Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 2/Contributing references

How else can we help Wikipedia in a way that doesn't involve writing a whole article? We can help by finding and adding a reference, a citation for something that already exists on Wikipedia, but that doesn't have a reliable source. Now, I know what you're thinking: Reliable source? Isn't that complicated? Isn't that the sort of thing that is problematic or difficult in Wikipedia? It *is* complicated, but not problematic, I would like to think. And we have a whole module dedicated to it, module number four. So if you don't know enough about reliable sources or have encountered problems with it so far, I encourage you to stick around for module four, where we will really learn how to identify and use reliable sources. But here, for this talk, I'm just mentioning that that is another way of helping.

If you don't feel like writing whole articles, especially if you have access to materials, if you have access to a good library, for example; if you're a student, your university may have a library, or if you have access to some online databases. And by the way, if you don't know about the Wikipedia library, you should:

This is a project that gives free access to usually-paid online reference sources, so that even if you have absolutely no access to physical books, you will be able to cite serious scholarly sources using The Wikipedia Library. If you don't know The Wikipedia Library, you should take a look and apply and get your digital library card, which will allow you to access academic databases.

If you're interested in doing that kind of work, adding citations and establishing credible sources for facts, you might wonder, well, okay, but what needs citations? How do I find something that already exists that someone else wrote that I could support with a citation? I have just the tool for you!

You can click Citation Hunt on the slide here. And this is a tool that simply randomly selects an article, in this case on English Wikipedia, but you can change the language, and it tells you that in the article Geography of the Philippines, there is this statement:

"The islands are composed of volcanic coral principal rock formations."

Now, that sounds like a fact, right? Like a geological fact. But there is no source for this claim. Presumably, if you know your way around the geographical sources or the Philippines, you should be able to find a source establishing the fact that these islands are composed of volcanic coral etc. and if you do, you can add that source. So this tool is inviting you to think, "is this something I want to research and find a source for?" If it is, click "I got this!" and you will be taken to the page where you can add the citation.

If not, if this is not a topic you know anything about, you can click next. And now I'm taken to an article about a rock band called Cream. So that's just a fun way to find potential pieces of work that you could help with. There is also a language selector here, and you could select a different language. Not absolutely every language in the world. And the reason it doesn't have all the languages in the world is that this depends:

This tool depends on a little template in Wikipedia that has already identified something needing a source. You can see here in English, you see this space where it says "citation needed". This is the English Wikipedia way to mark the fact that here is a factual statement that isn't supported by a citation yet. So most Wikipedias have some equivalent of this "citation needed" template, but not all of them. If your Wikipedia isn't listed here, in this language selector, then you should take a look at the documentation for the tool, linked here at the bottom, and find out what you need to provide so that it is included. But just to show you, we can switch to French and you can see that now I was offered an article in French that is missing a citation. Okay, so this tool actually works across Wikipedias. If it doesn't work on your Wikipedia yet, I encourage you to provide the developers with the template that they need so that they can make it work on your wiki.

Anyway, that's just a quick way to find missing citations. And like I said, access to sources shouldn't be an issue. A lot of sources are available on the open Internet, and additionally, a lot of sources not on the open Internet are available to you as a Wikipedian through The Wikipedia Library.