User:Foomandoonian/Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that not just anyone can edit



Wikipedia is amazing, but I've come to realise that getting involved in actual editing work there is a very daunting prospect. Adding a link or fixing a typo is simple enough, but when it comes to creating a new article from scratch a new Wikipedian will discover that they have a lot to learn.

In this post I've listed what I think are the barriers to entry for an aspiring Wikipedia editor. This post may also be useful as a &lsquo;getting started&rsquo; guide.

Understanding the wiki concept
Today most people probably have a basic understanding of what a wiki is, but I wonder if many understand that a wiki is as much a philosophy as a technology? The notion of a website that anyone can edit is a powerful idea, and one very much in the spirit of the World Wide Web.

A wiki seeks to involve the reader in the process of its creation. An open wiki like Wikipedia undergoes a constant a natural selection process — or &lsquo;Darwikinism&rsquo; — which theoretically should lead to the creation of higher quality pages. The red link invites the user to add information that doesn't exist yet; to contribute something. Red links indicate that a page does not yet exist, and clicking one doesn't result in the usual 404, but instead presents the reader with an edit window and invites them to write the content themselves.

Copyright / Creative Commons
Understanding copyright is an important conceptual hurdle that may have to be overcome too. Many people seem to feel that anything they find on the internet is copyright free, while others can't imagine ever giving up a single word of their own intellectual property without compensation. To add to Wikipedia, an editor must respect the copyright of others, yet be prepared to release their own contributions into the public domain.

Notability
Then perhaps a new editor will have to face up to the fact that the article that they want to write (or the link that they want to add) may not be suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia.

Every minute of every day, Wikipedia is flooded with new pages created by bloggers, &lsquo;entrepreneurs&rsquo; and other self-important individuals who feel they deserve an entry. Others are created by small business owners, new bands, marketing and SEO noobs, hoaxters and vandals, and newbies with good intentions who simply haven't taken the time to learn how to write a good article.

Many articles destined for deletion will be removed (or require significant modifications to be made) because they lack references to good third-party sources. The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth.

Articles may also be rejected if they are not written from a suitably neutral point of view, if they contain original research, or simply if they do not fit into Wikipedia's goal of being an encyclopaedic reference. Further, any biographies of living persons must be treated with extra care and sensitivity.

It is important to format citations and all other aspects of an article in a consistent way so Wikipedia looks and feels (as much as possible) like one body of work.

Writing guides
Besides just having good basic copyediting skills, a Wikipedia editor needs to follow the Manual of Style to ensure consistency of formatting, page titles, the layout, dating and numbering systems, capitalisation and grammar rules, and much more.

There is some flexibility with regards to the actual writing style used in an article, but certain conventions are important, such as writing a concise lead section that summarises the subject, while establishing its notability.

Meta-work
Then once a new article is properly written, formatted and referenced there are various good housekeeping chores to be completed, like including it in the relevant categories, disambiguation pages, lists, portals, setting up redirects, and adding geographic coordinates, navigation menus, and probably lots more I haven't encountered yet. None of this is required of you (as a volunteer you are not expected to do any more work than you want), but these extras all add to the value and usefulness of your entry.

In addition to these tasks, it is good practice to write descriptive edit summaries, keep an eye on your watchlist and talk page for any activity related to you and possibly flesh out your user page> a bit to tell other Wikipedians a bit about why and how you use Wikipedia.

Some varieties of contributor enjoy working on these meta-tasks. While not of interest to many, this kind of maintenance work is vital to keeping Wikipedia's standards up.

Jargon
As you might expect, Wikipedia has accumulated a huge amount of esoteric jaron, abbreviations and &lsquo;WikiSpeak&rsquo;, which could overwhelm newcomers. Some of my favourites include: 0RR, 1RR , 2RR , 3RR (various degrees of &lsquo;revert rules&rsquo;), Abcdise (alphabetise), autoconfirmed users, Barnstars, &lsquo;convenience links&rsquo;, copyvio (or CV), diff, &lsquo;Don't-give-a-fuckism&rsquo;, edit conflict, &lsquo;Esperanzify&rsquo;, &lsquo;Gdanzig&rsquo;, hatnote, &lsquo;ignore all rules&rsquo;, namespace, NPoV , &lsquo;Pokémon test&rsquo;, redlink>, stub, tl;dr, wheel war and many more.

Wiki markup
Wiki markup starts pretty simple, with equal signs used for, apostrophes for   and   text. Links get a little more complicated, with slightly different approaches for  and.

Going further down the rabbit hole, curly brackets are used for transclusion, generally to insert templates for frequently used,  ,   flags,   and tons more recursive and complicated stuff.

On top of all that it is sometimes necessary to use some HTML for things like s and , along with pseudo-HTML markup like   and. CSS is also permitted, making advanced layouts possible.

Wikipedia does recognise that this complexity is a significant problem, and a more modern visual editor is in the works.

Politics


Like any community, Wikipedia has its fair share of internal politics. Edit wars rage where editors repeatedly override each other's contributions, and the inclusionists argue with the deletionists over what should or shouldn't be included the encyclopedia.

There is enough infighting in Wikipedia that they have run several Great Wikipedia Dramaout campaigns to encourage editors to focus on article work.

"In the Great Wikipedia Dramaout, similar to the Great American Smokeout, editors are asked to engage in a five-day period of abstinence from drama at Wikipedia; the most addictive and yet cancerous aspect of our community. During this five-day drama blackout, it is requested that regular contributors to the non-article-space areas of Wikipedia, including but not limited to, the various administrator noticeboards, the reference desks, the village pumps, or any other non-essential areas of Wikipedia cease working at those areas for the length of the Dramaout and instead work on article content."

More seriously, a contribution could (perhaps quite innocently) run into some legal problems.

Be bold! But…
Wikipedia encourages new users to be bold: "The Wikipedia community encourages users to be bold when updating the encyclopedia. Wikis like ours develop faster when everybody helps to fix problems, correct grammar, add facts, make sure wording is accurate, etc."

This very page that seems to exist to embolden new editors then goes on to warn them not to be too bold. It seems there are many places where they would prefer you to be rather more timid, like when editing templates or categories or other's user pages or portals or altering layouts or — for some reason I can't fathom — when editing pages in non-article namespaces.

This nicely illustrates the problem Wikipedia has: They want the encyclopedia to be open and welcoming to everyone, but the reality is that the work is very complicated and intimidating, especially for those less-technically minded.