
Everything is public, everything* is dynamic
Vigorously open & public community
Decisions made by consensus supported by policy
Not a political experiment!
Social rules:
Assume good faith
Discuss contentious changes
Undo other’s changes with care
Sign your comments
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7. Style
A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents,
either for general use or for a specific publication, organization or field. The implementation of a
style guide provides uniformity in style and formatting of a document.
A set of standards for a specific organization is often known as "house style." Style guides are
common for general and specialized use, for the general reading and writing audience, and for
students and scholars of various academic disciplines, medicine, journalism, the law, government,
business, and industry.[citation needed]
…it’s immediately recognisable!
Neutral, dispassionate tone, written for a lay audience.
Compromise between varieties of English.
Comprehensive (and absurdly detailed) internal MoS.
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8. Internal processes
All edits are visible through watchlists and page histories
About 7% are vandalism or malicious
Automated processes to detect these
Median time to correction < 2 minutes… but some stay much longer
Individual discussion pages for all articles – “talk”
Quality review and assessment process
Specialised “wikiproject” working groups and central noticeboards
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9. Demonstration time!
you should be seeing a Wikipedia
page, just wait a second…
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10. Formatting
Headers ==heading==
===heading2===
Style ''italic''
'''bold'''
* bulleted list
** bulleted list (indent)
# numbered list
: blank indent
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11. Links
Internal link [[link target]]
(alternate title) [[link target|title]]
Web link [http://www.example.com title]
Template {{example}}
Special links [[fr:Example]]
[[category:Example]]
[[file:Example.png]]
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12. Citations
Wikipedia’s obsession…
The sky is blue.
The sun, however,
is not.<ref>"The
Sky" (2008)</ref>
{{reflist}}
<references/>
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13. Communicating
Every article has a talk page, every user has a user talk page
Useful for coordination and discussion – and general problems
Discussion pages are the best way to engage with the community
All communication is public and permanent
Sign your comments, but not your article edits
to add a signature, use ~~~~ (shift-#)
Note internal “project” pages – policies, guidelines, working groups,
processes, metadata, maintenance, administrivia…
Lost? Try {{helpme}} on your user talkpage
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