Grants:IEG/Motivational and educational video to introduce Wikimedia/Scripts

Note: this project is now inactive. Please see outreach:NavWiki for the successor project.

Scripts for Grants:IEG/Motivational and educational video to introduce Wikimedia


Prioritization system

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Priority 1: currently plan to develop all the way through video production

Priority 1 for video, priority 2 for documentation: I will ensure that good documentation of these subjects exists (in some cases it probably exists already) and will include links to the documentation in the information that is publicly presented about my project. I also may develop scripts for these segments, but may not go through with the production and post-production phases due to time and budget constraints.

Priority 2: I will develop these to the outline stage, but won't write the full scripts or proceed with production and post-production until the higher 2 categories of prioritization are completed.

Possible future developments: will not develop these unless all of the above are complete.

Notes on tone and themes

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The tone should be motivational (use emotion and personal stories) and professional (use facts and research)

Use personal stories and emphasize the Teahouse as a resource, per the comments in the IRC office hour on 25 January 2016:

[19:14:39] <halfak> But I can tell you that the largest effect we have seen on retention in a controlled experiment came from inviting newcomers to the Teahouse.

[19:14:55] <J-Mo> for Teahouse, we focused on surfacing the community behind Wikipedia, in a positive way. That's why we encourage Hosts and guests to create profiles. So, one practice that you might adopt is introducing actual people (pictures, faces, and voices) in the videos. The series of intro videos produced a few years back (by Victor, maybe?) used this approach as well.

Suggestion from Victor: plain styling, for ease of making additional modules in a compatible style

Design thinking ideas: *Facilitate social interaction at all times *Boost rewards early to increase adherence


Notes on desktop vs. mobile interface

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  • May want to mention at key points that the mobile interface may be different.
  • A future extension of this project may show the mobile web interface.


Possible video to reuse

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"Module 0": Introduction to LearnWiki for program leaders (2 minutes)

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Intended audience: Education administrators, GLAM+STEM administrators, education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, and edit-a-thon leaders

Click here for the draft script for Module 0: "Introduction to LearnWiki for Program Leaders" on Google Docs. Comments are welcome.

  • Subjects that the video series covers
  • Wikipedia
  • Wikimedia Commons, a free multimedia repository that hosts most of the multimedia content that is included on Wikipedia such as images, sounds, and videos.
  • (Make this section easily extensible for other Wikimedia projects such as Wikisource and Wiktionary)
  • Modular format
  • Recommended playlists; details of these are in "Additional Materials", which may be found on <insert location here. Possibly on Outreach Wiki, possibly on a separate domain>
    • Mention other materials that may be found in "Additional Materials"
    • (What format to use for Additional Materials? Consider using a tabbed format like on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Education Working Group)
    • (revise the number of minutes when it becomes known)(Don't state a number of minutes because it might be revised periodically which would require revising this module as well)
    • (Have a two dimensional table that shows which modules are recommended for which audiences)
    • 15-20 minute version for use at edidathons and workshops
    • For use in education settings
      • For students (40 minutes)
      • For educators (additional 10 minutes or so, for Module 0 plus an instructor specialty module)
      • Special case: Medical content on English Wikipedia (MEDRS) (additional X minutes)
      • Special case: translation courses (additional X minutes)
    • 40 minute version for use in GLAM+STEM institutions (need to explain the terms)
    • "Full" version for Wiki Academies (need to explain the term "Wiki Academy")

Overview of Wikipedia and Wikimedia (2 minutes) (Priority 1 for video)

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Intended audience: Education administrators, GLAM+STEM administrators, education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, and people who are unfamiliar with Wikimedia and Wikipedia

Click here for the draft script for Module 1: "Overview of Wikimedia Projects" on Google Docs. Comments are welcome.

Welcome

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Main titles (15-30 seconds; probably a remix of existing content for the initial version. A more exciting version is in the "Possible Future Developments" section.)

(In "Additional materials" for this section: File:How Wikipedia contributes to free knowledge.webm)

  • Welcome by one or more Wikimedians
  • "Welcome to Wikimedia. My name is X. You're probably watching this video because you want to edit Wikipedia or one of its sister projects like Commons or Wikisource. These projects are collectively known as Wikimedia projects."
  • "Before we start contributing, we're going to spend a few minutes getting oriented, so that when we press the "edit" button, we know what to expect and how to accomplish our goals. You might have edited Wikimedia projects before. Many people experiment with editing Wikipedia casually. This introduction will help you to become a more knowledgeable editor. I hope that by the end of this video series, you'll find projects like Wikipedia enjoyable, and you'll understand the power that you have as a contributor to reach countless people who read Wikipedia and its sister projects." (Show the Wikipedia globe ball in hands: File:Wikipedia mini globe handheld.jpg)

What is a wiki?

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Interview with Ward Cunningham, for Additional Materials

"Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software... originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work". "Wiki" is a Hawaiian word meaning "quick".

A wiki is a website that provides collaborative modification of its content and structure directly from the web browser. In a typical wiki, text is written using a simplified markup language (known as "wiki markup"), and often edited with the help of a rich-text editor...

...The content is created without any defined owner or leader, and wikis have little implicit structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users.

The encyclopedia project Wikipedia is by far the most popular wiki-based website, and is in fact one of the most widely viewed sites of any kind of the world, having been ranked in the top ten since 2007. Wikipedia is not a single wiki but rather a collection of hundreds of wikis, one for each language."

Wikipedia has many sister projects which are also wikis. Once someone creates an account on Wikipedia or one of its sister projects, that same account can be used to access most of the sister projects without the need to register additional accounts.

What are the Wikimedia sister projects?

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(This list will be put in order by a measure of size or activity level if that information is available from Analytics; see https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2016-July/005297.html thread).

(Encourage people to explore by navigating to https://www.wikimedia.org)

  • Known to have been used in GLAM+STEM and education programs:
  • Wikipedia (multiple languages)
  • Wikimedia Commons (single multi-lingual project site)
  • Wikidata (of special interest to GLAMs) (single multi-lingual project site)
  • Wikisource (multiple languages)
  • Wiktionary (multiple languages)
  • Wikivoyage (multiple languages)
  • Other projects:
    • Wikiquote (multiple languages)
    • Wikispecies (single project)
    • Wikibooks (multiple languages)
    • Wikiversity (multiple languages)
    • Wikinews (multiple languages)
    • Incubator
(Mention briefly if bolded, otherwise put only in "additional resources"?)
  • Wikis
  • Outreach
  • MediaWiki
  • WikimediaFoundation.org
  • Meta ("cross-wiki" or "cross-project" coordination site)
  • Affiliates websites (if you want to meet Wikimedians in person, use these!)
  • Conferences websites, particularly Wikimania but also geographic and thematic conferences (list these in Additional Resources)
  • Private wikis
  • Not wikis
  • Phabricator (for reporting bugs and requesting features)
  • Mailing lists (lists.wikimedia.org), especially (put subscription info in Additional Materials):
    • GLAM
    • Education
    • Wikidata
    • Wikisource
    • Commons
    • Wikipedias (some)
    • Language communities, such as Iberocoop
    • Wikimedia affiliates (usually operate in a geographic area like Cascadia (Oregon and Washington in the US, and British Columbia in Canada) but may also be thematic (such as WikiProject Med Foundation)
  • Social media channels
  • Facebook
  • Wikipedia WMF account
  • Groups of Wikimedians
  • Affiliate pages or groups
  • Hashtags
  • Twitter
  • Wikipedia WMF account
  • Groups of Wikimedians
  • Affiliate pages or groups
  • Hashtags

Readership

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  • Total *probably human* pageviews per month; see charts on [stats.wikimedia.org stats.wikimedia.org] (verify that this excludes bots?) (is this website changing after the WikiStats replacement?)
  • This number excludes short summaries of Wikipedia that you might see on "knowledge panels" in search engines, so the number of total views is higher (see email from Trey Jones on the Discovery mailing list: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/discovery/2016-July/001203.html)
  • How widely are the projects read? (number and geography; waiting for info from Research per Dario)
  • Message: Wikipedia is an important source of information for the world. If you want information to be widely known, Wikipedia is a good place to put it. Information that you share on Wikipedia is likely to be read far more widely than information that you put on a personal or organizational blog, a paper for school, or even the website of the U.S. National Archives.

How big is the "Wikiverse"?

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  • How many articles are there on Wikipedia? (Show by language edition for the top 20)
  • How many images are there on Commons?
  • How many Wikidata items are there?

Who creates content on Wikimedia, and why?

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(Remember to keep this brief. The goal is to inform viewers of other kinds of people that they may meet. Exclude information on motivations, but links to that information can be include in Additional Materials.)

  • Short answer: People like you. (Show photos of diverse users; preferably include video clips of users. Include mentions of the geographies of users shown, where users have allowed that. Use the crowd photo from London Wikimania that was included in the 5 million article video)
  • Types of editors
    • Students
    • GLAMs
    • Organizations, politicians, celebrities, marketers, and PR people (often with COI that may conflict with Wikipedia's principle of neutrality. We'll talk more about in another module.)
    • Hobbyists and enthusiasts (examples: basketball, trains and gardening), and fans (examples: Apple and Samsung)
    • Subject-matter experts
    • Journalists, including citizen journalists (example: November 2015 Paris attacks)
    • Undersirable editors: COI editors, POV-pushers, vandals, spammers, and other uninvited guests
    • Wikipedia "netziens"; frequently found doing maintenance, protection, outreach, and organizing
  • Geographic, gender, and linguistic diversity
    • Perhaps a map of where Wikipedia editors are; again, waiting for information per Dario
  • In "Additional Resources": information about demographics, geography, and motivations. See the info on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pine/Motivations for contributing to Wikimedia
  • In "Additional Resources": https://www.whatcanidoforwikimedia.org/

Privacy (4 minutes, priority 1)

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Click here for the draft script for Module 2: "Privacy" on Google Docs. Comments are welcome.

  • Do create an account (see separate module about that). If you are worried about linking your school-related activities to another Wikipedia account that you have, it's ok to create a new account that you use solely for school-related activities so long as you don't participate in a single community process with multiple accounts. So-called "single-purpose accounts" are permitted, but avoid using them for advocacy, and especially avoid "sockpuppetry". Quoting from en:Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry: "The use of multiple Wikipedia user accounts for an improper purpose is called sock puppetry (or simply socking). Improper purposes include attempts to deceive or mislead other editors, disrupt discussions, distort consensus, avoid sanctions, evade blocks, or otherwise violate community standards and policies."
  • I recommend setting up an email account that you use only for Wikipedia activities, using this email when you register your Wikimedia account, and using this email at all times when discussing Wikimedia matters. This limits the privacy issues that can happen if you intend to hide your offline name but you use the "email this user" feature with information that can be traced back to your offline identity.
  • General advice: don't share your real name, phone number, address, anything about your birthday, or personal photos. The younger you are, the more strongly this advice applies to you. On the other hand, if you're already a public person and you want your edits to be attributed to you, for example if you're a graduate student of chemistry and you're editing chemistry articles, then it's relatively speaking safer and to some degree desirable to publicly identify yourself.
  • Certain roles in the Wikimedia movement require various degrees of real-life identification. You can always start more anonymous and then choose to reveal more about yourself later, but it's nearly impossible to go the other direction (from public to private.) So I suggest starting more private and then, if you choose and it seems wise or necessary, becoming more public if you want.
  • Wikipedia is a social network to a degree, and a certain amount of social networking is fine, but Wikimedia is not a personal Facebook, Twitter, or blog. For the most part, lengthy autobiographies and personal stories are fine for other social media accounts but not for Wikimedia. Keep in mind that Wikimedia is an educational platform and act accordingly.
  • Please note that no precautions can completely protect your identity on Wikimedia, although you can make choices that significantly limit your risk.

Create a Wikimedia Account: How and Why (5 minutes) (priority 1)

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Intended audience: Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, and participants in GLAM+STEM activities who are new to Wikimedia or Wikipedia

Click here for the draft script for Module 3: "Create a Wikimedia Account: How and Why" on Google Docs. Comments are welcome.

How do I create an account?

Show how to create an account (note that this may look different on mobile devices)
Remember to register an email account that you use only for Wikimedia sites, unless you're comfortable with your email identity being publicly known. See the privacy module for more information.

Benefits of creating an account

User Pages, Wikitext Editing, Sandboxes, and Images (12 minutes) (priority 1)

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Intended audience: Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM activities, and edit-a-thon participants. Note in the additional materials and in Module 0 that I recommend following these steps for users who are writing in English even if their ultimate goal is to edit a site other than English Wikipedia.

Click here for the draft script for Module 4: "User Pages, Wikitext Editing, Sandboxes, and Images" on Google Docs. Comments are welcome.

We're going to edit Wikipedia! (excitement)
To write Wikipedia we'll use wikimarkup, which is also known as wikitext. It looks complicated at first, but with a little practice the basics become easy.
Before starting this module, please make sure that you have created an account and are logged in. You should see your username at the top of the screen.
Edit your sandbox (don't use your signature)
  • What is a sandbox?
  • User sandboxes are public, although most of the time users will edit only their own sandboxes and not the sandboxes of other users.
  • There are also site-wide sandboxes. Anyone can use them at any time.
  • A sandbox is a place to practice editing and also a place to put content before transferring the content to a place that is more public, such as a Wikipedia article.
  • Mention the preview button
  • Mention the "history" button; notice the red link by the username, which indicates that the page does not yet exist. We'll create that page in a minute.
  • Write "Hello world!"
    • Indentation
    • Bold and italics
    • Section levels
    • Wikilinks
  • Include an edit summary, preferably with every edit. This will appear on the history tab after the edit is made.
  • After the edit, click the link on the history tab. This shows the history of the page. Please note that edit summaries cannot be edited, and can be deleted only by administrators. We'll discuss history pages in more detail in a separate module.
  • Note also that your username appears in the edit summary. If you forget to log in, your IP will show instead of your username.
  • If you make a mistake in an edit summary, for most minor typos and minor errors this is inconsequential and you don't need to fix it. However, if you feel the need to correct a mistake or if you accidentally edited without being logged in, see the additional materials for more information. (Provide this information in Additional Materials. For editing without logging in, include info about revdels and oversight suppression. For mistakes, provide info about dummy edits)
  • Generally avoid using the "minor edit" checkbox; more info about that in Additional Materials
Create your user page (optional but encouraged). We'll show a simple example here.

Communicating on Talk Pages (3 minutes)

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Click here for the draft script for Module 5: "Communicating on Talk Pages" on Google Docs. Comments are welcome.

There are two kinds of talk pages: Wikitext talk pages and Flow talk pages. Wikitext is used on Wikimedia Commons, English Wikipedia, and many other wikis. Flow is used on other projects like Chinese Wikipedia and Wikidata on certain talk pages. In this section we'll cover the basics of Wikitext talk pages.

Talk pages are used on "user talk" pages as well as "article talk pages". User talk pages are mostly used for communicating with a single person, while article talk pages are mostly used to communicate about the subject of an article. There are other kinds of talk pages also.

Say hi to someone you know on their talk page; include your signature (only on talk pages!) (Also mention article talk pages)
  • If you don't know someone to greet, you can go say hi to the hosts at the Teahouse. You can find a list of them at En:Wikipedia:Teahouse/Hosts.
  • Mention the signature requirement, and how to sign posts on talk pages only. Emphasize not signing posts on "main space" or "content" pages.
  • Again, show the edit summary
  • Again, show the preview button
Question: Will VE be active on talk pages? Reply from James F: No. Further discussion about talk pages on mw:User talk:Trevor Parscal (WMF)

Authorship, copyright, and copying (4 minutes, priority 1)

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Click here for the draft script for Module 6: "Authorship, Copyright, and Copying" on Google Docs. Comments are welcome.

 
License compatibility
  • Nearly all of Wikimedia and Wikipedia text content is licensed under Creative Commons licenses.
  • About Creative Commons licensing, particularly CC-BY and CC-BY-SA
  • CC NC licenses are prohibited on Wikimedia
  • Attribution rights kept
  • Donating permanently to the public via CC
  • Only publish on a Wikimedia site what you're comfortable with sharing with the whole world, for free, forever.
  • Contributions to Wikimedia generally will not be "unpublished", although it may be moved, modified, or removed from easy public viewing. In general, assume that anything that you publish will remain published indefinitely, and will be accessible on history pages even if removed from main pages. If you need to delete information from a Wikimedia site, for example because it contains a copyright or privacy violation, please contact a Wikimedia administrator. You can find out how to do this in Additional Resources. (Put info in AR about this).
  • Plagiarism
  • Close paraphrasing
  • