User:Adam mugliston/Adopt/Joseph Steven

Hi Timeweaver, and welcome to your adoption center. I've substituted across a lesson for you and I thought you'd like to know that you do now have your own official page. As you can see from User:Adam mugliston/Adopt, I've created an adoption HQ, where you can read ahead in the lessons. I haven't finished them all as yet - the deletion one is not quite ready yet, but feel free to read ahead - it might help. I also have a few more "advanced optional lessons". The tests might include a couple of extra unique questions if I see an area that you might need a little extra development - don't take it as a negative, it should help. Also we now have a talk area for us to use, away from the more public areas - if you would like to use it - it's at User Talk:Adam mugliston/Adopt/Joseph Steven. Let me know if there's anything else you'd like to see. Adam Mugliston Talk  07:02, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I have put in your first lesson. There's no test, and considering you already have some experience, I'm sure you'll whizz through. Let me know when you're ready for the next part. Why don't you do it on our new talk page?

How to Edit - Wiki Markup
So by now you know how to edit pages, one of the most important features of Wikipedia. The interesting bit, however, is getting things to look, well, interesting. There are a number of different bits of code that you can use in your editing to create different effects when the page is saved - they can be as simple as bold text or italics, but different bits of code can be combined to make a very appealing layout.

I should warn you that in most cases, special formatting is frowned upon in articles. It should only be used in certain situations, and when it is necessary to illustrate a particular point. Aside from those cases, text in articles should be just as you see it in this sentence - plain black, with only the occasional wikilink to spice things up.

Here, I'm going to show you what each of the buttons on your editing toolbar does and how to use the particular bit of code it produces. There are rather a lot of them, so what I'm going to do first is show you where you can go to test all this out while you're reading. There are two places: you can go to the main sandbox that everyone can use at Sandbox. This is a special page that is cleaned out every 12 hours automatically, that gives editors a place to play with new code and vandals a place to vandalize other than our articles. The only problem with the sandbox is this: Whatever you save there isn't likely to stay for long, and there is a high chance of you getting hit with a few edit conflicts. So, to avoid that, you can create your own sandbox! On Wikipedia, you are able to tack "subpages" onto your main user page to use for testing things out, writing new articles, or other projects like what we're doing here. This page (User:Adam mugliston/Adopt) is a subpage of User:Adam mugliston, and the source of this lesson (User:Adam mugliston/Adopt/Wiki Markup) is a subpage of that subpage. You can create user subpages by searching for the page you want to create in the search box. It won't find it, of course, however a red link will appear at the top of the page. Click on that, and edit away! For example, try searching for User:Adam mugliston/Example and creating it.

To make your sandboxes, we're going to skip a few steps. This is a handy little box that we can use to start making a new page. It will bring you to your own personal sandbox, which you can start using right away.

Now that you have somewhere to test all this code out in, let's start showing you what all it does. Here we go!


 * Table syntax is complicated, and we'll cover that later on.
 * This is a table.
 * If you would like to learn how to make and use tables, please tell me and I will organise a lesson for you.
 * rowspan=2| [[Image:Button reflink.png]]
 * Add a reference (footnote)
 * blah blah
 * Two "ref" tags around the reference text.
 * blah blah
 * rowspan=2| References are displayed using the code . There's a fancy bit of coding you can do to make the same reference appear multiple times, demonstrated in the second line. By adding a name="blah" parameter to the first instance of a reference, you can make the same reference appear more than once. I have these footnotes displayed below the table so you can see how they appear.
 * Add a duplicate reference
 * blah blah blah blah
 * The duplicate reference has a slash at the end of the tag.
 * blah blah blah blah
 * }
 * blah blah blah blah
 * }
 * }

The references
(That was a level 4 header, with four equals signs)

Other stuff
You can make lists and indents by adding characters to the beginning of a paragraph, like so:

A space before your paragraph will make the paragraph display in a box with machine font, and will cause it to run off the page if it is long enough. A colon will cause a block indent, with all lines starting away from the edge of the page.

An asterisk (*) will make a bullet. A pound or number sign (#) makes a numbered list. You can mix and match the last three characters to get several different effects. The only caveat, though, is that you must have a continual line of #'s in order to maintain the numbering. This does not mean, however, that the numbered list has to be displayed at all times. See below for an example: Note that you don't have to hit enter twice when starting a new line from one of these types of paragraphs. However, when you don't use them, you do. Those last two sentences are on a different line from this one in the editing box, but there is no line break when they are displayed.

Have fun!

The Five Pillars
One of the most important essays in Wikipedia is WP:FIVEPILLARS which is designed to eloquently sum up what we're here for. Once you get your head around these five pillars, you will be a Wikipedian and a good one at that. All 5 are covered in my adoption school, though at different lengths. Be aware that I don't know everything and I would doubt anyone who said they did.
 * Pillar one defines Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. It suggests some things that we are not. Thoughts about what we are not are covered in the deletion lesson.
 * Pillar two talks about neutrality, a concept that this lesson will be concentrating on.
 * Pillar three talks about free content. The Copyright lesson will go into this in more detail.
 * Pillar four talks about civility. Wikipedia is a collaborative working environment and nothing would ever get done if it wasn't. I'll go into civility more during the dispute resolution module.
 * Pillar five explains that Wikipedia does not have firm rules. This is a difficult concept and will be covered in the Policy and consensus lesson.

How articles should be written
The articles in Wikipedia are designed to represent the sum of human knowledge. Each article should be written from a neutral point of view – personal opinions such as right and wrong should never appear, nor should an editors experience. Neutrality also means giving due weight to the different points of view. If the broad scientific community has one set of opinions – then the minority opinion should not be shown. An example is in medicine – if there was an article on say treatment of a broken leg, a neutral article would not include anything on homeopathy.

To ensure that the information in an article is correct, Wikipedia has adopted a policy of verifiability. Anything written in Wikipedia should be available to confirm by looking at the associated reliable source. Wikipedia should not include anything not verifiable by seeing it is published elsewhere; in other words, it should not contain anything original.

Reliable sources
So what is a source? Wikipedia uses the word source for three interchangeable ideas – a piece of work, the work's creator or the work's publisher. In general, you would expect a reliable source to be published materials with a reliable publication process, authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject, or both. This doesn't mean that a source that is reliable on one topic is reliable on every topic, it must be regarded as authoritative in that topic – so whilst "Airfix monthly" may be a good source on the first model aeroplane, I would not expect it to be authoritative on their full size equivalent.

A source that is self-published is in general considered unreliable, unless it is published by a recognized expert in the field. This is a very rare exception – so self publishing is generally considered a no-no. This means that anything in a forum or a blog and even most websites are considered unreliable by default. One interesting sidepoint is on self-published sources talking about themselves. Obviously, a source talking about itself is going to be authoritative, but be careful that the source is not too self-serving – the article really should not be totally based on a direct source like that.

Mainstream news sources are generally considered reliable... but any single article should be assessed on a case by case basis. Some news organizations have been known to check their information on Wikipedia – so be careful not to get into a cyclic sourcing issue!

There's a lot more about what makes a source reliable here.

Questions?
Any questions or would you like to try the test?