User:WugapodesOutreach/2021 LSA splash page



If no one has said it yet, welcome to Wikipedia! We're excited to have you! This is the user page for my second account which I use during outreach events because it makes things easier to find in the future. I use this user page as a sort of landing page for edit-a-thon participants, so take a look around! If you have questions, you can post on my user talk page, and if you want to know more about me and my other Wikipedia stuff, my main account is.

Thanks for joining our 6th annual edit-a-thon! This page is meant to help orient you to Wikipedia and give you ideas on what to work on. Each section contains ideas for how you can help and they are roughly organized by the size of the undertaking. Not everything can be done in a day, but you're always free to come back and keep working on something! Feel free to add your own ideas too!
 * Are you here for the 2021 LSA Annual Meeting edit-a-thon?

Simple-ish tasks
These are tasks you can probably do in a few minutes. With experience, most of them can probably be done in seconds.
 * Add links. We have categories for articles with too few incoming or outgoing links. Look through User:WugapodesOutreach/Orphans which has orphaned articles in Category:Language or check out Category:Orphaned articles to see if anything interests you!
 * Add or edit IPA transcriptions in articles. See WP:IPA for our transcription standards.
 * Upload a photo of yourself (to which you hold copyright) to Wikimedia Commons so that it can be used in your biography article. For more complicated cases you should follow the release process ate c:Commons:Wikimedia OTRS release generator
 * Upload diagrams, graphs, or other visual materials for use in articles. Syntax trees showing particular phenomena are a good example, and more examples can be found at Linguistics category on the Wikimedia Commons
 * Add or edit alt-text of images to improve accessibility to visitors using screen readers.

Add red links
Wikipedia's software allows you to turn any text into a link, but when Wikipedia doesn't have an article by that title, you get a red link like this one. Many people think that they shouldn't add red links, but the truth is that red links can help the encyclopedia grow! A wiki works best when many people make small changes because these small changes invite other people to make further improvements. Some editors spend their time creating articles that have the most red links. Others look through red links and replace them with redirects to existing articles or sections on the topic. If you see a phrase that you think would make a good title for an encyclopedia article, make it a link no matter what color it winds up being. If someone disagrees, they'll fix it.

Ask questions
Wikipedia has a number of templates that let readers ask questions about the article they're reading right in the article. These templates are related to citation needed, but ask specific questions about the text like How many?, according to whom?, and Like what?. When readers see this, it invites them to add the answer if they know it. Some editors spend their time looking through these questions and trying to answer them. By asking questions, you help improve the article and inform other readers about its current quality. You can find a full list at Inline cleanup tags.

Medium-sized tasks
These are tasks that require non-trivial time, experience, or resources to complete and/or learn.
 * Add examples from lesser-studied languages to articles like phonology, ergativity, or Jespersen cycle.
 * Post a bibliography of sources on an article talk page so other editors can use them to expand and improve the article. The template Ref ideas might be useful for this.
 * Choose a random page from the linguistics stub category and and make sure that it's still a stub. Gretchen McCulloch has a super useful tutorial on stub sorting that may be helpful.
 * Go through some pages in Category:Linguistics and remove pages unrelated to the topic, or add them to more specific categories (see Help:Categorization)

Substantial or longer-term tasks
These are tasks to which you could easily devote a day or more, or tasks which are part of larger, multi-editor projects.
 * Create a stub. We have a list of wanted articles at WikiProject Linguistics, but you can also fill whatever gaps you see in our coverage by writing a few lines on the topic and including some sources for editors to use to expand it in the future.
 * Field a request at WikiProject Linguistics (many of which have been around since 2018).
 * Add content to an article. If you are looking for ideas, we have some at User:WugapodesOutreach/Articles needing linguist attention. If you want extra credit, see our guide at Writing better articles. You can also check out a random language article.

Advice for new editors
Usually, the "see also" section goes at the bottom, but depending on what you need, the following links may actually be more helpful than reading the prose below. Feel free to poke around.


 * Help:Wikipedia editing for researchers, scholars, and academics, a collaborative essay written as an orientation for academics and potential editors with a similar background;
 * User:Ian.thomson/Guide, a user essay from which this advice borrows heavily;
 * User:Wugapodes/Advice on editing Wikipedia for academics and experts, a user essay that serves as an archive for advice like this (and where this will all be archived eventually).

Getting around Wikipedia
Wikipedia can seem like a big and strange place if you've never worked behind the scenes before, but once you get oriented it's easy to get the hang of. Think of Wikipedia as a big building and the editors as occupants. Each page on the site is like a different room. Articles are like museum displays in a museum and the article talk pages are like the backstage areas where we work on the displays. You can make changes to the displays---and unlike most museums we encourage touching the exhibits, but sometimes you need to discuss things to figure out the best way to present the material.

Your user page is like the front door to your office: you can decorate it up to a point, but make sure that the decorations tell us about the work you (want to) do around the encyclopedia. Your user talk page is like the inside of your office: people will drop by to ask questions, give you notices, and sometimes chat a bit. Just like talking in your office, posting on your own talk page is like talking to yourself, so if you need help go to someone else's office.

The Teahouse is like our front office or reception area. Editors are there to field questions and point you to the right rooms. The Help Desk is like...well...a help desk. The Reference Desks are like library desks and editors there will try to help you find sources and materials to improve the exhibits.

Our policies and social contracts
The following are social contracts that members of the site have (directly or indirectly) agreed to prevent larger problems:
 * Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. All we do here is cite, summarize, and paraphrase the information available in professionally-published, mainstream, academic or journalistic sources neutrally and in proportion to a views' presence in the literature. We do not add unpublished interpretations.
 * When writing on talk pages please sign your comments with four tildes ( ~ ) so we know who said what when. Please do not change others' comments.
 * Our content inclusion is based on verifiability meaning that someone else could verify that someone else has made the same argument before we did. If the claim is not true, we need verifiable, published evidence that someone has said disputed it so that we can cover the dispute.
 * Always cite a source for any new information. When adding this information to articles, use, containing the name of the source, the author, page number, publisher or web address (if applicable). Don't worry too much if you get the formatting wrong; someone will come along and fix it eventually.
 * Wikipedia does not tolerate copyright violations or plagiarism.
 * Primary sources are usually avoided to prevent original research. Secondary or tertiary sources are preferred for this reason as well.
 * A subject usually gets a standalone article if it has received significant coverage in multiple, secondary, reliable sources that are independent of the subject.
 * Wikipedia is not a source for Wikipedia. This is intentional.
 * Articles are to be written from a neutral point of view. However we do not necessarily give equal validity to topics which reject and are rejected by mainstream academia. For example, our article on Earth does not pretend it is flat, hollow, and/or the center of the universe.
 * Material must be proportionate to what is found in the source cited. If a source makes a small claim and presents two larger counter claims, the material it supports should present one claim and two counter claims instead of presenting the one claim as extremely large while excluding or downplaying the counter claims.
 * Wikipedia is not a cook-book, instruction manual, travel guide, or train schedule.
 * It is recommended that you do not add anything relating to yourself to article space, and it is expressly forbidden to use Wikipedia to promote anything about yourself.
 * Biographies of persons assumed to be alive are held to especially high standards of verifiability -- all unsourced information may be removed, no matter how plausible.
 * Wikipedia is not censored. If material is reliably sourced, it is given due weight.
 * Credentials are irrelevant, noone here cares about them, we will ignore them.
 * Users should never make personal attacks on others. It's a good idea to avoid commenting on people, but instead focus on content.
 * No one owns any article here, or even their edits to articles. Work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed by anyone as long as they attribute you for your contribution and share their modifications with others under the same terms (and some other conditions).
 * Don't be afraid to make changes, be bold in your edits. Just be prepared to discuss the changes you make, and possibly have them reverted.  (Alternate version: If your edits are undone (reverted), go to the article's talk page to discuss them. )
 * Don't edit war. Except in cases of clear-cut vandalism, do not revert changes to a page more than 3 times within a 24 hour period.
 * Vandalism is defined as a deliberate attempt to mess up the site. It does not include real accidents, nor does it include someone trying to improve the encyclopedia in a way you disagree with.
 * It is best to stick to one account. There are very few legitimate reasons for creating multiple accounts, and outside of those reasons, we can and do block people (not just their accounts, but the people behind them) for trying to evade scrutiny.
 * Assume other editors are here to help as much as you are.