Welcome to Wikipedia (Bookshelf)/Development

The Welcome to Wikipedia is one of the deliverables for the Bookshelf Project. Welcome to Wikipedia aims to attract new contributors and assist them as they take their first steps towards becoming a Wikipedian. The chapters and other Wikipedians can customize, translate, and print this material(when it is ready and uploaded) and hand it out with the goal to inspire new contributors to start editing Wikipedia.

Go to the start of the material

Production notes

Universal:

The welcome packet is now called: Welcome to Wikipedia
Create a visual identity for menu items.

Each module comprises: the dialogue of our main character, Sara, and the instructional text. These two elements are presented here in the order they should be read in the material. Most modules also have a Try it! at the end.

For purposes of this wiki page, our main character, Sara's dialogue are presented indented and in italics (The visual design needs to inform how she would actually speak in the printed format)
[square brackets] are used within instructional text to facilitate communication within the project team on a specific area (for example, if there are areas that need to be fleshed out more) and to clearly mark out Sara's dialog. Text within the square brackets will not be printed.
Production notes are provided at the end of each module. The Production notes represent communication between the scripting and visual design. This text will not be printed.

Information design

I. Introduction

Welcome
Fun fact(s) about Wikipedia to get the learners excited about being part of the community (Example, 360 M users i.e. 5% of world population)
What is Wikipedia?
What makes editing for Wikipedia unique <bring out the aspect that no official is incharge. Also bring out aspects of social learning, more than just content, bring out the community aspect. Bring out aspect of community improving quality. People are excited to create high quality articles. Collaborative aspect: Unlike Youtube, Facebook, Blogger/Wordpress, WP is one of the most collaborative social media sites.)

II. First steps (Familiarity with UI Volatile! More UI updates underway )

Features on the main page <Check how frequently content structure changes>:
- Today's featured article
- In the news
- Did you know
- On this day
- Featured Picture
- Other Areas of Wikipedia
- Wikipedia sister projects
- Wikipedia languages
Global menu
- Discussion
- Read
- View Source (Edit in article pages- Which is good since we do not want to confuse the learners with editing details)
- View history
- Search
- Left Hand Side menu <Highlight just the most important and non-volatile menu items. For example, Print/Export: Create book., Recent changes>
- Top menu: New features, Log in/create account

Task:
- Practice History: Study History tab of the same article to study community interaction
- Compare two versions of the same article
- Follow recent changes

III. Your first edit (Volatile! More UI updates underway )

Login/create account
Start from main page again – define new top menu items (username, My talk, My preferences, My watchlist, My contributions)
Watchlist
- What is it
- How does it work
User page
- What is it
- Why it is important
- Explain information that can be provided in the user page
- Recommend structure or lead learners to user page samples (Volatile! User might delete account)
My talk
- What is it
- Why it is important
- Explain information that can be provided in the user page
- Recommend best practices
Introduce basic wiki markup
Explain Preview, Save, Cancel options
Explain timestamp
Explain Weblinks

Task:
- Create a Wikipedia profile
- Practice Watchlist: Save your favorite topics/articles on Watchlist and study how they grow. Alternatively, save a featured article on your watchlist – study it from content perspective.
- Create your own user page < Introduce the editing toolbar (example: list, bold, etc.) and important wiki markup not available in the toolbar.>
- Structure your own talk page

IV. What makes a good article? (Article Study evaluation)

Structure: Graphically display a featured article (generic, culturally agnostic content. For example, Ant), call out different parts of the article (anatomy) and explain how structure helps create encyclopedic content
Content: What is a good article? Verifiability, Citing sources, Neutral point of view and explain how it helps create encyclopedic content
Community: Civility, Why Friedrich Engels would have difficulties editing the Karl Marx article (self promotion, campaigning) and explain how community helps create encyclopedic content
Examples from articles that already exist

Task:
- Create a learner activity with a graphic of an incomplete article. Ask learners to identify what is missing and why it is important.
- Participate in the peer review process

V. Life of an article

Stub
Good Article
Featured Article

Task:
- Quiz with 2-3 questions to test basic understanding of the topic

VI. There are so many ways you can contribute! You already edited here’s more you can do

Grammar
Images
Citations
- Add a signature (Volatile! UI team is looking to simplify this feature. )
Wikify" a new article
Adding reference to an Article

