Wikipedia:Instructional material/MediaWiki training videos

YouTube

 * "Add and edit pages with Media Wiki", lifehacker, March 28, 2006: "A short demonstration on adding, editing and formatting content using MediaWiki, the software that powers Wikipedia."

Brian Will
An administrator of a public wiki recorded some MediaWiki training videos, to help people learn how to edit on his wiki:


 * http://www.brianwill.net/wiki/index.php?title=LearnProgramming:How_to_edit_our_wiki

Most of the material in the videos applies to any MediaWiki site, including. Many of the examples feature Wikipedia. The videos could be better, but they are not bad. They should be helpful for Wikipedia beginners as an easy way to get a quick overview of how to edit on, particularly those who prefer to see software demonstrated rather than read about it. If nothing else, these videos demonstrate the value of the concept, and may inspire similar efforts from Wikipedians interested in educating new users.

Hi-resolution .avi files
You may prefer to download the video files to view directly rather than from the wiki page in the previous section. Here are direct links:

 001-intro.avi 002-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi  Warning: the above video shows an example page on Wikipedia which contains a potentially offensive word in its title.  003-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi 004-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi 005-shortcuts-and-interwiki-links.avi 006-wikitext-markup.avi <li>007-wikitext-markup.avi</li> <li>008-wikitext-markup.avi</li> <li>009-wikitext-markup-lists.avi</li> <li>010-wikitext-markup-links.avi</li> <li>011-wikitext-markup-links.avi</li> <li>012-wikitext-markup-tables.avi</li> <li>013-wikitext-markup-templates.avi</li> </ul>

The above videos use the x264 codec (a Lossy compression which reproduces screen shots clearly). To view the videos, you may need to install one of these video players: <ul> <li>VLC media player <li>VideoLAN <li>X264 </ul>

If you want to watch all the videos sequentially, you can download them to a directory on your computer (for example, in Microsoft Windows: ), and make a playlist file for VLC media player (for example, ). In the playlist file, edit a list of your video files in the order you want them to play:

C:\junk\001-intro.avi C:\junk\002-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi C:\junk\003-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi C:\junk\004-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi C:\junk\005-shortcuts-and-interwiki-links.avi C:\junk\006-wikitext-markup.avi C:\junk\007-wikitext-markup.avi C:\junk\008-wikitext-markup.avi C:\junk\009-wikitext-markup-lists.avi C:\junk\010-wikitext-markup-links.avi C:\junk\011-wikitext-markup-links.avi C:\junk\012-wikitext-markup-tables.avi C:\junk\013-wikitext-markup-templates.avi

and then you can open your playlist file in VLC media player via the usual File | Open... command.

Low-resolution .mov files
If you don't want to install VLC media player, you can download lower-resolution (but still fairly legible) versions of the videos in QuickTime format from Revver:

<ul> <li>http://one.revver.com/find/user/brianwill</li> <li>http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91522.mov &mdash; part 1 of 13</li> <li>http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91446.mov &mdash; part 2 of 13</li> <li>http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91447.mov &mdash; part 3 of 13</li> <li>http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91448.mov &mdash; part 4 of 13</li> <li>http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91521.mov &mdash; part 5 of 13</li> <li>http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91450.mov &mdash; part 6 of 13</li> <li>http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91451.mov &mdash; part 7 of 13</li> <li>http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91452.mov &mdash; part 8 of 13</li> <li>http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91453.mov &mdash; part 9 of 13</li> <li>http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91454.mov &mdash; part 10 of 13</li> <li>http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91455.mov &mdash; part 11 of 13</li> <li>http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91456.mov &mdash; part 12 of 13</li> <li>http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91445.mov &mdash; part 13 of 13</li> </ul>