LAB 1: SET UP YOURSELF

This assumes that you’ve completed Lab 0, and are no longer afraid of the place. Now that you have an account, you need to get yourself ready to become a true wikipedian. If this lab totally freaks you out, I can do an office hour in a computer lab so we can go over it together.

I. USER: PAGES

Your User: page is a good place to start playing with the system and getting the hang of it. They all start with “User:” The colon is used to denote pages that aren’t actual encyclopedia entries.

First, find your own. If you click on your name at the top of the page (after you log in), you will go to your User: page (which should be blank right now). It will ask if you want to edit it. You will, but let’s only do a little bit before we look at some others to get ideas of what goes here. The code is a bit tricky, especially if you aren’t much of a coder.

II. Get Started

Right a quick sentence or two about yourself. You can say that your mean professor is making you do this, or give a sentence or two.Although I’m not a very active wikipedian, you can see what I’ve done. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GumbyProf Notice the Truman State University userbox? You’ll want one of those, right?

III. Truman UserBox

See if you can put the Truman userbox on your page

While on my page, if you click on “edit this page,” you’ll see what the wiki code looks like. Scroll down to find the thing that will put that on your page. Two curly brackets denotes codes in wiki-land, so you’ll need to put {{User Truman}} on your page to get that box. Because I previously made this box and put it up to share, just by entering that code you’ll get the same userbox.

Truman

This user is a student, alumnus, or friend of Truman State University.

IV. Babel Box

Put a Babel box on your User: page, describing your ability with a foreign language. Click on “Wikipedia Babel” on my page, and you’ll go to the place where you can learn about them. Again, you can see the general format on my page, but I’d like you to figure it out for yourself. I bet you’re at least a one at some language other than English.

V. Link to you from me

So that I can easily grade your labs, and so that you can get back to my page easily, let’s put a link from your page to mine and from mine to yours. On my page, you can see I’ve left you space. In general, Links use double square brackets. Again, you can follow the format on my page, and you can add more text, but, in general, you want to add this code to your page: Dr. Alberts’ Page.

VI. Link to me from you

It is pretty unusual to edit someone else’s User: Page, since it is thought of as their own space (it’s more common to edit their User_Talk: page, since the idea is to talk to (or about) them. At the same time, Wiki still allows it to happen. There’s that whole trust thing.

I made a box last semester for my interdisciplinary class. We (by which I mean you) will make a similar box this time. Copying their format, put a link to your page by substituting your own name for mine. Once you do, click on my “history” and you can see what you’ve done, and you can also see how easy it is for me to “revert” the page if you say that I eat puppies, am a member of the Nazi party, or whatever. In fact, if you did that, I would be able to ask for have your Username banned from Wiki and such, so you probably shouldn’t do that.

VII. Add more stuff to your User: page

Look at some of last semesters’ student pages, and you can see what their User: space looks like. Go ahead and spend some time (maybe 30 minutes) adding stuff to your page. You can add a column of userboxes, or write about yourself, link to your “real” home page, or whatever. Maybe write about the kinds of things you might write about, or what your biases or ‘angle’ might be. To keep you from going crazy, there are some guidelines at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_page

VIII. Prepare for Lab 2

We will do Lab 2 together in class the day before break. If you aren’t in class that day, you’ll have to work it out, or hope for the best. Basically, I have just put the word version of these wiki labs on my account. Your job (as a class) will be to make them look like a Wikipedia article rather than a word file. You can divide up the work however you want (or not). The whole class will receive one grade for the Lab, based on how pretty the pages look when we’re done.

IX. Prepare for Lab 3

Now that we’ve looked at silly things, it’s time to think about being serious. Thinking about your own major, area, or paper topic, look at what wikipedia has to offer. Are there any gaps where you might be able to add content? Again, look for stubs and red links.

X. Conclusion

For now, just make a list of these things. Eventually, you will become a true wikipedian and add content to these areas!