User:Alihinai/Explain

Presentation for old Librarians to explain what is Wikipeadia

Submitted By:   ali Abdullah al-hinai

Contents:

1- Introduction 2- The objectives of this presentation 2- Determination of Wiki System 4- History Of Wiki 5- What is Wikipedia 6-Explication the map of the site to old librarian 7-  Explanation for the old librarian how to use the Wikipedia 8- Wikipedia effect 9- Features of the Wikipedia 10- Recommendation for old librarian when they beginning to use the Wikipedia 11- Conclusion 12- References :

We are living the revolution of the Internet which designed for governmental military purpose only then its extend to research and learning sector then its used in the business companies then its became available for everyone. Synchronization with this revolution the technology used to browse the Internet also advanced from browsing using a complicated operating systems like Unix to a very simple technology that a 10 years kid can surf the Internet. The websites moved from text age to revolutionary technologies such as : asp, php, xml, flash, java and much more helped the providers of the websites invent new methods of introducing the contents and make it active by adding discussion forums and polls and blogs and wiki system. And this what ill introduce in details The Wikipedia which every librarian especially the old librarian which should know about it to give him idea about what is Wikipedia how they can use it and the features of it. Because am sure when they know how to deal with Wikipedia they can provide the information to the normal users easier and simply to reduce their time and effort.

a. Encouraging the old librarian to use the newest technologies to provide information for the users. b. Giving the old librarian an idea about how the Wikipedia built by Wiki system. c. Provide all the information to the old librarian  about the dealing with the Wikipedia such as editing, adding articles and searching for existed articles. d. Giving the old librarian The features of Wikipedia. e. Explanation for the old librarian the difference between Wikipedia and regular encyclopedias.

The main idea of the wiki is a site which anyone can edit ! all the users found that this is a strange system and a few of them accept the idea at the beginning but then its became one of the successful ideas over the Internet and a thousands of websites providers using it especially the companies interest in wiki. The easy of use is most important feature in wiki, ( Please notice that am talking about wiki system now and not Wikipedia as an introduction for understanding Wikipeda which built on wiki system ) with this easy of use we can say that all the users of internet can make activities with wiki system ! First most of the media and news websites turned to be wiki with " Edit " feature on every article, the things were all good at the beginning then more than one media website noticed that there is the experiment descended into chaos and the editorial eventually ended up a bit tighter than expected with the somewhat pithy scrawls on the news archive and some articles making this sites back to no-wiki system. In a original wiki, there are three wayss for each page:

- Wiki syntax : The user-editable "source code", which is also the format stored locally on the server :

- Rendered output : It is usually plain text, made visible to the user only when the edit operation shows it in a browser form : - A template (possibly internally generated) that defines layout and elements common to all pages. The rendered HTML code produced by the server on the fly from the source text when a particular page is requested : Before forwarding to Wikipedia lets talk a little about the history of the wiki.

Wiki software originated in the design pattern society as a way of writing and discussing pattern languages. The WikiWikiWeb was the first wiki, established by Ward Cunningham on March 25, 1995, as a complement to the Portland Pattern Repository. He invented the wiki name and concept, and implemented the first wiki engine. Some people maintain that only the original wiki should be called Wiki (upper case) or the WikiWikiWeb. I am sure now that you want to know what the meaning of Wiki ? The term wiki is a shortened form of wiki wiki which is from the native language of Hawaii (Hawaiian), where it is commonly used as an adjective to denote something "quick" or "fast".

The biggest project using wiki system The Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia available for everyone online : www.wikipedia.org Its works as simple as this : You search about anything you want to get information about it and if it's existed in the database you will get a lot of details and pictures and other links what other People like you added before ! from expert scholars to casual readers, anyone with a little knowledge of browsing the internet can add new data or edit it without any hindrance or supervision I think we can rely on this encyclopedia for our small researches. The Wikipedia administrators opened the site for everyone to edit and I mean they made it for everyone that there is no need for registration to add or edit knowing that you can register optionally if you want really to be loyal to Wikipedia and add more and more trusted information to the huge database out there.

In the first page of Wikipedia you have to choose the language of the site between 10 main languages or between the other languages which can be found in the bottom of the main page including Arabic, and as another good addition on the first page you can instantly search the Wikipedia from the search field :

Then when you choose your language every first page will have the same division only the difference is the direction of the site depending on the way the language written ( Example : from right to left in Arabic ) and the divisions are :

Portals : the main sections of the Wikipedia like :   Arts, Biography, Geography, History, Mathematics, Science, Society, Technology or you can view all the portals :

In my opinion this method of classification the knowledge is not the standard of the any famous classification like Dewy decimal classification but its created by the team of Wikipedia.

