User:Bluerasberry/exercises

When I present Wikipedia for the first time to people I often wish that there was something that I could help a group of individuals with no prior Wikipedia experience to each do in 5 minutes.

Check an article's traffic - login not needed!
Is an article within your scope of interest? Then check the traffic to it. Go to Google and type in the name of a disease, procedure, or drug. See if a Wikipedia article is returned.

For example, here is "ECG" - https://www.google.com/#q=ecg

If no Wikipedia article is returned, then Wikipedia may not be important to people who are searching for information about the topic you tried. If there is a Wikipedia article returned, see how many people are checking that article.
 * 1) At the top of the article, click "history"
 * 2) On the history page, click "Page view statistics" somewhere just below the top of the page but before the timestamped changes log
 * 3) You should see a chart like this one for ECG
 * 4) Consider this traffic. To what extent is it significant? To what extent does it represent the number of people searching for information on that topic?

Explore media collections - login not needed!
Wikimedia projects like Wikipedia are supported by a central media repository called "Wikimedia Commons". Take a look at some of the health and science content stored there.
 * When an academic journal gives a license for its content to be reused, people can copy that content and use it for new purposes. There is an open access project on Wikipedia which takes free media from journals and incorporates it into other articles, as well as features it as content which is being reused. See this gallery here -Commons:Open Access File of the Day. Just consider that in traditional academic publishing, most of these pictures would never be seen outside of a few academic journals, but now people reuse them.
 * There are continually photo contests on Wikimedia projects. Here are two high-profile contests - Commons:Commons:Picture of the Year Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 winners
 * The Science Museum in London donated some images to Wikipedia in August 2013. See the medical images here - Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine
 * Go to any health article on Wikipedia and click any image you like. Go to the bottom of the page to see categories for similar images. Click on a category and browse.

Lurk in relevant health discussions
The discussions behind Wikipedia articles are in public forums which anyone can visit. Here are some current discussions. If you would like to participate beyond just viewing these, check the below guide for help leaving a comment.
 * WikiProject Medicine talk page, an active messy space in which the daily problems with health articles are identified and sorted
 * Good article review forum for biology and medicine, another messy space but this is where peer review happens for articles before they seek detailed expert review. Feel free to jump into low back pain, for example.

Account creation
This is the least useful exploratory exercise, but if you want to stay in touch on Wikipedia, create an account then sign your name below.


 * 1) Create an account here! If lots of people are creating accounts at the same time then some people may need help from Lane because SPAM protection may activate.
 * 2) After creating an account, come back here - remember to type WP:POD2013 into Wikipedia's search box
 * 3) click edit source near the bar which says, "Account creation"
 * 4) You will now see editable text. Sorry that it is confusing and has code! Sign your name as it says below.

On Wikipedia, people sign by typing ~ when they are signed in, as so - * ~. This generates a signature like below.
 *  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   17:00, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Ask a question or give a comment somewhere active

 * 1) If you like, login.
 * 2) Go to any of the following places-
 * 3) The Teahouse, a forum where any new user can ask any question and get a fast polite response.
 * 4) WikiProject Medicine talk page, an active messy space in which the daily problems with health articles are identified and sorted
 * 5) Good article review forum for biology and medicine, another messy space but this is where peer review happens for articles before they seek detailed expert review. Feel free to jump into low back pain, for example.
 * 6) Reference_desk/Science The reference desk for science will answer any medicine question just like a library reference desk.
 * 7) Check back later. Within hours if not sooner someone will have responded.

Try adding a reference
It is difficult to guide a group of people to add content to a real article in a useful way in only a few minutes. However, there are "sandboxes" in which people can play in their own space as practice. In this exercise a person can add example content to an article in just a few minutes.


 * 1) Choose a logged-in or non-logged-in option
 * 2) *If you made an account and are logged in -
 * 3) **Open Special:MyPage/sandbox in a new window to access your personal sandbox, or click the word "Sandbox" at the top of any page in your personal navigation bar
 * 4) **Click "Start the User:(your name here)/sandbox page" if prompted
 * 5) *If you are not logged in, go to WP:SANDBOX and use the community sandbox shared by everyone.
 * 6) Click "Edit source" at the top of the page.
 * 7) You should be in an editing window. I know it is confusing.
 * 8) Type one sentence - "People need good health information."
 * 9) Click save at the bottom of the page.
 * 10) You should have returned to the sandbox presentation page and should see your sentence there. You made a live edit in Wikipedia!
 * 11) Now you are going to add a reference. As an example, add this new paper from our conference speaker Ray Moynihan - Expanding Disease Definitions in Guidelines. Start by opening that paper in a new window.
 * 12) Look in that academic article and find the "digital object identifier", a unique code to identify this article. It is after the letters "doi", typically at either the top or bottom of the page. Do not choose the subcategories of the doi for images used in the article - we want the doi for the entire article.
 * 13) When you have the doi, copy it and return to your sandbox.
 * 14) Click "edit source" at the top of the article again.
 * 15) Put your cursor after the sentence you added to add a citation to verify your sentence.
 * 16) When your cursor is after the sentence, look at the top of the editing box.
 * 17) On the right side, click "cite"
 * 18) On the left side, click "templates"
 * 19) In the templates drop-down menu, choose journal
 * 20) A box appears. It contains empty fields. The only one to look for is "DOI"
 * 21) Paste the doi into the DOI box and then click the magnifying glass image to the right of that field.
 * 22) The citation should have been propagated into the reference box.
 * 23) Click insert and see a coded citation.
 * 24) Click enter twice to go to a new line after a space.
 * 25) Type or copy the following command to create a list of references to appear on your sandbox.
 * 26) click save below the text box
 * 27) you should see your sentence, a citation note after your sentence, then a list of citations below that.
 * 28) Did it work? What could possibly go wrong?

Add an image to an article
This is a little jargony, and it is difficult to give instructions about this, but propagating images across languages is among the few high-impact actions that a person can do with little prior training in just a few minutes.

The idea is that if an English language (or any language) article is illustrated but other languages are not, then anyone can move illustrations to other language articles even if they do not speak other languages. It is a copy/paste operation. Captions are typically lost unless someone can translate them.

Overview of the theory -
 * 1) Login
 * 2) Go to any article on Wikipedia that has useful images without English-language text in the picture (in the caption is okay)
 * 3) Check on the left side of the article to see if there is a list of other languages in which the article exists
 * 4) If an article has a picture and exists in another language, then check to see whether the equivalent article in another language has the same picture
 * 5) If the foreign-language article does not have the picture and you feel that this article would be improved if it adopted the picture of the English-language article, then you may copy the image from English to the other language
 * 6) Go to the source code for the English language article by clicking "edit source" at the top of the page
 * 7) Find the link to display the image and copy it
 * 8) Go to the foreign language article and find a place where you think the image goes, even if you do not read that language
 * 9) Paste the image there. The English file name and coding is fine, but leave the caption blank if you cannot translate it
 * 10) Click save
 * 11) The image should be in this foreign language article. Now people are alerted that the image is there and that it exists. Someone else will clean up the image's placement if necessary