User:Computron/Mentoring

Hi Computron,

Following our conversation on IRC, I'm officially adopting you for Wikipedia mentoring. All the various things we do will be on this page, so you may wish to put it on your watchlist. You can do this by clicking the 'star' button above the page, next to the 'edit' button.

I'll try and guide you through the things you need to know to effectively edit Wikipedia and participate in the community including understanding the principles behind editing, doing "gnome"-type tasks, adding references, handling deletion, requesting help from administrators and so on.

—Tom Morris (talk) 20:20, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

What do you want to do?
The first question is a very broad one: what do you want to do on Wikipedia? Why are you here? To best help familiarise you with Wikipedia, I kind of need to know what you want to get out of editing Wikipedia. If you are interested in, say, editing and helping others rather than working on your own writing, we can prioritise the different things.


 * Thanks! I had a look at some of those links you put above, the things I guess interested me would be the principles behind editing (actually editing as well) and "gnome" stuff you talk about". --Computron (talk) 20:59, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've laid out some of those things below. Do read through them, and then anything you don't understand, just ask questions inline. —Tom Morris (talk) 03:09, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Principles
The principles of Wikipedia are pretty simple. They are laid out at Five Pillars. I'll expound a few of them below:


 * Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. As you are already a Wikinewsie, this should be fairly easy: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and not a news site (though subjects which are in the news are covered), or a dictionary, or a random collection of crap. How do we decide what goes in to Wikipedia? The notability guidelines: the general notability guidelines and others. Why do we have those? Because Wikipedia needs to be verifiable. That is, things in Wikipedia, users need to be able to check. And why's that?
 * Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view. Like Wikinews, in fact. Neutrality means Wikipedia doesn't have a take on political issues or religion. If you read the article on Christianity, it won't tell you that Christianity is true or false, it'll just tell you about Christianity. There are struggles over this. We don't want "fake" neutrality. Because there are some facts in the world: Paris actually is in France, and we don't need to give much time to people who think that it's actually in Denmark. So, we rely on what sources say. It's worth reading the basics of reliable sources, it explains what a reliable source is. You have to think critically and carefully about sources. A newspaper is a fine source for an uncontentious claim about a celebrity or TV show, but for a medical article we need stronger sources.
 * Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute. This is fairly easy to understand. Don't plagiarise, don't violate copyright. Copyright is very hard to get right: I spent hours the other day trying to work out the copyright situation of an image. There are people who understand copyright very well, and it's worth asking if you've got questions about copyright. But it's not just copyright: anyone can edit means that other people will just jump in and edit your work. That's fine. It's best to be unromantic about your writing on Wikipedia. Other people will rip it to shreds, other people will improve it. Don't get attached to your words, just try and write as best as you can.
 * Editors should interact with each other in a respectful and civil manner. This is pretty easy: don't be a dick to people. If you can be as reasonable as possible with people, and avoid drama, things will be fine. I've occasionally blown up at people. And I've always regretted it afterwards. The people you see getting banned or having arbitration cases or any number of other things: a lot of the time the reason they've got to that point is because they were unreasonable. "Play the ball, not the man" as the saying goes.
 * Wikipedia does not have firm rules. You don't need to read the rules most of the time. Most people are reasonable. If someone points out you've made a mistake, then it's worth checking the rules. But mostly, you can just jump in and start improving things. Be bold!

I have a few little tasks for you.


 * Work out in your head topics where you have strong opinions, or feel you can't edit neutrally. For instance, politicians who are bigoted sort of make me feel rather uncomfortable. I don't edit articles about them, because I don't think I could be neutral on the topic.
 * Pick three topics you are interested in and find some articles about those topics. If you can't pick some specific topic areas, pick a broad subject like, oh, a type of sport, or a country, or a type of music.

—Tom Morris (talk) 03:09, 31 January 2013 (UTC)