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User:Ichdunich/Webinar

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0. Learn how to edit Wikipedia articles

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Hi there!

Hi there!

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Hello, I am user:Ichdunich and I will be your coach or trainer for your first steps of editing Wikipedia.

About this Webinar

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This Webinar will introduce you to Wikipedia’s values and basic principles. You will get in touch with its worldwide community, which is creating and improving Wikipedia every day. Also, you will learn about some apects of Wikipedia, which may be less visible to you when you are browsing Wikipedia's articles.

You will create your own user account and user page and you will learn how to communicate with fellow Wikipedians.

Also, you will learn how to edit existing articles and you will create your first Wikipedia article and prepare it for release.

Schedule

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This Webinar is made up in 10 lessons. Lessons 1-6 comprise some basic editing knowledge and need to be completed before our videocall. Each lesson will take 15-60 minutes to complete. After our videocall there will be three more lessons, which will guide you to write articles and become more proficient as you proceed. I will follow your steps before and after the videocall and provide feedback and answers individually. Please ask any questions any time!

To get started: Please write your first name or any nickname into this etherpad.

1. Wikipedia needs you!

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Some background information about Wikipedia and its worldwide commmunity

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In this section you will find a number of blogposts and videos, which highlight different aspects of what makes Wikipedia and its community special. Have a closer look at how insiders perceive wikipedia. Pick and choose what is catching your attention - you don't have to read or watch all of them, or just use the links as a starting point to explore.

Some Questions

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Please write your answers below your name into the webinar's etherpad.

  • Do you remember the first time you were using Wikipedia? Why? What were you looking for?
  • Did you ever edit Wikipedia so far? If yes: what did you do?
  • Any fun facts you remember from using Wikipedia?

2. The five pillars of Wikipedia

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Five pillars of Wikipedia
Five pillars of Wikipedia

Let’s move on to the values that form the core of Wikipedia: the five pillars of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia's Five Pillars are:

  • Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia.
  • Wikipedia has a neutral point of view.
  • Wikipedia is free content.
  • Wikipedians should interact in a respectful and civil manner.
  • Wikipedia does not have firm rules.

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia.

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While this may seem obvious, it may be helpful to think about what Wikipedia is NOT: It’s not an advertising platform, no personal website, neither an experiment in anarchy nor democracy, not just a collection of random data, and not a search engine. It’s not a dictionary, no newspaper, no book or instruction manual, and not just or a collection of documents. (There are some sister projects of Wikipedia, which are dedicated to these other functions) So what is Wikipedia then? It is a place where you can find a good summary of what's already known about a topic.

Wikipedia has a neutral point of view.

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Video: On Wikipedia, Facts matter (4 minutes)

Splinter Article: A Brief History of NRA Employees Editing Wikipedia for Fun and Possibly Profit (8 minutes)

Wikipedia articles should document and explain the major points of view about a topic in a balanced and impartial manner. So keep to the facts!

  • Don’t debate or attempt to persuade readers
  • Don’t share personal your experiences or opinions
  • Don’t share your own analysis of the information you find

Some times this may be difficult, since there can be a variety of factual information about a topic. So, some articles contain multiple points of view. It is important that each view is presented accurately and together with relevant context and no view is presented as „the truth“. Anything you add to an article should be based on a published source of information. That means you should cite published, authoritative sources that people trust whenever you add information. Im my personal - not quite neutral - point of view, this is the most important of all principles governing Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute.

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Wikipedia‘s content is free to use for anyone. So, please make sure that it is ok to share content freely when contributing it to Wikipedia. Copying and pasting copyrighted material into Wikipedia isn't just plagiarism, it's a copyright violation, too. You have to attribute facts to reliable sources, but you must use your own words when you do.

Editors should interact with each other in a respectful and civil manner.

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Don't panic if someone else edits your work, or removes your contributions. This is part of the process! Every article has a talk page where you can interact with the other Wikipedia editors who are working on the same article. If you have a disagreement, keep some core Wikipedia values in mind:

  • If you don’t agree with someone’s edit, don’t just “change it back.” That’s an edit war, and it could get you both blocked!
  • Act in good faith and assume good faith of other editors. It’s difficult to read tone in an online communication. Remember that regardless of how you think another editor's behavior comes across, it’s still critical that you reply in a polite and respectful manner.
  • Always be mindful of the community around you.

Wikipedia does not have firm rules.

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ignore all rules

OK, you just read a bunch of rules. So what does this last one mean? Rules in Wikipedia are not carved in stone. Their wording and interpretation are likely to change over time.

The principles and spirit of Wikipedia's rules matter more than their literal wording, and sometimes improving Wikipedia requires making an exception to a rule.

