User:Akuchling/IntroTalk

Abstract

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Wikimedia is an international project that produces, writes, and curates the world's knowledge. Do you enjoy writing, editing, or photography? Do you know a lot about a particular topic, no matter how specialized? Then you can contribute to Wikimedia's projects. Come to this talk and learn about the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia, and get an introduction to participating.

Open questions

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Put explanation of articles first and then discuss Wikimedia, history, etc.? Or put it later?

Should I show off the pages I've written?

Add discussion of problems? e.g. biographies of living persons; poor representation of women as editors or as article subjects; declining volume of editors; increasing complexity of the markup.

Outline

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Introduction
 * Welcome to today's talk on Wikipedia.
 * Introduce myself -- I edit wikipedia as a hobby.
 * please ask questions at any time.

screenshot
 * When you search for something, the first result is often a wikipedia page.
 * What is wikipedia, and where does it come from? How does it get written?

Screenshot of http://www.wikipedia.org/ 3.9 million articles in English version, 1.4 million in German, many other languages supported 3.9 million articles would be over 1,000 Britannica volumes
 * it's a set of world-editable encyclopedias

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Vega within Wikipedia. each statement. of their own.
 * Let's look at a single article
 * in this case, for singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega.
 * Notice the various parts of the article.
 * there's a summary
 * an "info box", a sidebar with information.
 * this entry is long enough that there's a short table of contents.
 * reading through the text, there are many cross-links to other articles
 * each of these blue links goes to another wikipedia article.
 * throughout the article there are footnote-like links to references for
 * At the end of the article, the references are collected into a section

At top of the article, there are links that provide insight into how Wikipedia operates.
 * there's "article", the thing we're currently looking at.

Talk page: which is notices and discussion about *the article* itelf. a particular fact comes from.
 * Comments are usually signed by a particular user and timestamped.
 * they can note problems with the article, or ask questions about where

View History: (cur) is the difference between the past and the current version of the page.
 * shows every edit made to this article.
 * there's a date/time for each edit
 * either a user ID or a numeric Internet address for anonymous edits
 * these links here show the differences between version.


 * (prev) shows the edit the person made at the time.
 * this shows the differences between the two versions
 * additions in green ; modifications in yellow; deletions in red; etc.

This is how Wikipedia entries are assembled. the 'edit' link next to a section header.
 * anyone can edit a page to correct an error, rewrite a sentence, add a fact.
 * you do this by going to the 'Edit' link in the top bar, or
 * entries are written in a special text format.
 * for example, square brackets indicate links.
 * with angle brackets is used to embed a reference
 * wikipedia web site turns this format into a nicely formatted page
 * when you make a change, supply a change message explaining what you did.

Is it really possible to write an encyclopedia this way? loosely coordinated group and basic articles. Or they might produce a sizable first draft. edits, to fix punctuation, standardize date formats, and do other gruntwork. adding swearwords, etc.
 * it seems like writing an encyclopedia is too much effort for a
 * it turns out that it is.
 * some people start articles. Often they start out as "stubs", very short
 * some people add facts, from an interview, book, or news item
 * other people like rewriting entries to make the prose flow better
 * it's also possible for computer programs called "bots" to make automatic
 * bots also help protect against vandalism -- replacing pages with junk,

 Wikipedia. Enough time to write 25,000 wikipedias!
 * author Clay Shirky estimated it would take 10 million hours to write
 * Americans watch 250 billion hours of TV per year (33 hours per person).

The encyclopedia is also given away: assemble them into a book, and download the resulting PDF.
 * the text and images are available for you to read or re-use.
 * wikipedia's web site has a 'Create a book' tool to pick multiple articles,

of around 20,000 articles. This was completely legal.
 * in 2008 the German publisher Bertelsmann printed a 992-page dictionary

Equipment and software is provided by a non-profit, the Wikimedia Foundation. being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.”
 * funded by donations: around $X/year.
 * Mission statement: “Imagine a world in which every single human
 * Arranges partnerships with libraries/archives/museums for material
 * Runs an annual conference called WikiMania

The Wikimedia foundation runs a number of other projects.
 * All of their projects are editable by anyone
 * All of them are free to use and available to adapt.


 * Wiktionary -- a free dictionary


 * Wikiquote -- quotation collections

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/European_History
 * Wikibooks -- collectively writing textbooks

everything from the constitution of every country in the world, to public-domain poems and novels. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Portal:Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States
 * Wikisource -- collects public-domain electronic source texts


 * Wikidata -- a database of facts usable by computers.

It collects images useful for all the other projects http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
 * Wikimedia Commons -- freely available media (images, audio, video)

So there are:
 * photos of locations, people both historical and modern, and objects
 * diagrams
 * maps
 * graphs

General principles:
 * NPOV
 * no original research
 * assume good faith.

History Ward Cunningham invented the wiki in 1994 for workplace use; instead of having an editor take suggestions and apply changes, just let people make the change themselves.
 * Who came up with the idea of "just let everyone edit pages"?
 * 

The word "wiki" comes from the "wiki wiki shuttle" at Honolulu airport. "wiki" means "quick" in the Hawaiian language.
 * 

In 2000, Jimmy Wales had the idea of an online encyclopedia built by volunteers, and co-founded Nupedia with Larry Sanger. Nupedia had a seven-step process for getting articles: an author was assigned an article, wrote it, there were 2 rounds of review and copy-editing, and a final approval.

Nupedia went online in March 2000. By November, they had 2 articles.

In 2001, started Wikipedia as a side project to allow collaborating on articles before the peer-review process. It turned out to work well and began running on its own.

Participating You can start editing on your own. Or, you can go to events called editathons. A local group, Wikimedia DC, runs them regularly; there's usually at least one per month.

Other projects: US National Historic Register.
 * Wikipedia Loves Monuments: aiming to get photos of everything on the

For further reading: Andrew Lih, “The Wikipedia Revolution” -- a journalistic account that briefly covers Wikipedia's processes, history, and internal controversies "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual" Joseph Reagle’s “Good Faith Collaboration” Shirky's books Other references?