Tentative Wikipedia Tutorial Script

(This script is to be narrated over screen-shot videos, possibly with Power Point slides for summaries in between...)

These videos are intended to start off with the more basic and useful information, in case you would like to ignore the rest for the moment and just get started and try it out at Wikipedia before getting into the more advanced parts.

Although most of the tutorial aims itself at Wikipedia users, its concepts should be mostly valid for all Mediawiki sites.

Background

Let's imagine that we are in a special magical library. We find a book of interest, and as we are reading the book, we notice that there is an error. We take out our special magical pen, make the correction inside the book, and voila! The book itself is altered with our correction along with all copies of this book in libraries throughout the world. A magical scribe also writes in his magical logbook that we have made such a correction so it is available for anyone interested in the book to verify for themselves, and if necessary, they could revert back to the edition before we made the correction. If a trouble-maker comes into this library, he can be banned, so we don't need to worry about uninformed people vandalizing our books. Besides, the magical scribe is perfect at recording all changes.

But we are not just limited to making corrections. We can also add notes in the margin or add sections to the book that we feel are missing. We can even reorganize what the author has written to be more intuitive. Of course the original author himself or herself will be notified immediately as well as anyone else interested in the book that changes have been made, and they will also have the option to build upon (or possibly reject) the choices we have made. We can discuss our feelings with each other about the changes in order to come to a consensus.

Yet this is not all. One of the most intriguing aspects of this magical library is that we are not confined to work inside of a book. Since all of the authors in this library have opened their book's contents to the public, we can actually magically copy portions of the book that we like and put them into another book. In fact, we can draw upon many books in this way in order to build our own public encyclopedia. In this way, whenever anyone writes a new book, we can find the sections that are interesting, and summarize them or bring them over into our new expandable encyclopedia. In fact, many authors just choose to add entries directly to the encyclopedia since it allows for the entry to fit in nicely with the content that is already there. With all of these authors working over time on the same articles, they improve the quality, accuracy, and organization of the materials, and continue to expand it as new information becomes available.

Today this magical library has become possible. Only, this library is available from your computer via the internet, and it is called "wiki".

We know that the invention of writing and printing allowed for knowledge to be accumulated accurately and to be readily dispersed across time and space. Just as the invention of writing allowed for civilization to expand enormously as not only readers were able to find information of interest and use to them, but new writers could also more easily view and integrate this previous content into their own pages, adapting it or expanding upon it according to changes in time and changes due to their advancing understanding.

It is my position that wiki technology may be becoming almost as significant an invention as writing itself in that these websites allow for an even easier recording and publishing of knowledge and allow for even greater integration of knowledge into a well-organized framework.

To give you more concrete examples, albeit fictional, with which you may already be familiar....In the television series, Star Trek, the space ship's onboard computer can be called upon by the ship's crew to provide introductory or detailed information on topics not only relevant to present technology but also to various cultures over time and space. For example, the captain of the ship, speaking from say the 23rd century, might ask the computer to find out the basics of 20th century literature. If we were to rely on companies to collect this information, we might find that certain companies might collapse, that copyright would restrict us from reusing or building upon their contents, or that the contributors within their company might not have as expansive or in-depth knowledge of topics which others might be able to provide. With wiki websites, anyone familiar with a given topic can help edit and add articles that are missing.

To take another fictional example with which you might be familiar, in Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", authors from across the galaxy contribute introductory articles about planets and their cultures. In fact, the popularity of this book, led to a British wiki encyclopedia to use its name.

What is wiki?

Wiki is a Hawaiian word meaning "fast"-- (Wikiwiki is a reduplication of the word with the same meaning)

What does a wiki website have to do with being fast?...

1) One can rapidly edit and add new pages just by using a web browser connected to the internet. Very little technical know-how is needed.

2) Your edits to pages become immediately visible and immediately accessible to the world after you decide to save the edited page.

3) Any visitor to any of the pages (except for locked pages) can begin editing usually immediately without a lengthy registration process

thus leaving the widest net for potential contributors. That is why the public encylopedia, Wikipedia.org has since January of 2001 built up over 330,000 articles (over 6 million edits)

But don’t worry about the ease of just anybody being able to come along and use it...It works, really!

So what's to prevent misinformation, you ask? What's to prevent misinformation from any source? People interested in and usually qualified in the subject monitor, edit, and contribute to the pages of interest to them. Wikipedia has been cited in anywhere from scholarly discussion boards to Court documents, so it has been recognized from various sources as containing useful information even if it is not formally reviewed by any expert organization.

Previous versions of each page edit are kept so it is always possible to go back to a previous version & there are security measures we will talk about in case there are any real trouble-makers out there...

Although it is a common use of wiki sites to make them freely accessible on the internet, it is possible for your organization or company to have its own local wiki which can only be accessed by members of your network, such as if a company wanted to collaborate on creating some company documentation or if even just a few co-authors wanted to work together on a piece of poetry.

It is also possible to have password-protected online wiki sites, such as for only those who register or who have been invited to join.

Some wiki sites allow the author and/or administrators (usually at least system administrators) to be able to lock specific pages so that only those with special access can edit these pages. This is useful for the main page of a wiki site which might include a disclaimer that the site's contents can be variable from moment to moment based on who has last contributed to the site. One might also note on a locked page up to what date the site's contents have been reviewed, if there is some review of the site.

Wiki sites can also differ in their intended point of view. Some try to be neutral in tone, while others aim to argue from a particular point of view, or to allow many points of view to be housed on their own pages.

Audience

The audience of a wiki site is really anybody who likes to read, learn, write, edit, or teach.

Nonscholars as well as scholars can use the site; Nonprogrammers as well as programmers can use the site.

And one can simply be a visitor to the site (i.e., a user) or can become an occasional or regular contributor (we will cover how to do these during our content and editing sections, respectively).

Wikipedia main page

What we see now is the web browser software called Firefox. You can use Internet Explorer or whatever web browser you prefer.

(" I am now typing in the Wikipedia site name into the URL window - w-i-k-i-p-e-d-i-a DOT o-r-g" )

We have a choice for the site in a number of different languages, according to the present number of articles they contain. We choose the English version of Wikipedia which gives us the prefix "en" (each language's main page has its own prefix).

Now, don't be surprised if the page doesn't load immediately. Try again later if there are some problems. There is a lot of traffic to the site and this can tax the servers. Wikipedia posts notices encouraging people to donate funds to this public site so that the site's infrastructure can become faster and more reliable and handle more people visiting it.

Now, Wikipedia is just one type of wiki site. Other wiki sites have their own policies, standards, content, and editing procedures. But Wikipedia is a very good example of the power of open collaborative editing for organizing and building content. Wikipedia allows anyone to edit almost any page (besides the main page which is locked) without needing to even register. It is fully accessible on the web by anyone with a web browser.

As you can see, the top section here deals with items of current interest, featured articles, and the like.

To the left (or to the right if you change your preferences) is a toolbar with quicklinks to important pages. We will discuss these a bit later.

Now, we can see at the top that we have the option to browse articles by their topic or category. Or, you can instead choose the search field here to type in a word or phrase to try to find a particular page you have in mind. Yet another approach would be to visit the "Quick index" to find an article in a comprehensive alphabetical listing (click there and go back) or go to "All articles by title" to start at the beginning.

We will be exploring the main content of this website a little bit later. For now, let's see what else is available for us on this main page.

As you can see, there have been over 455,000 articles already written here since January 2001. This should give you some idea of how inviting it is for people to use this technology and concept to build web content together.

As you can see at the bottom of the main English page (you can get here by clicking the languages links or quickbar), there are many languages ranging from Chinese or Hindi to Arabic or Farsi and to Esperanto or even Simple English).

These language pages have their directions and content all in the language they are representing. However, it is possible for any Wikimedia page (including the English pages) to include multiple writing scripts within a page, if say, someone wanted to explain the meaning of a word or phrase from another language, such as from an original text being cited.

Also at the bottom of the page are links to other related sister projects to Wikipedia, such as Wiktionary, a multilingual collaborative dictionary.

At the top of the page again, we have Help. This is hopefully self-explanatory; if not, maybe you really need some. The Community Portal, listed here and here, is a good place to go for a lot of basic information on how to add a page or edit, what standards Wikipedia follows, and so on.

There are also the obligatory disclaimers--obligatory especially for a wiki site where the content is very changeable from moment to moment.

You can opt for a printable version on any page (you probably don't want the quickbar and the like to show up if you just want to print a page's content)

Now you can also change how you see pages in general by visiting Preferences. You can change such things as the position of the quickbar, the layout of the page, and so on.

Wikipedia does not require its contributors to register. This opens the door for more contributors who might otherwise be deterred from contributing. However, if you would like your own page, you will need to register. To log in, just select log in at the top of the page. You can then store the password on your computer so you will not need to manually log in each time. You can also logout after you are done or if you wish to allow someone else at your computer to log in to their own account at Wikipedia.

We should take a few moments now to explain the standards being used here at Wikipedia for articles contributed

Important Site Standards (besides the obvious nonprofanity, etc.)

(go immediately to GNU and NPOV info (see next section))

GNU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (bottom) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License

Wikipedia has adopted the GNU Free Documentation license for all of its content.

That means that any work submitted here must be either from the permission of the author, under "fair use", or public domain. Any content that an author submits to Wikipedia which was not already copyrighted will enter into the public domain. It can then be freely modified and distributed by whomever.

The license in fact requires that anyone adopting or modifying the contents and then distributing the contents must give the same rights to others to copy, modify, or redistribute whatever works they create based on this content.

So what does this mean exactly?

Let's say the Imperialiast Megacorporation decided to take advantage of all the free work people have been contributing to this giant encyclopedia and download the contents of the whole wiki site to use in their own work. It is in fact possible for anyone to download all of the pages at wikipedia, including even the software used to run Wikipedia. Now, the hypothetical Imperialist Megacorporation could redistribute its own version of this wiki encylopedia and even charge people for it. However, those people who purchased their product or services would have to be given the right to also be able to freely copy, modify, and redistribute not only the content which the Megacorporation had copied, but any work that the Megacorporation had derived from what they had copied. So, if this Megacorporation decided to say copy the Wikipedia content, add lots of advertisements and publicity for their site and got people to somehow abandon Wikipedia and contribute instead to their website, the original Wikipedia fans (who didn't care for all this new advertising and the like) would only need to have one person who had purchased Megacorporation's services to redistribute all of the expanded contents back to them, which they could then redistribute freely as well (while simply citing the source).

Neutral Point of View (NPOV)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (top) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal (middle right) (briefly show: what can do, about Wikipedia, Writing/Reference Resources) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view

Now, you may be wondering, how can people come to any agreement on what should go on a page, particularly on controversial topics?

Wikipedia solves this problem for itself to some degree by insisting that articles adhere to a neutral point-of-view (NPOV for short). This means that, although Wikipedia articles can make reference to common beliefs and opinions held by groups or individuals, the articles should not be written in any kind of subjective tone (or with subjective information that is stated as though it were fact). For example, it is possible to write an article which states that such-and-such group believes X about the economy (while such-and-such group believes Y about the economy), but one cannot say on Wikipedia that so-and-so is correct in their opinions or that such-and-such an opinion is valid or more valid than other opinions . Thus, if a group wants to point out the reasoning behind their opinions (or draw attention to a neglected perspective), they can do so, but while respecting the description of other opinions on a subject, and without taking on a biased tone or providing uncorrobortable statements as fact.