Be bold (but not reckless) in updating articles. Dive in, and don’t panic about making mistakes. Prior versions of pages are saved, so any mistakes can be corrected. The most important thing to do is communicate: make transparent to others what you are up to and tell the other editors what you’d like to do, what you’ve done, and why. Wikipedia editing is about using your best judgement, and you may be asked to explain your decisions. Explaining why you decided to do something, is part of being a respectful member of a diverse community of people.

Think of it this way: You aren’t going to break Wikipedia!

Some Questions

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Now you learned about the five pillars of Wikipedia. Please keep these in mind whenever you are editing Wikipedia.

In order to dive deeper in your understanding oft he five pillars, please answer the following questions and type your answers below your name into the etherpad.

1. What practical implications does the principle „Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia“ have for your own contributions to the project?

2. Why is a neutral point of view so important? How do you know wether the idea of a neutral point of view was honored?

3. Why is it useful that all Wikipedia content is published using a free license?

4. How are you able to tell that a community is acting mindful and respecting each other? What would you do to ensure that your contributions are preceived as respectful?

3. Wikipedia structure

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Name spaces

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Articles are Wikipedia’s most well known and most visible aspect. However, there are many other areas, which cater for various pusposes, such as: user pages, talk pages, special pages, help pages, project pages. These areas are called name spaces. So Wikipedians talk about the article name space, when referring to the articles as a whole, or about the help name space when they mean all help pages.

Screencast about Wikipedia's namespaces

Name spaces are relevant to distinguish pages with dedicated purposes from the article pages. For example, the name of the user page of a user whose name is „moon“ will be „user:moon“ and the corresponding talk page will be „user talk:moon“ – whereas the article about the astronomical body simply is „moon“. This is relevant in particular, if you are using Wikipedia’s search engine. If you are looking for a page which is not part of the article name space, use the "search in:" menu in Wikipedia's search engine to search any specific name space.

Click: in this screencast I will show you the different namespaces.

Revisions, talk pages and edit button

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Screencast about the revision history

Any edit to Wikipedia is saved as a separate revision in Wikipedia’s database. So everyone may easily follow up on any past contribution to any page. In order to see all past revisons, push the „view history“ button on top of the page. Click: in this screencast I will explain the "View History" button.

Most pages also have a “talk“ button. By pushing the talk button, you enter the corresponding talk page of the previous page. This is the place to discuss with other Wikipedians. Most important for Wikipedians, however, is the „edit page“ button: this is how you get to contribute text or other conent to pages, where you add references or insert pictures.

4. Where is your area of interest and expertise?

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What are you interested in?

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Search Wikipedia for three articles, that describe a topic which is familiar to you. This could be anything related to your job or profession, or any topic that was relevant for your education or professional training. Or anything else you are interested in or which has a meaning to you.

Copy and paste the URL of these articles to the etherpad.

Are these articles perfect?

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Read the articles again with attention to detail. Is everything just perfect? Or is there anything you would like to change? What?

This could be something like

  • spelling
  • stile, line of argument, lack of precision
  • facts missing or incorrect

Try to identify at least three missing or incorrect facts. If you can’t find any in your chosen articles, try to go to another article about a related topic which is in worse condition and needs improving.

Which facts would you want to add or change in order to improve the articles? Give a short description in the etherpad.

Published sources

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We will come back on correcting spelling mistakes and improving stile later on. First of all, let us focus on adding or changing factual information.This is the most important way to improve Wikipedia since it drives its growth and keeps Wikipedia's content correct and up to date.

You don't trust everything you read on the internet, and Wikipedia is no different.

What makes a Wikipedia article trustworthy is information that can be traced back to a collection of reliable sources. Each statement in an article should have a supporting source. Reference links in the text, in-line citations, which look like this[1] connect you to the reference list at the bottom of the page.

Before you start working on an article, make sure you have a collection of good sources. This means, information you wish to cite, must be published in a reliable source elsewhere, such as a textbook, journal or other publication written by experts in the respective field, and published by reliable publishers. This will ensure that anyone will be able to understand, how a particular piece of information became part of the article text. Also, referring to sources will enable the reader to make his own judgement about the reliability of any information.

For details, have a look at Wikipedia:Verifiability.

Remember the facts you were missing in your chosen articles. Do you have realiable sources at hand that contain the missing information? Do some research in your library or accessible online sources and bookmark the respective pages.


5. Get a user account and start editing!

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Create an account

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You don't need to register for contributing to Wikipedia. However, this is highly recommended. Having a user account makes your Wikipedian life easier, since you are able to follow up on the articles you edited. It also helps to communicate with other Wikipedians, since they will recognize you and help you along. While it is entirely possible to register using your real name, most Wikipedian prefer to use a nickname which is not connected to their real name. If the name you wish to use is already taken, try to add some numbers or further letters to find a user name which is still available.

