Presentation used for Wikipedia training workshops as part of the British Library/AHRC Wikipedian in Residence program.

1. Wikipedia
Workshop
Andrew Gray – andrew.gray@bl.uk
@generalising
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2. About Wikipedia & Wikimedia
 Wikimedia
 80-100,000 contributors in 280 languages
and eleven core projects
 Image repository, dictionary, news site…
 …read by 7% of the world!
 Wikipedia
 20+,000,000 articles, 4,000,000 in English
 6,500 articles and 235,000 edits per day
(…and twelve years ago, this was all fields…)
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3. …so what is Wikipedia?
 …an encyclopedia
 …written neutrally and verifiably
 …using previously published information
 …free to use, distribute, or reuse
 …a collaborative community
 …with no firm rules
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4. …so why take part?
 Give back to a valuable resource
 Interact with your readers (and vice versa)
 Immense reach and exposure
 Hundreds of ways to contribute
 Editing is the most effective way to engage with the community
 …and it’s rewarding!
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5. Content
 Content should be neutral, verifiable, and not original research
 Not a textbook, journal, or instruction manual
 …inform, don’t instruct
 Neutral secondary source
 …reflects the consensus in the existing literature
 …clearly supported by citations to reliable sources
 Conflicts of interest
 …don’t write about yourself, your employer, your job
 …not a promotional tool
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6. Collaboration
 Everything is public, everything* is dynamic
 Vigorously open & public community
 Decisions made by consensus supported by policy
 Not a political experiment!
 Social rules:
 Assume good faith
 Discuss contentious changes
 Undo other’s changes with care
 Sign your comments
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7. Style
A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents,
either for general use or for a specific publication, organization or field. The implementation of a
style guide provides uniformity in style and formatting of a document.
A set of standards for a specific organization is often known as "house style." Style guides are
common for general and specialized use, for the general reading and writing audience, and for
students and scholars of various academic disciplines, medicine, journalism, the law, government,
business, and industry.[citation needed]
 …it’s immediately recognisable!
 Neutral, dispassionate tone, written for a lay audience.
 Compromise between varieties of English.
 Comprehensive (and absurdly detailed) internal MoS.
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8. Internal processes
 All edits are visible through watchlists and page histories
 About 7% are vandalism or malicious
 Automated processes to detect these
 Median time to correction < 2 minutes… but some stay much longer
 Individual discussion pages for all articles – “talk”
 Quality review and assessment process
 Specialised “wikiproject” working groups and central noticeboards
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9. Demonstration time!
you should be seeing a Wikipedia
page, just wait a second…
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10. Formatting
 Headers ==heading==
===heading2===
 Style ''italic''
'''bold'''
* bulleted list
** bulleted list (indent)
# numbered list
: blank indent
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11. Links
 Internal link [[link target]]
(alternate title) [[link target|title]]
 Web link [http://www.example.com title]
 Template {{example}}
 Special links [[fr:Example]]
[[category:Example]]
[[file:Example.png]]
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12. Citations
Wikipedia’s obsession…
The sky is blue.
The sun, however,
is not.<ref>"The
Sky" (2008)</ref>
{{reflist}}
<references/>
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13. Communicating
 Every article has a talk page, every user has a user talk page
 Useful for coordination and discussion – and general problems
 Discussion pages are the best way to engage with the community
 All communication is public and permanent
 Sign your comments, but not your article edits
 to add a signature, use ~~~~ (shift-#)
 Note internal “project” pages – policies, guidelines, working groups,
processes, metadata, maintenance, administrivia…
 Lost? Try {{helpme}} on your user talkpage
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