Although Wikipedia aims to be a more general storehouse of generally recognized information, and not to be a place for original research, it is possible to express within reason in an article, for example, that "some have proposed such-and-such". Even on the dictionary sister project of Wikipedia, it is possible to have original ideas expressed to some degree, as there is a page which houses proposed words--words that have just been coined by someone and which have not been accepted by any wide audience.

However, even with these means of allowing a forum for all ideas to be expressed, there can be debate about the prominence given to certain topics, what phrasing is acceptable, which items can be stated as "fact", and so on. Such debates can often be resolved an an article's corresponding discussion page. These discussion pages can be accessed from any article, and they allow people to express their opinions as to why such-and-such a phrasing or organization should be added, modified, or deleted from a page. If there is still no consensus and/or there is a constant rewriting of a page from one style back to another, it is possible to submit the page to a public vote to try to resolve the issue. These votes can be based on objections as to a perceived lack of a neutral point of view or to a lack of accuracy. However, it is usually possible, even on controversial topics, to come to some kind of consensus.

Wikipedia Content

We are now going to visit some of the content at this site. As we visit these pages, keep in mind that all of the pages can be edited (we’ll discuss how to do this later).

You can click on the "browse by topic" link here at the top (and add it to your bookmarks or favorites (depending on how your system calls it) if you like), or just scroll down the page each time you visit. You could also choose the text only option or browse by category (or academic discipline) if you just want to see the topical/category information. We will explain how to view or assign categories later.

So you can see here with have the main categories: Nature, Human, Culture, Society, Technology, and Abstraction. Note, these may be changed at any time. (((It is even possible to edit (or suggest edits for) these main categories and have them become immediately accessible to thousands if not millions of people.)))

All of the links here are either blue or purple which means these pages all have at least some content on them. The purple coloring is simply used by this browser to show that I have already visited these pages before). Now if we come across an orange link, that means that the page has not yet been created, but someone can click on that link to immediately go to the page to start editing it so that the page can be added with some content.

Main Categorizations

Let's get a sampling of these pages by visiting a science page, a cultural page, and a society page.

First, let's go to see the first page here in alphabetical order, astronomy.

So you can see immediately that it is possible to add pictures to any page. There are categories here which we can click on to see other pages in the same higher-level category, for example, "Natural Sciences". After a basic introduction to the topic, we have an automatically-generated table of contents which conveniently makes links to the main headings on this page. This can be turned off from showing up in your user preferences if you don't want this convenience.

I'll go to a "short history", and as I'm reading I notice a link to constellations. If I'm an amateur astronomer, maybe I'd like to learn these constellations. So I click on this page, choose a constellation here, and then there is a nice picture with this information and some technical information about it as well as the mythological stories behind it.

Now, back to the main page.

Let's go to a culture page. Poetry anyone?

As you can see as we scroll down the page, there is a great deal of basic information about poetry from various angles. Its history, styles, and so on. Now I see those orange links, meaning that if I click on one, this blank page will show up meaning that there is no content here, and I can begin editing it. We will discuss more later on how to do this.

Now, going back to the main poetry page, you see how specific we can get. Let's choose Urdu poetry. This article is described as a stub, meaning that although it is a beginning, it is not really fleshed out in enough detail to be considered a regular page.

Lastly for the general categories, going back to the main page, we'll choose a social science. Let's say, "law".

International law, UN Charter, link to UN Charter (also can have external links)...We're pretty familiar with our own country's Constitutional documents, but what about the one that in a sense belongs to all of us. ... This sounds like it could be a good motto for Wikipedia, especially since its members do come from around the whole world...

Other Categorizations

As you can see there are other categorizations here as well:

We have Almanac-type data (also called here as reference tables) of every type imaginable. ((Go there)) I've seen list of self-referential songs, list of puppets, list of punk movies. You won't these in your average almanac.

One can search by the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress classification (even though we are viewing online Wikipedia articles here, not print books, the classification of subjects might still be useful for those familiar with the system)((Don't Go there))

There are timelines by theme or general timelines of important events of history listed by year/decade/century, and so on.((Go there))

There are a list of dates for specific dates in history or for recurring anniversaries.((Go there))

There are cycles for lists of things that recur but not according to specific dates of our calendar.((Go there))

There is even how-to information for keeping track of procedural knowledge of various types.((Go there))

Now that you have seen some example pages, let's take a look at how to use some of the quickbar items which typically appear on each page.

Searching or Browsing Your Way Through Wikipedia

Besides the many ways of browsing that become possible because of the way people create new content and organization of that content, there are also many additional tools available for making one's way through Wikipedia.

Search box

First of all, there is the search box. You can type in some text here after clicking your mouse into the field. If you know the specific name of a page, you can click "go" (or just hit return) and you will be brought directly to that page. (You can also type it into the URL if you know this or bookmark your favorite pages.) If you do not have a specific page in mind, but want to find what pages include the text you are searching for (whether in their title or their content), click "search".

This search box may be even more useful than the broader Google searches if you are looking for a general introduction to a particular subject. Although it may seem counterintuitive to say that the articles at Wikipedia may be better written than on an average personal website, since anyone can edit the articles and occasionally there are conflicting points-of-views coexisting on a page, the collaborative nature of Wiki websites has the potential to allow multiple minds to improve not only the content of an article but also even its accuracy, readability and structure.

As far as navigating through Wikipedia, it is also possible to combine our approaches of using the search box, with browsing through the topical organization. For example, you might want to do a search to get started with exploring a topic and then visit the pages of interest that link from the page or pages that result from your search. Or, conversely, you may wish to browse through the topics and then perform a search within a page by using your browser's "find" function (usually under "edit" in the menu bar of your browsing program).