Think about a user name! Some hints:

  1. Your real name is just fine. But: you will not be able to edit anonymously. This may be useful when editing controversial topics such as politics, religion or sexuality.
  2. Wikipedians adress each other with their user names, on-wiki but also at offline meetings, so it helps if your user name is easy to spell and to pronounce.
  3. Use your fantasy to come up with your user name, but keep in mind: re-existing words help others to write and pronounce your username (so "tree hugging hippie" works better than "678hyspcks!!"

Ready? So click to create your account now!

Create your user page

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Screencast how to edit a user page in Wikipedia

You created an account in Wikipedia! Great! Now write something on your user page. Let other Wikipedians know who you are and what your are interested in. But please, be aware: whatever you write is public - so keep personal information to a minimum.

Click: In this screencast I will show you how to edit your user page. Try the same on your own user page!

6. Start Communication on-wiki

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Wiki Markup vs Visual Editor

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So now there is a tricky bit: Wikipedia currently has two edit modes: a visual editor, which has a similar look and feel like any standard word processing software and a source code editor, which is using a Wiki markup. For most pages, such as article and user pages, you may chose between the two editors and use the one that you prefer. This course strongly recommends using the visual editor for your first article edits. Actually, you have just used it, when you created your user page.

On talk pages, however, there is only the souce code editor available. That means, for communication with other wikipedians, you will use Wiki markup, which is a simple source code language for Wikipedia. If you are on any talk page, you can start a new conversation by clicking "New Section". If there is an ongoing conversation to which you want to reply, you go to the headline of that section and press "Edit". This will open the source code editor.

Most important for editing talk pages are the commands for bold and italic, as well as inserting links. The edit toolbar at the top of the page can do some formatting for you: simply highlight the word you want to format and click on the respective button in the toolbar. The software will add the markup code to your text.

If you want to add the commands to your text without using the tool bar, these are the most common commands:

  • Make text '''bold''' or ''italic'' by placing it between ' apostrophes.
  • [[Links]] within Wikipedia are added using [[]] square brackets.
  • Communication on talk pages is complete with a wiki-style "signature", using the signature button in the edit toolbar . The written signature command will look like this: --~~~~. The wikipedia software will produce a link to you userpage and a timestamp, once you publish the changes.

The cheatsheet lists more useful commands, if you want to try more.

Communicating on-wiki using talkpages

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With your user account registered and user page created, you are now able to get in touch with other Wikipedians and to write and receive messages. This is extremely helpful for coordinating work on articles or in case of any questions. From now on, we will use this way of communication also for this course. That means, you will get feedback "onwiki" and will ask your questions there.

There are several ways to communicate:

  1. Write on a talk page of on any article talk page. Sign your message with your signature. That way, others will be able to react to your statement and to get back to you directly.
  2. Others may leave messages on your user talk page and you can leave messages on their user talk pages.
  3. If you want to communicate out of the public sphere, there is an email functionality provided. You enter your text into a form and it will be sent via email to the other user. That user will see your email adress, and may reply to that adress directly.
Screencast how to edit a talk page.

Click to see a screencast where I show you how to edit a talk page.

Please leave a message on my talk page: user talk:Ichdunich, so I can see whether the editing works for you. Don't forget your signature! I will in turn post a message on your userpage. Also, I have created a page for this Webinar, where I will add links to the user pages of all participants as well as to the articles which you have chosen to work on.

First milestone complete!

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Now you have learned about the five pillars of Wikipedia and you have found some articles which you would like to improve. You have registered your own account and created a user page. Finally, you started communication on talk pages. Congratulations!

If things did not quite work yet: don't worry, we will sort it all out in our upcoming video call.

7. Videocall

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There will be room for sharing your experience with others as well as for answering any questions that have come up. Further to that, I will provide information about the next steps of the course.

8. Implement information in articles

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Now we will start getting real. Remember the three articles which you wanted to improve by adding or changing some information (have a look at the webinar's etherpad or the webinar's wiki page if you need to refresh your memory). Now, you are well equipped to start editing these articles.

Be bold - you will not break Wikipedia. Even if things go really wrong, it can be fixed easily by reverting to the previous version of the article.

Recapitulate: what exactly do you want to change? What external sources are there to support your change?

Screencast: How to insert information in an article.
Screencast: How to insert a wikilink.

Click: in this Screencast I will show you how to add information to an existing article.

Click: this Screencast shows how to insert a wikilink to another article.

To edit the article, follow these five steps:

  1. Click "Edit" on the top of page or section where you want to make a change.
  2. Make your changes in the text.
  3. Click "Publish changes". A new dialogue window will open, where you are asked to give a summary of your edit.
  4. Describe your edit and mention the source for your edit.
  5. Click "Publish changes".

