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Wikipedia Workshop

Andrew Gray – andrew.gray@bl.uk

@generalising

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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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…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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…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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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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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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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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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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Demonstration time!

you should be seeing a Wikipediapage, just wait a second…

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Formatting

Headers

Style

==heading== ===heading2===

''italic'' '''bold'''

* bulleted list** bulleted list (indent)# numbered list: blank indent

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Links

Internal link(alternate title)

Web link

Template

Special links

[[link target]][[link target|title]]

[http://www.example.com title]

{{example}}

[[fr:Example]][[category:Example]][[file:Example.png]]

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Citations

Wikipedia’s obsession…

The sky is blue. The sun, however, is not.<ref>"The Sky" (2008)</ref>

{{reflist}}

<references/>

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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