Wikipedia talk:Canada Education Program/Courses/Genetics in Everyday Life F12 (Tom Haffie)

Welcome to the talk page

This is a place where you can ask questions, talk about problems, and discuss the Wikipedia assignment with classmates and other Wikipedians. Make sure to sign your posts using four tildes (~~~~), which will produce your username and a date stamp. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:24, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Awards

A number of articles from Wikipedia's Education Program have won internal Wikipedia awards, including a number from our Canadian program. We encourage all students to nominate their articles, if they feel comfortable doing so. For more information about the awards, feel free to contact your professor, a campus ambassador or one of the coordinators of the Canadian Education Program.

Guidelines and resources

Here are some guidelines and other resources that will be helpful to you as you begin your editing. There are further resources, with videos and PDFs, available in the "Resources" tab.

One very important reminder: if you are doing any class-related editing, make sure you are logged in. Edits made while not logged in cannot be counted towards your grade. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:54, 14 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Editing philosophy

WP:5P: The Five Pillars of Wikipedia
WP:V explains the basics of why to source and what types of sources to use; WP:RS and WP:MEDRS help explain how to find and use good sources.
WP:PLAGIARISM: similar to those "academic dishonesty" paragraphs that show up on every syllabus, but please read anyway
WP:N and WP:NOT explain what should not appear in Wikipedia and why. In particular, note that Wikipedia articles are not essays like you might write for a class - do not try to put forward a particular thesis or argument, but remain neutral in how you present information from your source(s). See also the neutrality policy.
WP:BOLD and WP:CONSENSUS: the two main guidelines detailing how Wikipedia is developed

Editing mechanics

The tutorial takes you through the basics of how to edit.
Wikipedia:Cheatsheet: Quick reference for basics of wikicode
Wikipedia:Article wizard: create your own article

Tips and tricks that are not mandatory but will make your life easier

At the top of almost every page on Wikipedia, you will see a tab with a star. If you click that star, the page will be added to your watchlist. This will allow you to easily monitor changes that happen on pages you're interested in, without needing to visit each page individually to check for changes or new posts. Your watchlist can be accessed through "my watchlist" at the top right.
You can use the Cite Toolbar to simplify adding references. Watch a short video about it here
You can change a number of settings in the "My Preferences" tab at the top of the page that will customize your reading and editing experience. Feel free to play around with different settings, but here are a couple that will really help you:

Enable email (bottom of User Profile): this will allow you to recover your account if you forget your password, and also allows you to email me or other users via Wikipedia
Enable wikEd (under Gadgets -> Editing): WikEd is a tool that, among other functions, colour-codes text in the edit box, making it easy for those unused to reading computer code to figure out things like images (green), links (blue), references and other code (grey), and normal text (white). If you want to edit the text only, it also provides a function to temporarily hide the reference code.