Did it work? Does it look as you wanted it to be? If you are not yet happy with the outcome, repeat the five steps again and try to improve the result.

Repeat these steps with other information gaps that you have identified in your three articles. If there is any problem, please have a look at the editing FAQ or post a message on my talk page: user talk:Ichdunich. .

9. The Wikipedia Community

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Originally founded by a bunch of geeks, today Wikipedians are a diverse community!
Screencast: how to use your watchlist.

You know the five pillars and you are familiar with the basics of the editing process. But: Just as important are the unwritten rules and habits of the Wikipedia Community.

  • Each user account has its own watchlist. This is a useful tool to keep track of articles you have edited, but also of talk pages and any other page you might find interesting. By clicking on "Watchlist" on the top of the page, you can access the watchlist and you will see the recent changes of all watched pages.
  • It is important to avoid plagiarism. A good method to avoid plagiarism is, to read a text, then explain the content so someone else and only then write it down for Wikipedia. Otherwise it may happen that the original wording is still somewhere in your head and finds its way into Wikipedia inadvertently.
  • In Wikipedia there are people from a great number of backgrounds with all kinds of previous experiences and assumptions. Keep this in mind to avoid misunderstanding each other. Wikipedians, who have been around for a long time, sometimes have difficulties understanding the impediments that newbies stumble upon. The best way to deal with this, is to say openly what you do not understand and to ask a lot of questions. Wikipedians are knowledgeable people and usually only too happy to share.
  • If you want to know what is going on, have a look at the Wikipedia:Community portal. A link to this page is also included in the navigation bar on the left.

10. Your first article

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Following your first steps with editing Wikipedia in existing articles, let's now move on the creating a new article from scratch.

For the purpose of this webinar, I will help you create your first article on a dedicated page within your user name space.

Find a topic

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You may have hundreds of unwritten articles in your head. However, as part of this course, I kindly ask you to limit your choice to a female scientist's (or other notable woman's) biography. As you may have heard, Wikipedians are trying to fill the gaps that are still huge in the coverage of women's biographies within Wikipedia. Some Wikipedians have set up a project called Women in Red, referring to the red links to non-existing articles, to increase visibility of women in Wikipedia. You don't have to be a feminist or gender activist to embark on this project - for the purpose of this course it is just a good learning opportunity while at the same time filling relevant gaps. Have a look at the project's coordination page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red.

Write a short biography

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Screencast: How to insert a reference.
Screencast: How to insert images into articles.

In the Redlink Index you can find names of female scientists, authors, artists, politicians, sportspersons and other notable women, who do not yet have a wikipedia article. You can browse through the various categories. Chose a woman from your area of interest or expertise, for which you would like to write a short biography. Insert a link to that missing article on the webinar's wiki page.

I have created a new page within your user name space, which contains some basic formatting that you may use for a short biography. You will find a link to that page on your user talk page as well as on the webinar's wiki page.

Just send me an email or post a message on my user talk page, once you think you are finished. I will help you to move the draft to the article name space.

Continue on your own

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Now that you have some experience, just give it a try and write more articles about your topics. Here are some suggestions how to proceed:

Use your sandbox

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As a new Wikipedian, you are not allowed to create articles in the article name space directy. Rather, you are required to draft your first article within your user name space or in a draft name space. A good place to start working and for any other formatting tests is the sandbox, which is provided to any user automatically. You find the link to your sandbox in the navigation bar on top of the page, just click on "Sandbox" and an empty page will open.

Use subpages in your user namespace

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Another good idea to prepare your article for publication is within your user namespace. I suggest you setup a subpage like this:

  1. Click on your user name in the navigation on top of the page.
  2. Add /subpage after your user name in the URL bar of your browser and press "enter".
  3. Click „create“.
Submit draft for review.

You may create a more or less unlimited number of subpages to your user page. For further subpages use any other names such as /workshop or /building site. It is helpful to use a name that suggests to any other Wikipedian that this is still a work in progress.

Use the Article Wizard to create a draft

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A further way is to use the Wikipedia:Article_wizard which will guide you through some questions to create a draft.

Submit draft for review

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Once your first article is ready for publication, you click on "Submit your draft for review". There is a committee of experienced Wikipedians who will check your request for article creation and who will subsequently move your draft into the article name space.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge

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Voilá: your first new Wikipedia article, created from scratch! Thank you for donating your time and sharing your knowledge with the world!

I hope you had fun with this introduction and you have become somewhat of a Wikipedian by now. If you have questions or if there are any problems, just get in touch via email or contact me on my talk page.

References

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Content for this webinar has been created using the following resources:

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  1. ^ This is how a reference will be displayed, in a pop-up window and at the bottom of an article page.
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