Edit tab (Introduce Edit tab while explaining how to implement each of the role)

Task:
- Quiz with 2-3 questions to test basic understanding of the topic

VII. Did you find a topic that is not available in Wikipedia? Create a new article

Use your own sandbox for the draft
Add links to your prospective article in other articles
Move your article to the "article main space"

Task:
- Quiz with 2-3 questions to test basic understanding of the topic

VIII. Conclusion

Reiterate key learning points
Further resources
Thank You

Storyline

The story follows Sara, a woman of about 30 years of age, interested in traveling, as she makes her first 100 edits on Wikipedia. She starts off as positive towards Wikipedia, is slowly drawn in, meets one or two road blocks, but sticks with it and ends up a happy Wikipedian.

She is guided by an instructional text that addresses her concerns and answers her questions without talking directly to her. If anyone wants to remove Sara from the material, it is possible to do so without having to rewrite the text.

Instructional text/Character relationship

Instructional text:
- Assists story progression
- Supports and addresses character scenarios/concerns/questions but does so implicitly
- Does not talk to the character directly because we want to give flexibility to the chapters and other users to remove the character if required
Character
- Owns the storyline

Content development

[Frontcover]

[Brochure title:] Welcome to Wikipedia

[Background image that will echo throughout the piece]

[Wikipedia logo]

[Separate page] Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. -Jimmy Wales

Welcome to Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia in the world. It is created and maintained by more than 100 thousand contributors from around the world. Every month, over 388 million people visit Wikipedia. Wikipedia features more than 16 million articles in over 260 languages. It is free to use, free to edit, and free of advertisements.

[Sara {new01.bmp}] Hi! My name is Sara. I use Wikipedia whenever I need to learn more about a topic. But lately I have been wondering, who writes these articles? Why do articles change sometimes? I have read that anyone can edit Wikipedia. Can I do that too? How?

After reading Welcome to Wikipedia, you will be able to:

Understand how Wikipedia works
Create a Wikipedia user account
Understand Wikipedia's user interface
List the different ways you can contribute to Wikipedia
Communicate with other users through your My talk page
Explain how an article evolves on Wikipedia
Describe the attributes of a quality article
Create a new article

Production notes

Sara's right hand needs cleanup, in particular her middle finger.

How does Wikipedia work?

Everything on Wikipedia has been written by people like you. In fact, Wikipedia would not be the world's largest online encyclopedia without people continuously contributing information, images, and data. Wikipedia grows by nearly 1200 articles per day and over 4 million contributions per month.

Many contributors(Wikipedians), share an aspiration to provide free knowledge to the world. That is the reason why people all over the world volunteer their time to protect and improve the quality of Wikipedia articles. By allowing everyone to access, download, and reuse content, Wikipedia provides many options for sharing knowledge.

[Sara {new03.bmp}] But who decides what gets published? An editor-in-chief, somewhere?"

Wikipedians create so many new articles and edit existing articles so often that it would be almost impossible to have a team large enough to review and validate every single change made to the encyclopedia. Instead, Wikipedia relies on input from contributors and collaborative community decision making to create quality articles.

Most people who participate in making Wikipedia better find that it is both an entertaining and rewarding exercise. While the social aspect of working towards a goal is fun, most active users are driven by their passion to disseminate free knowledge to the world.

[Sara {new16.bmp}] Helping everyone across the world get access to free and quality content makes a lot of sense to me. Tell me more. Where can I start?

Try it!

Who can edit existing articles in Wikipedia? Select the correct answer.
Only experienced editors
Wikipedia's Editor-in-chief
Anyone who has access to the Internet

Answers to this question and others quizzes can be found on the back flap of this brochure.

Create a Wikipedia account

Creating a user account is a good first step when you begin contributing to Wikipedia. An account allows you to create new articles (pages), upload images, and rename pages. You also get access to useful features, such as watchlist. Watchlist lets you follow articles that you are editing as well as other interesting pages.

More importantly, since all your edits are assigned to your account username, you have an identity on Wikipedia. This helps you interact with others that edit the same articles, and helps you become a trusted member of the community. As you get accustomed to Wikipedia, you will find that you have more to say in discussions and you might help others solve problems.

