User:DGG/talk/CCNY

An approach to Wikipedia

Based on a presentation at CCNY, Sept 13, 2011 for
Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Courses/English Composition (Amrita Dhawan)

in theWikipedia:United States Education Program

Introduction

• Statistics
• Comparisons

• Unregistered Logon -- Registration

How reliable is Wikipedia as a source?

1. recognized (within limits)
2. reputation
3. credentials of authors
4. Controls for quality
5. Format and medium: online, print, etc.
6. Technical quality
7. Degree of detail
8. Freedom from bias
9. Currency of information
10. Confirmation by other known reliable sources
11. Sources given for information
    1. Reliability of sources
    2. Appropriateness of sources
    3. Currency of sources

positive factors affecting reliability

1. Large number of contributors
2. Varied background of contributors
   1. Education
   2. Interest
   3. Geography
   4. Language knowledge
3. Specialist contributors
4. WikiProjects and Workgroups
5. Screening of contributions
   1. Recent Changes
   2. Edit filters
   3. New Pages
   4. Patrolled pages for Biography of Living people (forthcoming)
   5. Quality ratings: featured articles,...
   6. Blocking
6. Policy on sourcing
7. Policy: Not Censored
8. Edit histories
9. OTRS

Negative factors affecting reliability

1. Concentration of editors on popular topics
2. Anonymity
3. Impermanence
4. Pressure groups & cabals
5. Cultural bias
   1. Recentist
   2. Anglocentric
   3. Political inclinations
   4. Philosophical inclinations
6. Taboos

Getting Started

• First Step: Find an article, Look at its history., Look at its talk page.
• Second Step: Edit an article, such as JoAnne Stubbe
• Third step: Start an article: for example, from List of members of the National Academy of Sciences (Biochemistry))

• Contributing to Wikipedia, WP:FIRST, WP:MARKUP, Manual of Style, WP:CITE
• Search, WP:SEARCH
• Userpages: for example, User:LaraLove. User:GlassCobra, .. WP:USER
• User Contributions, All Logs, Watchlist
• Preferences

Rules

• WP:SIMPLE, WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:N, WP:RS, WP:NOT, WP:COI
• WP:COPYRIGHT
• WP:GLOSSARY

Organization

• Category:Books. WP:CATEGORY, List of engineering topics, WP:LIST
• WP:REDIRECT
• WP:WIKIPROJECT,
• WP:PORTAL, for example, Portal:Narnia, Portal:China

Quality

• WP:DEL, WP:CSD,
• (Administrator Login WP:ADMIN)
• Category:CSD, WP:PRODSUM, WP:AFD, WP:DELREV
• Becoming an administrator WP:AFD,
• Further Layers WP:Bureaucrat, WP:CHECKUSER, WP:OVERSIGHT,WP:ARBCOM, WP:STEWARDS, WP:WMF, WP:JIMBO

• WP:DISPUTE, WP:ANI, WP:BLOCK , WP:PROTECT
• Enforcement: [|User messages]
• Policies: WP:NPA, WP:BOLD, WP:IAR
• Special WP:NEWPAGES,WP:New pages patrol WP:New pages patrol/patrolled pages-- All Pages, Users, Recent Changes
• Top edits
• WP:BFAQ (guide to corporate contributors) and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard and WT:SPAM
• Wayback Machine archive

Good things

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Classroom coordination
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange
• Wikipedia:Reference Desk
• Category:Wikipedia resources for researchers
• Category:Wikipedia Wikipediology

citinge references

• WP:CITE
• WP:RS (Reliable sources)
• WP:Copyright

• Key Free resources for Wikipedia
  • Google, Google News Archive, Google Scholar, Google Books
  • WorldCat
  • PubMed
• Key non-free Library Resources for Wikipedians
  • JSTOR
  • Project MUSE
  • Web of Science
  • Scopus
  • Ulrich's
  • Readers' Guide and other Wilson indexes (or Ebsco or [[|Gale (publisher)|Gale]], or Proquest, etc.

Writing Articles

• Writing Contributing to Wikipedia, WP:FIRST, WP:MARKUP, Manual of Style,
• Needed topics:

Editing as you see problems

• WP:Cleanup

Further Reading

• WP:FAQ
• WP:HELP (comprehensive)
• WP:GLOSSARY
• History of Wikipedia
• Mediawiki

key resources

• the free online version of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual by John Broughton (also available in print)
• books about Wikipedia

• WP:Wikipedia Signpost, Tutorial series
• Virtual Classroom
• Wikipedia:Ambassadors
• NYC chapter next meeting not yet scheduled.

Other Projects

• Wiktionary
• Wikipedias in other Languages
• Veropedia
• Citizendium

Notes

• WP as a prefix means in the part of Wikipedia devoted to discussing the project, rather than the actual articles
• WT as a prefix means the talk pages for WP: pages

this page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:DGG/NYCTC