Now onto other ways to find information...

Random, WhatLinksHere

Random is fairly self-explanatory. (we'll try it out) ((Do it again)).

Another option you can use at most pages is "WhatLinksHere". This is very handy for finding other pages that relate in some way to the page in question which may not be included on the page itself. If you are looking to visit the more general category under which this page falls, it is usually more useful to visit the category listed for that page (if there is one already). However, this kind of information may also appear under "What Links Here" if people have added it as a link from a higher level page. This "WhatLinksHere" feature is also useful if you have, for example, created your own page, and you would like to know as time goes by whether anyone else has felt that the page you added (if others can find it) was relevant enough for them to make a link to your page from the page or pages they were working on. So if you added a page on famous unsolved scientific mysteries, you might be interested to find out that the page you started has had links added to it from the general science page, from the mysteries page, and so on. After finding this information, you can then visit the pages to see in what context the link to your page was made.

Discussion and user pages

(in more depth later)

Discuss this page: These discussion pages can be accessed from any article, and they allow people to express their opinions as to why such-and-such a phrasing or organization on the corresponding article page should be added, modified, or deleted from a page. So, if we visit the poetry page again, we can see on its discussion page that there has been a good amount of discussion about how the page should be structured, how to define poetry at the page, and so on. These pages are important for resolving disagreements. However, one does not need to worry too much about needing to consult before making changes. It is often best to simply demonstrate the change you would like to see, and if others disagree, they can then raise the subject or easily revert back to one of the previous versions. If you have added the article to your watchlist, the discussion page for that article will automatically be added to your watchlist as well, so you can be kept informed if people are discussing your page of interest as well as if they are editing it. Once you are on a discussion (also called a talk page) we can click to go back to view the article (or in some cases the project) page.

Another way to discuss issues relating to Wikipedia, is to visit an individual user's page. Instead of user's pages having a "Discussion" page, they are called "user_talk" pages. You can leave comments here. If you choose "post a comment" once you are on their talk page from the quickbar (or also the sign next to the edit link in some view types), as will also work on Discussion pages, it will automatically add a section to the end for you, although you can also choose to "edit this page" as you do for other pages, though this will load all of the code for the page. You will see that you can also opt to email this user or even see an automatic listing of what contributions they have made to the Wikipedia site. People often like to list their important contributions manually on their main user page anyways but by visiting the "user contributions" link you can see every single edit they have made.

RecentChanges, PageHistory, Watchlist

(covered in more depth later)

The RecentChanges allows you to monitor all edits to the entire Wikipedia site. PageHistory at the top allows you to see all the edits made to that particular page. And Add to Watchlist allows you to monitor changes at your pages of interest. We will discuss all of these in more depth in the editing section.

Languages

Now, in addition to the main page, other article pages can have links to pages in other languages corresponding to that article. However, it may be that the page has not been created in another language yet, so you may see few or even no language links for a given page.

Here, for poetry, we have links to several languages. Let's try Esperanto. We can see a corresponding page, which is noticeably smaller, but it is a fair start.

As you can see by the difference in size, these pages are not (necessarily) mere translations, so the pages may have different content.

Although it is not necessary, contributors familiar with the languages into which the page is translated may wish to synchronize content between the pages to make sure that any useful information of general interest on the topic that is included on one page is included on the other.

It would sure help to have an officially agreed upon international supplementary language so that most of the content could be included on one page and which everyone would be familiar with!

Wikipedia Editing

Editing pages

One of the most inviting aspects of wiki sites is that one does not need always to finish what one starts. If you begin a clear pattern, it is possible others may be moved to help flesh out what you have started. Or, even if you are the only one contributing, it is nice to be able to get your content out there, and just work on it bit by bit, and not have to feel the pressure of having to finish it on a specific deadline. To take advantage of this great potential wiki sites offer, and to learn how to integrate your pages into the diverse and useful organizational schemes at Wikipedia along with the many other pages of content at Wikipedia, we will now go into the mechanics of editing and adding pages.

On the main page, we see here a link to "view source" This means that we can see the wiki code that made the change, but we cannot actually edit the wiki code. This is the case for pages such as the main page which are locked because they are too important to allow just anybody to come by and edit. Other pages generated by the system such as the recentchanges cannot be edited. However, for most pages, there will be an "edit this page" option in the quickbar here, and these can be clicked to bring you to the code which you can then modify if you wish.

Now if we want to try out editing without worrying about disturbing something important, we can go either to our own user page (a link is listed at the top of each page for easy access). Another option is to go to a place designed to allow people to test out wiki code and learn how to use it. It is called the "sandbox".

So we can click the "edit this page" link at the side, the top, or at the bottom.

So, I'll click it here...Now you see a text box which includes the wiki code for this page. The first line we are not supposed to change as it is what provides the instructions to the user. Below this we have a little bit of "testing" text that someone has put here before to apparently try things out.

Now, I need to first place my mouse's cursor into the text box. I can then move around with my computer's arrow keys to the place I would like to add, change, or delete text. Since this is only a test area, nobody should mind if I change what has been done here. So, I will remove one of these "testing" words. Now, I think I'll add another number at the end. Finally, I'd like to add my own text on a new line.

Now if I just want to see first what my page will look like, I can click "preview" here. In my preferences I can choose to have the preview of that page show up either below or above my code. In this case, it shows up above the code.

Ok, look good?

Well, the page reminds me at the top that I have only previewed the page for my own benefit. It will not show up for the whole world to see until I save it.

But before I save it, it is a good idea to fill in this "edit summary" here.

This box is intended to show others in a summary form what you have done to the page. This summary you have added will show up when people look at the history of this page, making it easier for others to see what has been done to this page over time. Your summary will also appear in the recent changes list for the Wikipedia site and will also show up in other people's watch lists, if they have added the page you are editing to their watchlist. This can save them the trouble of visiting the page you have edited if they want to take your word on what you say you have done to the page in your summary.

So to fill it in with something, I can click into this box (or use my tab key to get there if I my cursor is in the text box). I'll say "Just testing..." Now I can save it.

And, voila! Here it is, now available to anybody who comes to this page--at least until somebody else changes it again.

If I have started editing a page and, in the meantime, someone else has added a new edit for the page, I will be told when I try to save the page that there are conflicting edits. I can then either overwrite the new edit with my page (which would not be fair to the person who just spent their time adding something) or I can adjust my own code to include the new edit's information.

Adding pages

Now, you may be wondering, that is nice and all, but how do you make NEW pages?

The typical way to make a new page is to make a link in another page leading to the as yet uncreated page. Just type in the desired name, surrounding it with double brackets.

We'll test this out in my own personal page this time, instead of the sand box.

So, I'll make a link to a new page with the name /my own personal think space. In the case of a user page, I need to also put a slash at the front in order to indicate that it is a subpage of my own page. Otherwise, the slash should not be added. And I summarize what I'm doing here.

The orange color means that the page has not had any content added to it yet, even though I have set up a place to link to it here. If I click on this new link, I will be brought directly to the edit page for the new page and I can begin adding content here too. If I go back to my page, I will need to refresh it, and then I will see that Wikipedia has automatically changed the link color now that I have added my subpage. It makes the links for you, so you can concentrate on your writing.

Linking to pages

Internal wiki links

Let's make some links to some pages which we know already exist. I'll add Poetry, Astronomy, and Persian poetry and then summarize this in the summary. In this case, the first two pages are in a blue color (actually they are really purple here since I have recently visited them, but they may be blue for you if you have not visited the pages yet). These colors show that the page already has content added to it. However, sadly, for my "Persian poetry" entry, such a page does not already exist, at least with this particular title I gave for it (it might possibly be listed under Middle-Eastern Poetry, for example). But I can click on this link to start editing it now (or the next person visiting my page can add it). However, for such main pages, I will want to be sure to add a link to it from a page where people are likely to come across it. For example, people are not likely to look up my name to find Persian poetry. They will probably more likely come across it by visiting the poetry page. So, let's add a link to it at the main poetry page if there is a logical place for us to put it. Well, it looks like it is already here. So someone else wanted to see this page developed. Once the page is added, the orange link will turn blue or purple not only from the link at the poetry page where someone may have followed the link, but also from my own page.

Let me go back to my own page again.

This time I will make a link to another wiki page, but have the link name that appears to the viewer be different from the name of the page to which it is linking.

To do this kind of link, we need to first put the actual name of the page within double brackets, and then follow this with a pipe character and then the text that we want to show up visibly on the page.

Ok. So, here's an example: "At this page, you can find out a lot about the science of the stars." This code will create a link on our page to the wiki page titled "Astronomy", but the link name will show up to our visitors as you can see once I preview it, as "the science of the stars". These aliases as they are called are convenient for allowing the text of an article to flow smoothly.

External links

Now I want to go back and add a link to a specific website address outside of this wiki site.

"If you are interested to learn more about a topic of interest to me, a world auxiliary language, please visit The World Auxiliary Language Campaign website." As you can see, I only have one bracket on either side in the case of URL outside links, and there is no pipe here to separate the URL from the text that shows up...just a space--the first space that appears after the URL. And this is how it appears once we preview it.

Now, if I wanted to allow people to see the URL itself, I could just type in the URL like this: " Please visit http://onetongue.com " And if I wanted to make a link footnote style, such as if I didn't want a long URL to show up, but I didn't want to give any particular name to the link, I would just surround the URL in single brackets without any name [1] and all that would show up to the visitor is a number. It is usually best though to give a name to a link rather than just show a number or the URL.

Interwiki shortcuts

There is yet another way you can make links. Wikipedia recognizes certain shortcuts which will lead to outside pages. We can find out about this at the How to Edit page. As we can see the left column here is for what we want to appear in our page (and there is some explanation too) and the right column shows what we will need to type in our code. So I can easily make a shortcut to the Wiktionary page (a collaborative dictionary associated with Wikipedia) which is outside of Wikipedia by just typing the shortcut "Wiktionary" followed by a colon and the text to search. If I don't want the shortcut name to appear, I can just follow the link with a pipe character and then put the text I want to appear.

If we go to the InterWikiMap we can see all of the available shortcuts. Let's say I want to make an easy way of adding links on my pages to Google searches, and I don't want the hassle of having to do a search first at Google and copying the long URL into my pages. I find the shortcut for Google at this InterWikiMap (the shortcut is simply Google) and then I can add the following in my pages to search the surrounded text at Google. Google:cameras.

Learning the Code

Now although you can see that this is not too complicated, it may still be a lot to recall when you try it out yourself. Fortunately, there are a number of ways that can help relieve this burden.

One of the most useful ways is to just look at some code on a page that already has the type of information that you want to add (the code may even already be somewhere in the code of the page you want to edit) . For example, if I come back to my user page later and I've since forgotten how to make the types of links we've added, I can just view the code and copy its pattern. I can also go back and forth between the page in my browser and the edit page to see how it shows up (or do another preview).

Or, if you are looking to know how to add a table, you can visit a page with a table and then click "edit this page" or "view source" for any page and see how the page was done--just be sure you don't save the page if you are just looking at the code. You can then test the pattern at the page where you want to add the table...Be sure to first preview the page if you are just testing, especially if the page is not your own.

If you are NOT the learn-by-doing type or you can't find a page with the formatting you want to add, you can simply click for editing help on any edit page and search for the instructions there.