You can edit Wikipedia without having an account. However, without an account, your edits are assigned to your computer's Internet protocol (IP) address. The Wikipedia community tends to distrust edits from an IP address, especially if it is traced to a school or company network where unregistered users may make edits based on their biased interests. Editing articles where it might be hard to remain impartial is considered a conflict of interest on Wikipedia. For example, if a student edits an article about her school, she may have a biased perspective on the school's national importance.

It is easy to create a Wikipedia account and you are not required to provide any personal information: 1. Click Log in/create account, located at the top right side of the page. 2. Choose your Username 3. Select your Password. 4. Click Create account

[Sara{new05.bmp}] That was quick! Now that I have an account, I can work with other contributors to create quality articles.

Try it!

Create a Wikipedia account
Create a watchlist of your favorite Wikipedia articles by clicking the star at the top of the article page. Study how changes to the article are tracked on your watchlist.

Wikipedia user interface

[Help] Help provides assistance to learn more about how Wikipedia works.
[Wikipedia languages] Wikipedia exists in over 250 languages.
[Discussion] Discussion appears at the top of each article. Discussion is a place for you and other contributors to plan article structure, discuss and build consensus on article content, and ask for help from one another.
[View history] View history allows you to view and compare past versions of the page.
[Search] Search takes you to the article that matches your query. If the article does not exist, it displays the articles in which the word(s) appears.
[Recent changes] Recent changes allows you to view edits made to all Wikipedia articles in chronological order. This allows you to monitor articles for mistakes and vandalism.
[Log in/create account] Create account, at the top right of the page, gives you access to all features of Wikipedia and helps build your online profile.

[Sara {new012.bmp}] Who wrote this article? I really like it! I am not sure I can write an article as good as this one.

Try it!

Click Recent changes for any article and study the page. Notice how each edit is timestamped and attributed to a specific user or IP address. Observe how some contributors explain their edits. Explaining an edit is a good practice because it helps others understand why you made the edit.
Sara's friend Josh just started editing and finds that he needs information about policies and guidelines, community standards, and general help for editors. Where can he find assistance? Select the correct answer:

Recent changes
Help
Search

Production notes

Highlight the Main page at top of the page to implicitly indicate to the learner that he/she is on English Wikipedia main page.
Highlight Interaction in the left menu bar since both Recent changes and Help are nested within this menu item
Choose a screenshot of the main page when the featured article content is generic and lends itself well to global audience. Check the upcoming featured articles at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Today%27s_featured_article/2010. Alternatively, put in another featured article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles) that is culturally neutral in the main page image.
Use the following graphics as reference. However, feel free to create your own design.

Page 7 of Wikimedia Foundation's annual report
OR Wikimedia Sverige's poster

How can I contribute?

Did you know that there are many different roles you can play on Wikipedia? Writing is just one of the many options. Here are some of the roles and what they do:

WikiGnome: Makes minor edits, for example, spelling corrections. Suggests article improvements by leaving a message for the authors on the article's Talk page, which is accessed by clicking Discussion.
Copyeditor: Improves the language and grammar in an article.
Formatter: Structures or "wikifies" articles, using wiki markup, so they are easier to read.
Maintainer: Monitors articles for biased edits and corrects them. A maintainer watches out for changes made by contributors with a personal agenda or political/philosophical point of view, and ensures that factual accuracy is maintained in the articles.
Illustrator: Uploads images, photographs, maps, and visual aids relevant to the article.
Author: Adds information to articles from books, websites, newspapers, and other credible sources. An author also initiates the creation of new articles.
Mediator: Moderates discussion on controversial topics, helps resolve disputes, and provides guidance on contributor behavior.

[Sara{new017.bmp}] I just corrected an historical fact about Lahore, a city in Pakistan, and guess what? My edits went live as soon as I saved the page. How exciting!

Try it!

Sara likes to take pictures of the places she visits. If she contributes her pictures to Wikipedia she is:
Illustrator
Author
Mediator
Formatter

Production notes

A graphic that illustrates Wikipedia's global footprint while showing various contributor roles.

User page and My talk page

[Sara{new08.bmp}] What just happened? The edit I made to the article is gone. Did someone take it out? Why would someone do that?

There are thousands of contributors who edit Wikipedia each day. Some edits are not verifiable or are made with a biased perspective. That is why some Wikipedians monitor almost all edits using Recent changes (under Interaction in the left menu bar). This feature provides an overview of all edits made in a particular language version of Wikipedia. Because some Wikipedians monitor huge numbers of edits they may sometimes delete an edit that is accurate but not well-written. To prevent that from happening to you, it is important that you write factual information and reference reliable sources. Another way is to follow Wikipedia's preferred writing style. Search: "Wikipedia:Manual of Style"

To provide authenticity to your edits, maintain your User page. It is a good way to build trust. Every account has a User page and a My talk page. You can find the links for the User page and the My talk page at the top right of your screen. Your User page is accessed by clicking on your username which appears next to the bust icon. Click Edit to write about yourself. Then click Save page at the bottom of the screen when you are finished writing.

On your User page you can write about yourself, your special knowledge, and your interest in particular articles. This is also a place where you can mention your affiliations or if you have a potential conflict of interest. For example, it might be hard for you to remain neutral if you edit an article about the organization where you work. However, you can use your in-depth knowledge of your organization to list verifiable sources of information. That way, when you read information about your organization that is inaccurate or outdated, you could leave a message on the article's Discussion page citing the discrepancy and leading article authors to your User page. The authors can then evaluate your sources and use them to update the article on Wikipedia.

My talk and Discussion is a place where other contributors can leave messages for you and you can respond. Many contributors leave welcome greetings to new users. Others might use the space to start a conversation to get to know you or better understand your edits.

Every article also has a Discussion page. This page is used by Wikipedians to plan how they will collaborate on the content and resolve conflicts. If someone wonders why you have made an edit, or would like to recommend another article to you, they will use the article's Discussion page. The article Discussion page is also a good place to ask for help with the article.

Note: Discussion and My talk are also called "talk pages" by the community.

[Sara{new013.bmp}] Oh, someone just left a note on my My talk page. The message explains that my edits were reverted because I had not cited a source. Since the fact is mentioned on the government website, I will make the edit again. This time I will include the source in the references section below the article itself. That should work.

Try it!

Click your username and then click Edit, in order to edit your User page. Explore the various options in the editing toolbar - B (Bold), I (Italics), and the Link symbol. Click Advanced to see the format tools. Wiki markup quick reference is available at the back of this brochure.

Production notes

Vector toolbar can be found here.

Life of an article

Although the articles in Wikipedia should be detailed and well written, no one is expected to write a comprehensive article in just one draft. Articles typically start small and then mature through extensive collaboration, often following a pattern like this:

Most successful articles start small and consist of a summary of the topic (overview), a statement that tells why the topic is noteworthy ("the first...", "the biggest...", "the capital of...", etc.), and a source outside Wikipedia confirming the existence and importance of the topic (a credible publication or website). This basic article is called a "stub". If any of the three items are missing the community may assume the topic is not important and delete the article.

As other users add text and images to an article, it matures from a topical overview to a more detailed article that captures various perspectives such as historical (for example "in 1923, new factors..."), or global (for example "in Europe, this was viewed as..."). More active contributors might nominate their article for a Wikipedia peer review process. The Wikipedia peer review process involves close scrutiny of the article's quality from a broad group of Wikipedians. The process is applied to articles that have undergone extensive work. The review process involves addressing comments, questions and suggestions from the peer reviewers. Based on the feedback, the article writers plan their article improvement strategy using the article's Discussion page.

Finally, an article reaches a level where it is so well-written, sourced, and comprehensive, that only experts can add much value to it. These articles might be designated as "good articles". A few articles could be recognized by the community as being of the highest quality. These are designated as ''featured articles''. Featured articles are displayed on the Wikipedia main page. It takes time and effort to write articles at this level. Collaborating to create a featured article is gratifying and also enhances your status in the Wikipedia community. Just as all other articles, a featured article continues to be edited.

[Sara {new015.bmp}] I dream about contributing to an article that appears on the main page of a website with millions of readers.

Try it!