Navigation : Important links like the community portal and the recently added topics and some of the best articles in featured articles also you can contact the administrators of Wikipedia and if you feel bored go ahead to the random article !

Search : the most important field in the whole site, from it you can find anything from the available database of the site.

Toolbox : we can call this block "other" in it there are links which don’t belong the main blocks of the site, good links like upload a file available to put it in your articles.

The footer : in the footer of the site there are the Wiki network sites and wikipedia sister's projects and wikimediafoundation information and the copyrights.

Contents page : in the second page after language page goes the contents page include this sections : - Today's featured article : the article of the day picked by Wikipedia users.

- In the news : headlines of the international news. - Did you know : light and short information on the speed.

- On this day : the things that happened in the past years in the same date of the month of current month. - Today's featured picture : selected pictures from any random article.

- Other areas of Wikipedia : - Help desk : Ask questions about using Wikipedia.

- Reference desk : Serving as virtual librarians, Wikipedia volunteers tackle your questions on a wide range of subjects. - Village pump : For discussions about Wikipedia itself, including areas for technical issues and policies. -Community portal : Bulletin board, projects, resources and activities covering a wide range of Wikipedia areas.

-Site news : Announcements, updates, articles and press releases on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Edit and Test : Lets talk now about using the Wikipedia and the first steps, your first steps should be on the sandbox of the Wikipedia … what is the sandbox ? It’s a page meant for experimenting and testing; you can edit and tweak to your hearts' content there, first you have to log on to the Wikipedia:Sandbox from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox then click on edit which can be found on the top of the page you will move to another page where you can input a text or images below the text area you can check the "Editing Help" link for additional information. Make a few changes and click on "Save page" afterwards and the changes will effect immediately.

How to add a new article : Notice that you cant add a new article unless you registered, which explained in this presentation …There are two methods of adding new article : 1- Search for not exist article : Write in the search box the title of article you want to add and if its not existed you will find an option to add this article by yourself and this is one of the advantages of Wikipedia to avoid doubling the article.

2- From the Sandbox : Now to add a new article in the Wikipedia create a link to a non-existing page in the sandbox, put your article title in this two brackets like this : This page does not exist yet It will look like this: This page does not exist yet. The red color indicates that there is no article with that name yet, Click the red link , and the edit page for the new article will be displayed. It contains a blank text area, in which you can type the text for your new article then save it.

Registeration : Click on "Sign in/create account" link on the top-right of Wikipedia. Click on "Create an account". Enter your name,password and E-Mail then click on "Create account". When "logging successful" appears that’s mean you done … can it be more easy ? No I think it is the easiest register on the net :

Wikipedia become a big name in every where that’s effect on the sales of the famous Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia for a big reason that Wikipedia is FREE.

Also Wikipedia become a trusted reference for many books and latterly I was reading a small book about Linux called " Fast Track to : Linux " and Wikipedia was one of the references in the book.

- Easy of use : With less than an hour you will feel that you know how to add and edit the articles with a few knowledge of using the internet before making the writers of the Wikipedia more and more. - No size limits : The most obvious difference between Wikipedia and any other encyclopedia is that there are, in principle, no size limits in the Wikipedia universe. It is quite possible, for example, that when you finish typing in everything you want to say about poker, there might well be over 100 pages, and enough text for a full-length book by itself. This would certainly never be tolerated in a paper encyclopedia. But there is no reason at all why Wikipedia should not grow into something beyond what could ever possibly be put on paper. Plain text takes up an almost negligible amount of disk space. At seven letters per word, a 100 GB hard drive that costs around $70 US can hold 15 billion words. That's two million words per penny. - Free : No subscription needed like most other services on the internet, no fee , its free ! yes thats what makes Wikipedia unique. - Fast : The Wikipedia works smoothly even if you have slow internet connection. - Organization : Of course, a 100-page thesis on poker is useless to someone who merely needs an article summarizing the basic rules and history of the game. The purpose of a normal encyclopedia is to provide the reader a brief overview of the subject, while a reference book or text book can explain the details. Wikipedia can do both. Because Wikipedia is not paper, it can provide summaries of all subjects of interest and also provide exhaustive detail on those subjects, conveniently linked, categorized, and searchable for readers who want more detail. The key to avoiding information overload is to break an article down into more than one page (long articles require many sub-headings anyway). For example, Poker can be broken into a basic "Poker" article which is only one page (about 30 KB) and links to "History of poker", "Modern popularity of poker", and variations of the game, such as "Stud poker" and "Texas hold 'em". These will be much more searchable. - Multi-languages : More than 30 main languages including Arabic with different articles on each section. - Timeliness : The articles in a paper encyclopedia are all compiled and printed at roughly the same time, and old sets are generally replaced by whole new sets. But Wikipedia pages cannot assume that the reader will have any idea to the historical context in which the article is written, or the state of any article to which it refers. Wikipedians must be careful, then, to imagine how an article might appear to someone reading it after changes have been made in articles to which it links. This is a rare instance of something that is actually more difficult in a wiki than on paper. Not only will a list of recent celebrity deaths obviously need to be rewritten once those deaths aren't recent anymore, but any article that links to it because a certain celebrity has just died may leave the reader wondering what the link was for, since the celebrity will no longer appear on that page. The general recommendation is to just write time objectively. As a result, Wikipedians don't write, "today" or "recently" they write absolute times when times are necessary and don't mention time at all when it isn't necessary. - Updated daily : New articles everyday and new edits from all the Wikipedians and users. - Search engine : The advanced search engine in Wikipedia is not an average engine its short a lot of time using regular search methods.

Now what ? is this all what I want to be a Wikipedian ? Yes but you have to take care of the following points : Edit first : To encourage newcomers to start out slow. Look for a topic you are interested in, and read the articles that already exist. Click along. Sooner or later you will find a page you can add some information to. Click "edit" and edit away! Save it! .  - Create new content : On the other hand, everyone wants to contribute new content. One of the most common mistakes for beginners is starting after two minutes in the sandbox by creating five to ten new articles with only two or three words each in rapid succession. It is a big letdown to see these pages deleted in cold blood. However, that is what has to happen because we are trying to write an encyclopedia. So, Before you start on new articles: Please read site remarks on stubs and tips for writing good articles. A new article should have some quality: a few lines are necessary and two or three are enough. One of the most important things is to always write complete sentences. Ideally, the first sentence should contain the term that is explained. Articles like "Wikipedia: Its an online encyclopedia" don't help much, and copying your thesis is also not a good idea. That is why i recommend reading and editing first, so you get a feeling for Wikipedia style before you start on new articles. Have a look on the lower half of the new pages page to get an impression of how new pages should look. Now, if you want to start writing new articles: On the Main Page there are some topics for which articles are requested (remember: Really intend on writing a short article, not only three words!). Also keep in mind that a whole bunch of missing articles are on the requests page. - Testing : You should always make previews of your articles before saving them to the Wikipedia, feel free to try every thing in the text area and you will easily handle the editing tools.

With all this previous features I think Wikipedia is not a regular website of services site or simple encyclopedia its powerful than with information and its simpe and its easy.

But I'm sure that you are thinking "there is nothing perfect" but in Wikipedia you can say that if I have to mention the disadvantages of the Wikipedia ill find nothing ! in the first when I log on to the Wikipedia for first time I was taking an idea that this information is not trusted and any person can put bad and wrong information in the site but I was wrong when I discovered this two systems : 1- Wikipedia Time Machine : Write some wrong data in any article and save it, then back after some time you will find your data erased ! That’s what happened when I tried to put some data about turtles in the wrong article as testing for Wikipedia reaction and they really did the right job … Wikipedia have a Time Machine system, when the moderator check his control panel the updates in articles will displayed and if he noticed that the new data to the article not right he will delete this data by back the before one day article which didn't ruined yet ! 2- Wikipedia Eyes : If you want just to copy articles from the web to Wikipedia its no more trusted, Wikipedia founders want from you to put what your brain tells you not searching Google , so Wikipedia handle this by searching if the article you saved is exist in the web and if its exist Wikipedia will erased it !

After this presentation and from reviewing the Wikipedia and its contents and what it have of huge abilities to introduce the information with the minimum effort and in express way its clearly to us now that its present solutions for the librarians specially the old librarian from their suffering of fewness of resources and budget and a lot of benefit users is a hindrance so Wikipedia come as an excellent solution to this problems from what we see before like the speed, easy of use and more, so we have to take this opportunity and exploit it best exploitation.

-How to use the internet I.C.D.L, Mohmmed saleh, Dorgham, Israa publishing 2004. -Digit magazine : December issue 2005. Wikipedia.org. - http://www.wikipedia.org/