User:Tedder/Reading-Wikipedia

Who am I?

 * dropped out of college (oops!)
 * have worked as a programmer for ~20 years
 * went on a big 6 month motorcycle trip to South America
 * went to Portland State University when I was 30, graduated (computer science)
 * have worked for: MP3.com, Amazon.com, Big Fish Games, Demand Media, Chrome River Tech, Jumptime, Ad Hoc Labs, Stanson Health, Signal Sciences.

What do I do?
I program computers, a simple example is the robot tiger brain, in Arduino. Even the 3D printed parts on the tiger are designed in code, not visually.

What is a wiki?

 * editable by all
 * can create pages, edit existing
 * can see history
 * Ward Cunningham!

''Is a blog or tumblr a wiki? Is Wikileaks a wiki? (no, no)''

Wikipedia is the biggest wiki, but there are others.

Wiki

 * Oregon has lots of open source/Wiki involvement.
 * Wikis were created by Ward Cunningham, a programmer god.
 * Wikipedia articles adopted by projects- e.g., WikiProject Oregon. Active project talk page.

Ted

 * Have created a few articles, edited thousands of others (2800th most active editor.. no award for this)
 * Recent articles created: Whitefish Energy, SOKS, Chinook Observer, EO Media Group, Trump Parc, Galesville Reservoir, DC Rainmaker, 2016 Union Pacific oil train fire, CRST, Hoover-Mason Trestle, Goldman roll
 * Favorite articles created: South Park Blocks, Jacob Kamm House, Ramona Gardens, LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, ARC Juan Ricardo Oyola Vera, Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, Oregon Sugar Company, 100s of HS articles

How to read a Wikipedia article
Is it actually an article? Look at URL. Look for the colon. This is a page about Wikipedia administration, this is a discussion page about a Wikipedia article, this is an article!

Is it a *good* article?
 * Look for bad: 'citation needed', improvement templates
 * Look for good: references. Are most things referenced? Is the info you want referenced? bad, good, good, excessively good
 * page history. quiet page, lots of current edits
 * talk page discussion. No discussion here, small amount of discussion, discussions and archives of discussion here
 * cite the page: 'cite this page' link! (do you want to cite wikipedia?)

More: 'read between the lines' from Pete Forsyth

Explore
Popular Oregon articles
 * assessment: article quality
 * importance: how important is this article to the Oregon project?

Explore in other ways: high-quality articles, new pages, by category: Oregon, Did You Know entries

Specific articles:
 * Vanport, Oregon
 * Lincoln Hall (Portland, Oregon)
 * Lists of lists of lists

Want to do more?
Read more about how Wikipedia works:
 * start with Five pillars
 * read Pete Forsyth's blog post about how creating an article can change the world in a small way
 * think about how to go beyond Wikipedia by Molly Lewis

What not to do:
 * add things based on your own knowledge or unpublished knowledge
 * vandalize pages or make test edits
 * create new pages until you understand more

''Even more? Wikipedia: School of Open course, self-paced course''