User:Bryceman99/Coaching/Tools on Wikipedia

The goal of this exercise is to learn how to use some of the various tools on Wikipedia.

Preparation
The word before a page name is called a "namespace". For example, the page User:Bryceman99 is in the "user" namespace because it's a userpage; Talk:Anime is in the "talk" namespace because it's a place for talking about an article; and User talk:Rjanag is in the "user talk" namespace because it's a user's talk page. Articles don't have anything in front of them, because they're in the "main" namespace.

Two namespaces that will help you are the Wikipedia: namespace and the Help: namespace. Both of these contain instructions about using Wikipedia; for example, you have already seen What Wikipedia is not and Tutorial. The Help: namespace is similar, but has more technical stuff (how to use Wikipedia code, etc.). Whenever there is something you can't figure out how to do, the best way to figure it out is to search Wikipedia in one of those namespaces. For example, if you want to get a vandal blocked but you don't know how, search for "Wikipedia:Block" and you will find a page about the rules for blocking.

Exercises
Answer the questions.

Watchlist

 * 1. What is your watchlist? How many pages are on it?  Is this page on it?  (if not, how can you add it to your watchlist?)   How do you get to your watchlist?


 * 2. To the left of each page on your watchlist, there are two links – (diff) and (hist). What happens when you click (diff)?  What happens when you click (history)?

Contribs

 * 1. How do you view a list of all the recent edits you have made? Can you give me a link that shows all your recent edits?  (Hint – the link for my edits is Special:Contributions/Rjanag.)


 * 2. How can you see a list of all the recent edits any other editor has made? (Hint – WP:CONTRIBS has the answer.)

Page history

 * 1. Find the Wikipedia article about "Shōjo manga". How do you view the editing history of the article?


 * 2. How do you see the version of the article as it looked on 5 March 2009, rather than how it looks now? (Hint – For answer to this, instead of searching for "Wikipedia : History", you will want to search for "Help : History", since this is a more technical thing.)


 * 3. In the space below, post a link that goes directly to that version of the article, rather than to the current version.  (Hint – this is called a "permalink", and you do it using the whole URL rather than just the page title.)

Using page history while editing

 * 1. A vandal just inserted a bunch of gibberish on the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. How can you undo it?


 * 2. This time, a vandal vandalized the article 4 times in a row, within a couple seconds of each other. How can you undo all the vandalism (rather than only the most recent edit)?  (Hint – it involves using the Page History to go back to a version before the vandal arrived.)


 * 3. Imagine you need to prove to an admin that someone is a vandal. How can you post a link that shows the admin exactly what that person's edit was? (Hint – Help:Diff.)