Now if you are familiar with HTML, the language which is used to create webpages, you can add some HTML into your code, but this is often discouraged since HTML is more complex in appearance in the code and may deter future contributors who are not familiar with HTML...

Yet another tool is the nice toolbar which shows you how to make the desired text (for example, to make text bold, it tells us to add three apostrophes on either side of the text). If we click on it, it should add the code for us. Then we need to copy it from here and then paste it where we want it. Other browsers may alternatively paste the code directly into your page. There should also be a list of special characters beneath the edit box. These can be clicked on to be inserted.

Hopefully, in the future, there will be good editors which do not require us to know any code, but in the meantime, this is a useful tool.

There are also some plugins for different browsers which facilitate editing (not to mention searching). For Firefox, for example, there is a Wikipedia extension which provides a toolbar (and contextual menu) for adding wiki code or jumping to one's favorite wiki pages.

Now if you don't like working inside a text box (say if you would like to search for text within the code), we can copy all the text of an edit window into our favorite word processor/text editor and then paste it back in here replacing the old text with the changed text. I'll paste the contents of my own User page into a mac program called "TextEdit". I can then search for some text inside like this "". I can then add some text or change it. When I'm done, I select all of the text, and return to my web browser. I need to be sure to first delete or replace all of the text here since I don't want the all the code to appear twice. Now I paste the code here. If you make a mistake, just don't hit "save" and any mistakes you have made will not be recorded. Just close the window or go back and start over. But I will hit save since my adjusted text is ok. Now we see that the replaced text is on the newly saved edit. Although it is an extra step to bring the text back and forth, this is quite useful when you are working with a long page and you need to find and possibly replace specific items.

More Advanced Editing

Now that we have covered the basics and most frequently used items, we will discover a few other techniques that you may find helpful. Some of what we will discuss is slightly more difficult to follow, but it should enhance your experience at the site. You can always come back to view this section later once you have tried out the more essential features such as making links.

User signatures

When making comments on discussion pages or at other user's pages, it is a good idea to leave a link to your user page so that people know who made a certain comment, when the comment was made, and know how to leave any messages to you at your page. There is a shortcut you can use to save you some time in doing this. To leave a quick link to your user page, just type in three tildes: ~~~ into any wiki code. This will then be converted into a link with your user name. If you type four tildes: ~~~~ this will also include a date/time stamp to show when your comment was made as well. You can also have a link directly to your talk page show up if you add this to your nickname in preferences.

Headings and Auto-generated Table of Contents

As you can find out on the How to Edit page, to make a heading, you surround the heading with equal signs (the more equal signs the smaller the heading). For example to add a heading such as "My favorite pages", I type this on a separate line: == My favorite pages == . To make a subheading, I add an equals sign on each side === My favorite Books === . Now if I make a number of these headings (at least 4), the system will automatically create those Table of Contents pages you have seen (including the subheadings). If I don't like Table of Contents to appear for me, I can deselect this option in my preferences.

Section Editing

Another thing which automatically becomes possible when headings are added is individual section editing. As you can see in the margins, I am able to edit just a specific section at a time by clicking the "edit" button above my section of interest. This is useful if I only want to modify that section and I don't want to have to navigate through the page of the entire code to find my section of interest.

Templates

Another tool which once set up can be reused again and again on different pages is the template. It is also explained on "editing help" page. Basically, to assign a template, surround the template's text with curly brackets: {{}}. If a template with that name already exists (at Template:XXX), it will insert that template's text within your page. If a certain table (such as a table of contents or quicklinks, etc.) gets used on multiple pages, this can be very handy, as you will not need to retype in this text again and again (or make corrections at each if you want to change it). If the template has not been created yet, there should be an orange link to the template page which we can click to go to and then edit the new template page. When we go back and refresh our page, we will see that the template's contents have now been added. If any templates have been used for a given page, you should see links to the template pages beneath the edit box for that page.

Multimedia

Now you may ask, what about pictures and sounds?

Fortunately, there is a link available right here on our quickbar saying "upload file"...When I click on this, I am given a window where I can choose to upload an image or sound file from my computer. On this page are also instructions for how I need to reference this file once it is uploaded within my page. It uses double brackets with Image followed by a colon and then the file name with its extension. Or, if it is for a sound file, it should begin with "Media" instead of "Image". There are options such as making the image show up in a smaller thumbnail size or align it to the right and so on, which you can find out more about here or on the links included here.

Moving / Deleting pages

Now if you have a page which you need to remove, you can delete the contents of any page by editing the page and deleting everything in the text box, but its contents are preserved in its page history which we will discuss later. If you want a page permanently removed (including its page history), you can post your page at pages marked for deletion. Although a systems administrator can fully delete a page, users are enabled to move pages. Just click "move this page" and follow the instructions before giving the new title of the page where you would like to move the page.

Be sure to click the WhatLinksHere link on the old page to make sure to change any other links which are leading to the old page to the new title.

Redirecting pages

Sometimes you may want to allow a page to be immediately accessible from two different names. For example, we can find out at the "How to edit" page that redirects involve typing the one line #REDIRECT following by the page you want to forward to surrounded by double brackets. The example given is for example, "#REDIRECT United States, which might be added to the USA page. If you want to change a redirect for some reason, you will need to type the target page in the URL field (changing spaces to underscores and making only the first letter capitalized unless it is a proper noun) and add ?action=edit to the end of it. Then you will be able to change the redirect text. Otherwise, when you go to the page, it will simply redirect you to the old page. ((#REDIRECT File))

Disambiguation pages

Sometimes, there is not just one possible redirect for a page, however, For example, "AMEX" could stand for "American Express" or "American Stock Exchange". There is therefore a disambiguation page which has text (borrowed from a pre-defined template) indicating that it is a a page intended to distinguish between two or more pages with the same name and provides links to the pages dedicated to the singular meaning. It is generally best to link directly to the intended page rather than to a disambiguation page.

Typing in URLs in the Browser & Orphaned Pages

When you want to visit a page, sometimes it is faster to simply type in the name of the page in the URL. Again, it is necessary to change spaces into underscores and make only the first letter capitalized unless it is a proper noun. If the page is for Wikipedia purposes (such as a help page), it will usually be prefixed with "Wikipedia:" or if it is used by the system at "Special:". User pages are prefixed with "User:", User talk pages with "User_talk:". In any case, using the search bar should bring you to your desired page.

There is one additional way to create a page, but it is not recommended. If you just type in a page name in a URL and find that there is no page there, you can opt to "edit" that page. The problem with this is that there is no way for someone to come across your page unless they are searching for it or see it in recent changes. The page will then be called "orphaned" since there are no pages leading to it. If you do create a page in this fashion, be sure to create a link to your new page.

Pages can also be orphaned if a page is originally created from a link on another page and then that original link (and any other links that have been added) are removed. The page will still exist, but you will want to find some other place to add the link back, in order to allow people to access your page. If it is just a page of your own, just make the link to it from your user page. And remember, user subpages should include a forward slash in front of the link code (but within the double brackets).

If you visit "Special Pages", you can see that the Wikipedia system can be used to provide information on all of the orphaned pages at a site, all of the pages which have had links made to them, but which have not been created, pages without categories and so on. You can take advantage of this if you wanted to help flesh out the site to see what work might be helpful for you to do.

Monitoring Changes/Security

In this segment we will go over the various ways you can keep track of pages of interest to you that you or others have been editing. You will be able to see summaries of what is being done or the exact changes made over time.

changes made by yourself

Wikipedia keeps track of all of the contributions you have made. You can find out exactly which pages you have edited over time, by clicking on MyContributions. You can then choose to visit the individual pages and see how they have changed.

This information on which pages you have edited is also made available to those who visit your user page. You can find it on others' user pages as well.

changes made by others

One of the first concerns people have when hearing about wiki sites such as Wikipedia is how is it possible? How can you trust the information? If anyone can not only add information, but also change or delete, what prevents someone from erasing everything or putting up lots of garbage?

Although some wiki sites solve this by requiring registration, by being invite-only, or by allow users to lock pages which they start, Wikipedia does not do this, for the reason that these measures could deter potential contributors who might offer positive contributions to the site.

Fortunately, there are certain safeguards which Wikipedia does use. Wikipedia keeps track of all edits to a page, and it is quite easy to go back to an earlier version of a page if that page has recently been corrupted in some way. And for repeat trouble-makers, Wikipedia administrators can ban specific IP addresses so that someone coming from that internet location cannot access Wikipedia pages. The whole idea of public wiki sites is really to first open the door as wide as possible, and then if necessary restrict the trouble-makers.

Although vandalism does occur on occasion, requiring assistance of the site administrators, most of the monitoring or policing and fixing of websites is done by everyday visitors to the Wikipedia site such as you and me...Fellow Wikipedians who keep track of changes at the pages they are interested in and then fix them if someone has done something to their pages that they don't like. Since there are so many Wikipedians actively monitoring pages of interest to them (maybe even just one or two pages), this help can really add up.

Even though this can lead to a page being temporarily violated, there are disclaimers about this from the main page (which is one of the few pages at Wikipedia that is by such a necessity locked), and people will hopefully learn over time that wiki content is changeable from moment to moment and should check the page over time and see or add to the discussion on the talk pages for questionable content.

If a person wants to cite a Wikipedia article on another website or in print and ensure that people visiting the page do not find disagreeable content which could be added by a subsequent editor, one can go to the page history and choose the URL of an older version (it should contain "&oldid=" at the end of the URL). This will ensure that the person will visit that (stable) older version of the page.

Now you be asking, how do we see what others have done to my pages of interest?

Recent Changes

First of all, we will show you how to monitor ALL pages at the Wikipedia site. You are most likely not going to be watching every single change at the site each day, unless you really become a wikiholic, but it is useful to know that it is possible to monitor all the changes.

In the quickbar, you should see, "Recent changes". If we click on that link, we can see what pages have been edited (and click on the link to visit the page if we like), we can see the date and time the page was recently edited, and we can see any edit summaries that have been added (this is why should add edit summaries to your page edits--to help people out when looking at summary views like this so people can see at a glance what changes were done in that edit without having to go to the page). We can also see which user has edited the page (or IP address if the user did not log in) and visit the user or their talk page directly by clicking on the link of their name.

Differences (Diffs)

Now going back to the recent changes page...."Diff" on the other hand brings us to a side-by-side comparison of the new revision with the previous revision. I'll try that now. On the left-hand side is the previous version. On the right is the new version. The yellow areas in the left show where content has been changed, while the grey color is the surrounded unchanged context. The green color in the right area shows where content is being changed in the new version, while the red shows the specific text that has changed. As you can see, this feature spares us the need to reread the whole entire article each time someone makes a small change to it. We can just focus on the changed text. However, going down the page, we can if we wish, also see the page fully with pictures and all as it will now appear to the next person visiting the website (assuming no changes are made in the meantime)...

Page History (hist)

The abbreviation "hist" will bring us to the editing history for that particular page. I'll try that now. Just like the recent changes page, we see the date and time the edit was made, any edit summaries, and who made the edit, but these edits are those made just on this particular page. We can even compare two specific versions, such as to see how the page has changed, not just since the previous version, but say from the last time you had edited the page. So, testing it here, I will check and see how things have changed since the last time user XXX had edited the page. I need to be sure to click "Compare selected versions" and voila...page differences similar to what we saw with diff...

Minor Edits, New Pages

Now going back again to the recent changes page..."m" stands for what the editor called a minor edit. You can choose not to see these in your preferences.

The letter "N" before the article name stands for a newly created page. You can also see all new articles under Special pages in the quickbar.

Page History and Differences (on individual pages)

You don't need to go first to recent changes to check the history and differences between versions for a given page. You can also go to the individual page and click the link "page history" which is at the top and bottom of each page and also available in the quickbar.

Reverting to an Older Version

If we click on an older version (by its date and time) inside a page history view, we will not only see the code for that older page, but if we save it, we will have the option of overwriting the more recent version with this older version. Do not do this unless you deliberately want to go back to an older version, such as if there has been some vandalism in the more recent version or versions. Be sure to use the most recent version before the vandalism.

If you want to go back to an older version not because of vandalism but because you don't like the changes that have been made, it is generally a good idea to first say why you feel so in the article's discussion page. This will avoid a constant back-and-forth reverting of the page. If you can't resolve the problem in the Discussion forum, you can follow the methods of dispute resolution under Wikipedia's policies which will tell you to first try requesting community comment (stating such information as to whether the objections are due to a perceived lack of neutrality in the article or questioning of the accuracy of statements within the article, etc.)). You can also try taking a survey or asking for the mediation of a neutral third-party. Finally, if it comes down to it, you can have the page submitted for arbitration.

Related Changes

If you are visiting a particular page and what to see not only the changes for the page in question, but also for all of the pages leading as links from that page, you can click "Related Changes" (Note that this is different from Recent Changes in that you will only see the changes for the page in question and for the pages leading from it, not from all of the pages at the Wikipedia site).

Watchlist

One last technique of monitoring selected pages of interest is the Watchlist. The Watchlist is another feature of Wikipedia which allows logged-in users to monitor pages of interest. Having a watchlist is one of the benefits of registering as a regular user.

Although we have shown that it is possible to monitor all of the pages at a website, it is unlikely for such a large encylopedia that you will want to do so. Also, it can be time consuming to have to visit the page history for each page of interest to you when there may have been no changes made. Instead, you can just mark pages of interest by clicking "watch this page" alongside your page of interest. The next time you visit that page, the link option "stop watching" will appear. If you no longer want to watch the page, just click that link. You can also add items to your watchlist by going to the link "my watchlist" itself and clicking at the top of the page. Lastly, when editing a page, there is the option to "watch this page" you can click or unclick. Depending on your preferences, you can also have these "watch this page" checkboxes automatically checked when you start to edit a page. This is in case you would like to monitor all pages that you have worked on. You can also deselect these on a case-by-case basis, even though the default may be checked.

Notification and RSS Discussion

Although some wiki websites offer email notification to let you know when changes are made, Wikipedia is not currently one of them. You have to log into your Watchlist to do so.

One other option available to you is to get all of the RecentChanges in a special format called RSS. Just go to the Recent Changes page and find the little RSS link at the top. The page that appears will show the recent changes in a different format. It is not very useful to view pages this way inside your website, but you can copy the URL into what is called an RSS reader and you can keep track of the Recent Changes at Wikipedia in a variety of ways.

For example, RSS readers allow you to mix RSS feeds from various webpages so you can have what will amount to your own Watchlist which mixes different sources together. So you can keep track of your favorite types of news all in one interface, including the "Recent Changes" at Wikipedia. RSS readers have been made to be accessible conveniently from your menu bar (such as this program for the Macintosh called "News You Can Use"). You first select "newsfeeds" from the menu and then drag the URL from your browser into the menu items list. You then tell the program how often you want it to check the RecentChanges for you. The icon will change color any time there are new items in RecentChanges so you don't have to keep going to the website to see. However, for Wikipedia's RecentChanges, this is not necessarily so useful, since there are so many changes each day, but you can still use this menu, to view the pages being changed without going into your browser and then let go on a particular title if you decide you do want to visit that revision page in your browser.

Other programs offer other convenient ways of viewing that don't require you to open up your web browser and view separate pages or which work in some way with your web browser.

Although you cannot at present get your Watchlist, or individual page histories in RSS format at Wikipedia, you can as we demonstrated, get the RecentChanges of Wikipedia added in. If you search the internet (or go to a website like versiontracker.com which keeps track of recent software ) you can find software (including free software) which highlights RSS readers that are available for your computer. You will then probably need to copy Wikipedia's Recent Changes RSS URL into your new RSS reader program, as we did for the menu bar program "News You Can Use".

All of these monitoring features which show changes on your pages of interest demonstrate another inviting aspect of wiki sites. Whether it is to edit your own pages, or to see what's new on your pages of interest, and possibly respond to the changes, it is easy and enjoyable to make progress on a wiki site gradually over time. It is enjoyable because it is not so time-consuming to have it as part of a daily routine to add to and check up on these pages of interest to you, just as a person may check the news (or comics) on a regular basis. And when others are contributing, it often motivates you (or others) further to build on their recent contributions.

Other Security Issues

One last item pertaining to security...If God forbid, something were to attack the Wikipedia system itself (not just their individual pages), since others can download all of the content at Wikipedia, there are other mirror sites around the world which can include recent back-ups of all of Wikipedia's data. You can even download a copy of the site's contents yourself. And since its contents as well as software are under a public license, you should even be able to host your own Wikipedia mirror site without infringing on other's copyrights as all content at Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, an open-content license.

Contact and Donations

There is also the "About Wikipedia" link where you can find out more about the Wikimedia Foundation. And let's not forget the very important other links inside your quickbar...Besides the "contact us" field, there is also the "donations" field....With so much content being loaded at the Mediawiki sites everyday and millions of edits over time, this takes up a lot of space and fast server systems are needed to provide this to you reliably and quickly. Please help assist Wikipedia's development with financial support as well as your editing contributions.