Adrianne WadewitzMemorial Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

ASECS 2015| Westin Bonaventure

(January 6, 1977 – April 8, 2014)

“I think women should edit

Wikipedia. I think more women

should edit Wikipedia than do. Who

edits the encyclopedia shapes the

knowledge we are choosing to

remember. What we choose to

include and how we choose to write

about i t... are choices that everyone

should be a part of, but I think we

should be recruiting women with our

eyes open. Recruiting more women

to Wikipedia will not necessarily fix

all the problems related to gender on

the encyclopedia.”

Wikipedia is the world’s free encyclopedia, accessed by nearly 500 million

unique visitors per month in more than 250 languages. It hosts more than 4.5

million articles in English with about 800 new articles created each day by

volunteer editors around the world.

Who edits Wikipedia?

• 87% men

• 13% women

• 75% under the age of 30

Female-made

edits, by article

category:

“Wikipedia will only contain ‘the sum of all human knowledge’ if its

editors are as diverse as the population itself: you can help make

that happen.”

—Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation

“A historian might spend decades undertaking research in

archives and writing up discoveries in scholarly journals, but if the

work does not have a presence online—and, specifically, a

presence that is not behind a paywall—it is all but invisible outside

academia.” — from Unforgetting Women Architects: From the Pritzker to Wikipedia

1st Meetup at Greene Exhibitions, July 13, 2013

Today:

1. Learn Wikipedia’s basic

principles.

2. Tutorial: Anatomy of a

Wikipedia page, basic

editing, inline citations

3. How to improve existing

articles and start a new

article or ‘stub’

4. Common mistakes to

watch out for.

WIKIPEDIA IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA

Neutral point of view – All Wikipedia articles and other

encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point

of view, representing significant views fairly, proportionately

and without bias.

BASIC RULES: BE NEUTRAL

AVOID CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Note: If you think you have a Conflict Of Interest (COI), don’t create the article.

Instead, you can suggest that someone else create it by posting this on a related

talk page.

Avoid Conflict of Interest – Wikipedia has an extensive

COI policy, but most importantly for our purposes: Don’t

create an article for yourself or your organization. For any

borderline conflict of interest concerns, it can be helpful to

disclose affiliations on your User page.

No original research – Your article should summarize the

existing, published knowledge on your subject. Even if you

know something to be true, do not include any previously

unpublished anecdotes, data, opinions or theories.

BASIC RULES: NO ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Verifiability – The information you include—especially

quotes and anything likely to be challenged—must be

attributed to a reliable, published source.

In Wikipedia, verifiability means that anyone reading and

editing the encyclopedia can check that the information has

come from a reliable source. It is accomplished by adding

inline citations (footnotes).

BASIC RULES: VERIFIABILITY IS KEY

BASIC RULES: DO NOT PLAGIARIZE

Do not plagiarize – Anything you add to Wikipedia must

be written in your own words. Do not copy and paste

information from other websites or sources. When including

quotes, be sure they are attributed.

ANATOMY OF A WIKIPEDIA PAGE

Select Edit to make changes to the article. A record of page edits can be found in the View

History tab. Every page edit can be traced to a user account.

Talk pages are where editors can discuss the article and any editing issues that arise. The talk page also has edit and view history tabs.

ANATOMY OF A WIKIPEDIA PAGE: VIEW HISTORY

ANATOMY OF A WIKIPEDIA PAGE: EDITING

Select Edit to make changes to the page. Use the formatting tools to add links and more.

ANATOMY OF A WIKIPEDIA PAGE: EDIT SUMMARY

You can enter an explanation of your changes in the Edit summary box,

which you'll find below the edit window.

If the change you have made to a page is minor, check the box "This is

a minor edit."

You should always use the Show preview button. After you've entered a

change in the editing window, click the Show preview. This lets you see

what the page will look like after your edit, before you actually save it to

Wikipedia.

ANATOMY OF A WIKIPEDIA PAGE: SHOW PREVIEW

DEMO: MAKING A SIMPLE EDIT TO A WIKIPEDIA PAGE

By Michael Mandiberg (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],

via Wikimedia Commons

USER PAGES

• Click on your Username in the top left

to view your User Page.

