Wikipedia training day, Bendigo Victoria

This introductory training day for editing Wikipedia and related projects was supported by Wikimedia Australia, w:La Trobe University and w:Bendigo Community Health Services. It was for health information professionals across the region, open to other information community groups as well (regional historic societies, librarians and the like).

Getting started with the Bendigo Wikipedia Training Day
Getting started with the Bendigo Wikipedia Training Day
Catering at the Bendigo Wikipedia Training Day

La Trobe University (Bendigo Campus) provided the venue, and sent staff along to consider health-educational use of the wiki projects. Bendigo Community Health Services assisted with promotion and sent staff along to consider ways in which they can work with La Trobe University staff and students to help maintain health information relevant to regional Victorians. Wikimedia Australia supported the workshop with catering and trainers.

Details

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  • Held on 21 February 2013, from 9am–4pm
  • Held at La Trobe University (Bendigo Campus) Building HHS2 (Gate 7 or 8), Room 327 Maps.
  • 16 people attended and 9 people sent apologies. Attendance was free, with lunch and morning and afternoon tea provided.
  • A handbook was printed from the PDF resources linked below, and one was given to each participant.
  • Funded by Wikimedia Australia, with in-kind support from La Trobe University Faculty of Health Sciences, and Bendigo Community Health Services
  • Trainer was Peter Waugh, supported by Chris Watkins and Leigh Blackall
  • Coordinated by Leigh Blackall and Amanda Kenny

Participants

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  1. Leighblackall – Faculty of Health Sciences, La Trobe University (Bundoora)
  2. Mandy Kenny – Faculty of Health Sciences, La Trobe University (Bendigo)
  3. Nick Stone – Faculty of Health Sciences, La Trobe University (Bendigo)
  4. David - Bendigo Community Health Services
  5. Ron Knevel – Faculty of Health Sciences, La Trobe University (Bendigo)
  6. Peter Waugh - Wikimedia Australia
  7. Teresa Iacono – Faculty of Health Sciences, La Trobe University (Bendigo)
  8. Carol McKinstry – Faculty of Health Sciences, La Trobe University (Bendigo)
  9. Mark Gussy - La Trobe University
  10. Emma Patten - La Trobe University
  11. Nerida Hyett
  12. Elena Wilson
  13. Kaye Knight - La Trobe University
  14. John Aitken-La Trobe University
  15. Mary Magennis
  16. Natalie Crothers
Apologies
  1. Natalia - BCHS
  2. Gillian - St Luke's Anglicare
  3. Bronwyn - BCHS
  4. Melissa Deacon Crouch - La Trobe University
  5. Virginia Dickson Swift - La Trobe University
  6. Elizabeth Martin - La Trobe University
  7. David Azul (maybe)- La Trobe University
  8. Graham Munro - La Trobe University
  9. Diana Guzys - La Trobe University

Skills and topics covered

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  1. Create a Wikipedia userpage
  2. Link to a userpage from another wiki project
  3. Use talk pages
  4. Create a sandpit page, try formatting
  5. Start or edit a Wikipedia page
  6. Notability and citations in Wikipedia
  7. Discussion on educational use and community work through Wikipedia and related projects

Feedback

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  • Agreed, thanks Peter, Chris and Leigh. I found it a great refresher and consolidator of skills and knowledge I am starting to acquire. The pace and tone was very appropriate and the time later in the day was very useful for informal interaction and networking. Everyone seemed to be nicely relaxed but very engaged, even when it took the form of revulsion at Peter's dismembered, flushed girlfriend tale. Much appreciated. Nick --Nick8june (talk) 04:43, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Process; the day was well structured but also flexible in that the conveners were available for any question and able to adjust the format of the day to “go with” the line of enquiry. The day did have a LaTrobe flavour to it (understandably) and probably can be adopted by the LaTrobe staff quickly. Impacts: For me it opened my eyes to possibilities regarding engaging members of a project and enabling them to participate during a project It also has great potential to make any work completed (in regards to information) sustainable after a project is finished. This potential has enabled me to rethink how a project should be designed and implemented. Very worthwhile day and many thanks to you for driving it. David Whitrow. Manager - Clinical Safety and Development. Bendigo Community Health Services.
  • Many thanks Peter, for your jovial and expert training. Thanks too Chris, in supporting Peter and for keeping our conversations engaging. I hope we will have you both in again. The day went really well, spirits and enthusiasm remained high, the catering was good, the venue was nice and we were all able to get hands on, with enough time to talk with each other and think through some ideas. Leigh Blackall. Educational Designer. Faculty of Health Sciences, La Trobe University.
  • The workshop was a welcome experience to learn a new skill (I seem to be losing those opportunities as I do more management work!) and debunk general derision about Wikipedia – I have renewed respect, interest and ideas about what can be achieved. It was particularly useful to have a few facilitators from Wikipedia Australia, not only because we had more access to individual help, but it also provided various perspectives on how to edit etc. Loved the fact that Natalie and I left having set up our own Wikiuniversity project page - and the fact that accounts and skills for one wiki$$ transferred to another! I did feel that I wanted the pace to pick up a bit in the early stages, but as I got into the tasks, the pace seemed fine. Teresa Iacono. Prof. of Rural & Regional Allied Health, Rural Allied Health Office. La Trobe University
  • Many thanks Peter, Chris and Leigh. The workshop started at a beginner’s level, which was perfect as I knew nothing about Wikipedia. It was great to see the various ways wiki can be utilised in an educational setting and how I can utilise Wikiversity to get information out to the community about various projects I work on. The workshop was very informative and practical. I really enjoyed the Wiki workshop, it was a great day. Natalie Crothers. Research Assistant, La Trobe Rural Health School
  • I only the workshop just before lunch. So I did have to catch up with all the basics. After lunch the session ended up being more of a discussion forum and for me it ended quite abruptly. I am very much motivated to introduce working with wiki’s into our program; and in 2nd semester the BOH students will get the task to rewrite the wikipedia page “Oral Health”. This page contains quite a few mistakes and lacks references. I was expecting that in the workshop I would get information about how to grade the student’s work/contribution to a page. This might have been discussed during the morning session. That is the only part I would be struggling with. How do I mark/grade the value of their contribution when they start rewriting the page? Ron Knevel. Year Co-ordinator Oral Health, Dentistry & Oral Health

Budget

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  • $1000 Trainer fees (In-kind contribution volunteers)
  • ~$150 Trainer expenses TBA (travel and incidentals for trainer)
  • $-- Venue hire (In-kind contribution La Trobe University)
  • $300 Catering
  • $100 Printing
  • TOTAL ~>$1550

See also

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Resources

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Introducing Wikipedia

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User Name Nice people Edit button Nice feeling
This video shows some of Wikipedia's contributors, explaining their user names. This video focuses on the motivations and passion of Wikipedians, and ends with a comment by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales about what makes the project special. This video is a direct invitation by Wikipedians to "click that [edit] button and see what happens". In this video, Wikipedians talk about the joy of being part of a global community of editors.
  • The Impact of Wikipedia A series of powerful videos of people from around the world explaining how Wikipedia has impacted them
  • Why Wikipedians are the Weirdest People on the Internet (YouTube) – a humorous presentation by Wikipedian Steven Walling about the culture of Wikipedia and its editors.
  • Wikipedia Vision – an animated map that highlights live edits from users around the world as they happen, demonstrating the global nature of the project.
  • wikistream – a visualization showing a stream of edits to the most popular Wikipedia projects.
  • Live feed of all edits – a feed that outputs every new change to English Wikipedia, demonstrating the pace of Wikipedia's evolution: 1–2 edits per second. Requires an IRC client to view.
  • Wikipedia article traffic statistics – a tool for charting how many hits any given article gets, great for comparing different kinds of articles at different times, e.g., Genetics (in the school year) vs. (in the summer), or YouTube (with weekend spikes) and Simpsons (with spikes when new episodes come out). Students can also use it to see how many people are reading their articles over the course of the class (and beyond).
  • Manypedia – a tool for comparing a specific Wikipedia page from a language edition Wikipedia (for example, English) with its equivalent page on another language edition Wikipedia (for example, Arabic), exploiting automatic translation and additional statistics about both pages such as number of edits and editors.
  • WikiTrip – a tool for visualizing the animated evolution in time of two kinds of information about the Wikipedians who edited the selected page: their location in the world and their gender.
Welcome to Wikipedia Ten Simple Rules Introduction to free licenses Evaluating Wikipedia article quality The Wikipedia Cheatsheet
 
 
 
 
 
This 17-page guide covers creating a user account, editing basics, communication, and how articles evolve and are evaluated, and includes a quick reference to help you to remember frequently used wiki markup. This editorial from PLoS Computation Biology focuses on how to contribute effectively as an expert, and is great for setting expectations before students begin editing. This brochure helps you understand the basic concepts of free licenses, as well as terms like "CC-by-SA" and "public domain". This reference guide covers specific steps you can take to get the most out of Wikipedia, as well as a look at how its quality system works. This one-page quick reference helps you to remember the most frequently used wiki markup commands.

Mechanics of editing Wikipedia

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These printable PDF documents are designed to be handed out to students, either as part of a packet at the beginning of a Wikipedia assignment, or throughout the term at appropriate points.

  • Wiki markup quick reference – This one-page quick reference (included in the Welcome to Wikipedia brochure) helps you to remember the most frequently used wiki markup codes.
  • References – This handout explains why references are important, what the expectations for sourcing on Wikipedia are, where to place references, and the basics of adding "ref" tags.
  • Reference formatting – This handout explains in more detail how to create footnotes for citing sources, and how to cite the same source multiple times.
  • How to get help – explains the recommended way to get help and feedback for classes supported by Wikipedia Ambassadors: by posting on their course talk page and notifying their mentor. It also includes a glossary of additional help resources students might use.
  • Plagiarism – explains what plagiarism is on Wikipedia—including "close paraphrasing"—in addition to why and how to avoid it.
Starting a sandbox article Basic editing: bold and links How to use a watchlist How to use talk pages
How to start an a sandbox page to play around with wiki markup or start an article draft (2m 11s) How to use the most basic features of wiki markup to create bold text and links to other pages (3m 37s) How to use a watchlist to keep track of pages you are interested in or have edited (2m 10s) How to interact with other editors using talk pages, including article talk pages and user talk pages (2m 30s)
Basic editing: citing sources Citing sources with RefToobar Uploading files to Wikimedia Commons
How to add citations using "ref" tags (2m 3s) How to use the 'Cite' tool for inserting automatically formatted references (2m 24s) Uploading files such as images to Wikimedia Commons, using the upload wizard (2 min 48 sec)

Writing articles

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Article creation Article improvement Article assessments Article evolution
A demonstration, recorded live, of how to create a Wikipedia article (7 min 50 sec) A look at how to assess the shortcomings of an article and improve it (4m 22s) An exploration of the standard article assessment system, with examples of each quality level (11m 30s) A trip through the history of an article, from humble beginnings to Good Article status (6m 25s)