Wikipedia:GLAM/Wikipedians in Special Residence 2013-2014/Crash course

Wikipedia as a tool for information and education


 * Encyclopedia that everyone can edit (and correct!)
 * Wiki = editable website, pedia = encyclopedia

Basic rules

 * Non-commercial, depends on donations
 * Neutral point of view (NPOV)
 * Community with democratic rules, election of moderators, discussions about articles
 * Authority of contributors is established through the quality of their contributions
 * Be kind
 * Text, images, sound and video are contributed under free licence, meaning that
 * Authors of works have to be acknowledged
 * The same licence has to hold for use of your work by others
 * License Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0

Why contribute

 * The pleasure of offering your expertise
 * Wikipedia is a good channel for information as it is widely used, so through Wikipedia you can correct, e.g., widespread misunderstandings
 * Your (corrections to) Wikipedia articles can supplement your lectures for students
 * It’s cool and modern
 * Outreach, if you contribute substantially to Wikipedia articles you can mention them on your academic publication list

Ideal for education, many readers

 * We can use the counter http://stats.grok.se/ to monitor the number of page views
 * Article Ghana October 2013
 * 17,001 views on French Wikipedia fr.wikipedia
 * 131,368 views on English Wikipedia en.wikipedia
 * Article Djibouti October 2013
 * 18,764 views on French Wikipedia
 * 72,809 views on English Wikipedia
 * Article Côte d'Ivoire October 2013
 * 44,242 views on French Wikipedia
 * 81,104 views on English Wikipedia (Ivory Coast)

Tutorial

 * homepage en.wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page – left menu – Interaction – About Wikipedia – Top Menu – (Various Help topics, e.g.) Tutorial

Contribute

 * Please register as a user under a (nick)name. Click the Register button in the topmost right button bar on any Wikipedia page. If you like, you can provide your email address. No, you will not be spammed!
 * You get a user page, a try-out page(Sandbox) and a discussion page
 * Try the editor in your Sandbox
 * Click Edit-button
 * Try a change
 * Click Preview
 * Fill in an explanation of your correction/addition
 * Save
 * Mark-up: easy subdivisions using = signs – see w:en:Wikipedia:Cheatsheet
 * Start, e.g., with small corrections
 * Learn by imitation if you find a Wikipedia page you like: click Edit – inspect code of a page – leave page without changing (saving) it
 * See previous contributions to an article: click on “View history” button near the upper right of an article page
 * Discussions about the contents of an article can be found pressing the “Talk” button near the upper left of an article page

Upload your photographs of encyclopedic value you want to share

 * Preparation: please give your photo file an appropriate distinguishing descriptive name, so not PIC001 and the like but rather, e.g., Fountain_in_Akibu_city_centre_2013
 * Preparation: determine the category on Wikimedia Commons your photo would fit in
 * If none exists, think of a new photo category to create automatically
 * Go on the internet to en.wikipedia.org (homepage)
 * Click in left menu column on Tools – Upload file
 * Follow the guidelines
 * Fill in the data forms and supply the category name – might be a new one, but check first
 * Your photo appears in the chosen category

Citing Wikipedia

 * Plagiarism. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved August 10, 2004, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
 * "Plagiarism." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 July 2004. Web. 10 Aug. 2004.
 * "Plagiarism." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 July 2004. Web. 10 Aug. 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism