User:GumbyProf/JINS352/Lab2

=LAB 2: LEARN MORE, WORK ALONE=

This assumes that you’ve completed Lab 0 and Lab 1, and are starting to get the hang of things, have some idea of syntax, and maybe even understand what’s going on.

I. RULES, CUSTOM, AND COMMUNITY:
Read as much as you need to. Get to work as soon as you can, but maybe keep these links handy. (The help button on the side will take you to these pretty quickly)

Wikipedia Introduction

Some Faux Pas to avoid

What Wikipedia is not

Being bold... (but not reckless).

FAQ's about contributions

Etiquette

Wikipedia's Community Portal

No angry mastodons (essay dealing with differences of opinion on Wikipedia)

Be sure to go through at least a little bit of this: Wikipedia's Editing Tutorial

If you know what NPOV, four tildes (~ ~ ~ ~), and a “minor edit” box mean, you are likely ready to go. If you aren’t confident, remember that you can use the sandbox for practice, and you can view an edit before you make it official. Also remember that others can undo your changes pretty easily. You can also check out discussion or “talk” pages before you do anything drastic.

II. BE ACTIVE; GET BUSY; DON’T HURT YOURSELF
I would like you to have made 12 edits in (main) space (not counting user pages or talk pages, although most non-trivial edits warrant some comment on an appropriate talk page.) before the due date, no matter how minor (it took me about 3 hours to make 15 edits (plus 15 edits to talk pages), and I was trying to be clever, doing at least one of each kind). Do whatever you want, but below are some easy places to start. These are articles about which other people have identified problems, and are looking for people to help them out. Don’t do all one single kind, though. The more experienced of you might try to do more challenging things if you’re up for it.

A general page to look at first is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pages_needing_attention

1)	Deletion Discussions. Wiki has three types of ways articles are deleted. a.	The first one is “speedy,” but is usually just for administrator types, and deals with pure garbage and spam. Not for you. Yet.

b.	The second one is “proposed deletion,” or “prod.” Anyone can mark any article for prod. An article that has been marked prod will be deleted in five days, unless someone else removes the mark. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Prod, you can find articles that have been marked prod. If you agree with the prod, you can add or  If you disagree, you can remove the prod mark, and either give your reason on the article’s discussion page or try to fix the article to eliminate the problem the proposer mentioned.

c.	The third one is “Articles Considered for Deletion,” or “Afd.” This is a longer process, and involves people weighing in on the reasons why you would or wouldn’t delete this article. You can read more about the how and the wikiquette at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion or and look at current discussions linked from that page by date.

2)	Cleanup, wikify, dead-end pages, and orphan control. These are all ways to make pages more acceptable to wiki. These might turn into deletion discussions. Remember to remove the if you take care of an article.

a.	Dead-end pages are those that don’t link to anything. To fix them, find things to link to, and add double brackets around the words. Here's a link to Wikipedia's list of Dead-end pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dead-end_pages

b.	Orphans are articles that don’t have anything linked to them. To fix, you just need to find other pages that should link to them and add the double brackets needed to bring them back into the magical web of wiki-ness. The links at the bottom of this page are to starting letter of the orphaned article. Click here to find out more about orphaned articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Orphaned_Articles

c.	Wikify means to make an article fit the format of wiki, including style and such. Dead-end and Orphan fixes, above, are two specific kinds of wikify needs. For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_that_need_to_be_wikified

d.	Cleanup just means to improve the grammar, spelling, flow, or clue of a particular page, including wikify. There are various tags and methods, depending on the problem, but many of them just need someone to do them. For more information on cleanup and grammar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cleanup and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Grammar

3)	Finish some stubs. Lots of articles are too short to be useful; these are called stubs. Find an area you know a lot about in the stub types, and see what you can do. The following link gives you the Wikipedia overview of stubs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types. You can also find uncategorized stubs and give them a category, or help out by writing stubs that other people can then fill out. Red links go nowhere, so they might be a place to start.

4)	Do whatever you want. Find articles. Mark articles. Edit articles. Talk about Articles.

=LAB 3: WORK TOGETHER=

I. WORK COLLABORATIVELY
On my page, I have put all of the wikilabs (0,1, 2/3, and 4) on my account, but I left them in Word format. Your job is to make them look like polished Wiki articles. You can split up jobs, or just do them at your own pace. You get one grade for the entire class, based on how well it is done. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:GumbyProf/Labs