What does the Wikipedia peer review process involve? Select the correct answer:

Review of article quality by a group of Wikipedians
Review of article quality by a group of experts
Review of article quality by Wikimedia Foundation

What makes a quality article?

A quality Wikipedia article is the result of a well defined structure, encyclopedic content, and an active community:

Structure: Providing a clear article structure helps readers easily find information and helps editors keep all aspects of a topic well organized. One way to learn about structure is to study featured articles, Wikipedia's finest articles. You can access all featured articles by going to the Wikipedia main page. At the bottom of Today's featured article, click More featured articles... then scroll down to Contents and select the subject that interests you.

Most quality articles have the following structure:

Lead section that summarizes the key points covered in an article. Note that the lead section is without a header.
The body of the article follows the lead section and includes specific headers and subheaders. A geographic location, for example, might have the following headers: history, geography, climate, economy, civic administration, demographics, culture, references, and external links.
Appendices and footnotes appear after the body of the article. These may include bibliographies, links to other Wikipedia articles, notes and references, relevant publications, and websites.

Content: Many Wikipedians consider content the most important factor in judging an article's quality. To ensure consistent quality, the Wikipedia community created these four guidelines.

Provide Sources: Writers are encouraged to provide sources for further information. Every fact should be verifiable by a reliable source.
Neutral Point of View: Articles must be written fairly, without bias, and present previously published notable views.
No Promotional Content: Promotional material, how-to instructions, resumes, and sales catalogs do not belong in Wikipedia.
No Original Research: It is not appropriate to include your own new ideas on a subject (Wikipedia calls this original research), or your personal opinions about a subject.

Community: All contributions to Wikipedia are freely licensed to the public. That means that no editor owns any article. All contributions can and will be heavily edited by many different users. In other words, everybody can join in the decision making process. The community also uses Discussion to agree on the content structure for the article. For times when consensus is hard to reach, check out the various options available at Help > The Wikipedia community. Some writers and editors have years of experience with Wikipedia and their experience can be a valuable resource for resolving conflicts.

Try it!

The body of an article has no headers. Select the correct answer.

True
False

What aspects should a quality encyclopedic article have? Select the correct answers.

Verifiable sources
Neutral point of view
How-to instructions
Summary, body, footnotes

Create a new article

[Sara{new010.bmp}]I cannot find an article about this subject. Should I wait for someone else to start the article?

There are many topics that do not have an article on Wikipedia. If you think a topic is missing from Wikipedia, search variations of the topic name. For example, try different spellings. Also check if the subject is mentioned in closely related topics. A island for example, may be mentioned in an article about its country. If the topic is not mentioned in Wikipedia, maybe it is too obscure to write about, such as a garage band or an unknown person with a blog. However, if you feel that the topic should genuinely be included in Wikipedia, consider creating the article yourself.

Search the article title. If the article does not exist, you will see the article title in a red hyperlink. Click the hyperlink to start editing a new article.

Your new article will get a good start, if you remember to provide the following three elements:

Summary of the topic
Reason why the topic is notable
Reference to a credible source about the topic

Create your own workspace or "sandbox" where you can edit your article until it has all the three critical elements.

To create your sandbox: Go to your user page> Click Edit> Write [[User:<Your user name>/Sandbox]] > Save page> Click the link you just created. You are now in your sandbox!

Use the sandbox to write your article. Do not forget to click Save page when you are done editing. When you are ready, find another Wikipedia editor who might be interested in the topic. One way to find an editor is to look at the View history tab of an article on a similar topic and see who has contributed to that article. Leave a message on the that editor's Discussion page with a request to review your article. When you are ready, copy the article content from your sandbox, go to the topic name you have chosen, click Edit, paste the content and save the page. Now, that you have created a new article, do not stop here. Link your article to other articles where your topic is mentioned.

[Sara{new02.bmp}] My very first Wikipedia article is now online! It will be exciting to see how the community comes together to expand this article.

Try it!

What are the three elements to incorporate in your new article? Select the correct answer.

An explanation, its notability, and a source
An explanation, a picture, and a link to another article
A name, its notability, and a source

A Wikipedian

[Sara {new019.bmp}] Before my trip to Morocco next month, I will use Wikipedia's Create a book feature. [She points to the menu on the left.] I will collect articles that I need and print a personal travel guide. Wikipedia has many more features than I first thought.

[Sara{new011.bmp}] Well, time sure flies! I just clicked My contributions at the top of the page to discover that I have more than 100 edits. I have so much fun connecting with other Wikipedians, writing quality articles, and spreading knowledge that can be accessed for free!

Production notes

For the first dialog, Sara's hand points at Create book menu which is available at the left menu bar> Print/export> Create a book
We have a suggestion for the second dialog, is it possible to create a graphic with Sara and My contributions page. Since we do not want to put a whole lot of effort in writing Sara's exact edits Sara and/or have you photoshop each entry, could you make the page blurred so that learners are not able to read the text. Let me know if you need a rough screenshot of My contributions screen to get started or or if this idea fits into the design

Conclusion

Now that you have read Welcome to Wikipedia, you are able to:

Understand how Wikipedia works
Create a Wikipedia user account
Understand Wikipedia's user interface
List the different ways you can contribute to Wikipedia
Communicate with other users through your talk page
Explain how an article evolves on Wikipedia
Describe the attributes of a quality article
Create a new article

For further information, visit Sara's user page at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sara_Wikipedia

Wiki markup quick reference [Back flap]

Here are shortcuts to some frequently used wiki markups. To start click the Edit button at the top of an article, make your changes, and then click Save page . Your edits are now visible to anyone who visits the page. If you have more information to add or would like to correct a mistake, make another edit. Do not be afraid, you cannot accidentally make permanent deletions. All versions of all articles are saved under View history and contributors can revert to the previous version by simply clicking undo.

Description - What you type - What you get

Italic - ''italic text'' - Italic text
Bold - '''bold text''' - Bold text
Section headers -

==<level 1 section heading text>== - [insert image]

===level 2=== - [insert image]

====level 3==== - [insert image]

Link to another Wikipedia article (Internal link) - [[Link to another page]] - [insert image]

Link with another displayed title - [[Link|different title]] - [insert image] - [insert image]

Link outside Wikipedia (External link) - [http://www.example.org Test website] - [insert image]
Bulleted list -

* List item - [insert image]
* List item

Numbered list -

# List item - [insert image]
# List item

Image with caption - [[File:Example.png|Caption text]] - [insert image]
Your signature for Discussion page- ~~~~ - [insert image]
Reference - <ref>Page text.<ref name="test">[http://www.example.org Link text], additional text.</ref> - [insert image]
Display references - <references/> - [insert image]

You can find more formatting tips by clicking Help on the left menu bar.

Production notes

Refer Help from the editing menu for the corresponding images
This section is tearaway for ready reference.
See this cheat sheet for how others have done it.

Try it! Answer Key [Inner side of the back cover]

How does Wikipedia work?
Who can write articles for Wikipedia?
Anyone who has access to the Internet

Wikipedia user interface
Sara's friend Josh just started editing and finds that he needs help with policies and guidelines, community standards, and general help for editors. Where can he find assistance?
Help

How can I contribute
Sara likes to take pictures of the places she visits. Sara can contribute to Wikipedia as:
Illustrator

Life of an article

What does the Wikipedia peer review process involve?

Review of article quality by a group of Wikipedians

What makes a quality article
1. The body of an article has no headers.
False

2. What aspects should a quality encyclopedic article have?
Verifiable sources
Neutral point of view
Summary, body, footnotes

Create a new article

What are the three elements to incorporate in your new article?
An explanation, its notability, and a source

[Back Cover]

Are you one of the 12 million people who use Wikipedia each day? What has Wikipedia done for you?

Everyday people all over the world use Wikipedia to help with school projects, business plans, personal research, and to plan travel. They use it to spark new ideas, and to brainstorm concepts. They use it explore far lands, ancient cultures, art, leaders, and recent events.

Welcome to Wikipedia is a reference guide for anyone who wants to take the next step and help gather and share the sum of all human knowledge.

Follow Sara as she takes the next step and make her first edits on Wikipedia. In the process, you will learn key concepts, guidelines, information, and tools, to get you to start contributing to Wikipedia.

[Wikimedia office address]

[Wikimedia logo]

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit charitable organization that runs Wikipedia and other freely licensed websites.