• Select Edit to make edits to your User

Page.

• Use the markup tools to format your

text and add links to other Wikipedia

pages or to external websites

By Michael Mandiberg (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],

via Wikimedia Commons

Take a few minutes to edit your own user page.

A NOTE ON NOTABILITY

Notability – Every article on Wikipedia must prove the

notability of its subject. To help your article pass the

notability test, I recommend a rule of three: Be sure to cite

at least THREE reliable, published sources that are

independent of your subject. If you can’t find at least

three good sources, you may find it difficult to prove

notability and your article will risk deletion.

Good sources are independent of your subject and provenotability.

When possible, focus on:• university-level textbooks• books published by respected publishing houses• magazines• journals• mainstream newspapers

When using websites, focus on those that are most likely to have undergone an editorial process that includes fact-checking.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD SOURCE?

DEMO: ADDING INLINE CITATIONS

EDITING IN THE SANDBOX

ADDING INLINE CITATIONS: FOOTNOTES

Use the Cite toggle to add inline citations that reference your sources. From the dropdown Templates menu, choose to cite web, cite news, cite book, or cite journal and the appropriate template will appear.

ADDING INLINE CITATIONS: FOOTNOTES

Fill in the fields with as much bibliographic information as you have. It will format the info and the inline citation (footnote) will appear at the bottom of your article under the “Notes” section.

On a new article page, you will need to create a section

named "Notes" or "References" at the bottom of the page:

ADDING INLINE CITATIONS: FOOTNOTES

Type the following in your editing window:

==Notes==

{{Reflist}}

This is where your footnotes will appear. The text of your article should be typed ABOVE the notes.

By Failedprojects (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

QUESTIONS SO FAR?

• No conflict of interest• No plagiarism.• Written from a neutral point of view

• At least THREE inline citations to reliable published sources that are independent of the subject and prove notability.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD ARTICLE

Click any red link to start a new article, or blue link to edit an existing one.

CHOOSE YOUR SUBJECT

If there is already an article with the same name as the one you want to create, you may need to disambiguate (or make less ambiguous) by adding a parenthetical tag—for ex., Russell Ferguson (curator), to avoid confusion with the Wikipedia entry for a very different Russell Ferguson.

DISAMBIGUATION

WIKIPEDIA “STUBS”

In Wikipedia, a stub is a short article in need of expansion. A good stub provides context so other editors can improve upon it. My recommendation: include at least three inline citations and then PUBLISH! A short article is better than none.

Your introductory paragraph must:• Include full name in bold, followed by dates of birth and death in parentheses• Provide context (most often, nationality and occupation)• Assert notability (museum collections, awards, legacy, etc.)

HOW TO START YOUR ARTICLE

As you continue writing, you can add section headings like:==Early life and education==

==Selected Works==

==Awards== To make a sub-heading, use 3[===] instead of 2.

Add categories to your article page so it will be grouped with similar articles and easier to find on Wikipedia. Categories should be placed at the very bottom of your article code, after the {{reflist}}.

OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO

Add external links that point readers to further information about the article subject that is accurate and on-topic, but remember that these should be kept to a minimum.

Focus on material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject but cannot be referenced in the article—for example, official websites, artworks, movie or television credits (IMDB), or finding aids.

OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO

• Using external links instead of inline citations.

• Creating footnotes in any other unorthodox way. Be sure they are using the cite templates!

• Copying text directly from artist’s website (plagiarism) or citing statement on website (not an independent source).

• Non-neutral POV: Feminist editing.

COMMON MISTAKES TO WATCH FOR

• Post your question at the Wikipedia Los Angeles Facebookgroup page.

• Attend another edit-a-thon.

• Post a question on the talk page of another Wikipedia editor.

• Ask a question to the Wikipedia Teahouse question board.

ASKING FOR HELP AND RESOLVING DISPUTES

Over the next hour, try adding some well-cited sentences and paragraphs to existing articles that interest you, or create a new article for someone on our worklist.

Unforgetting L.A. edit-a-thon at 356 S. Mission, July 2014.

WHAT NOW? BE BOLD!

THANK YOU! // Q&A

By Michael Mandiberg (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons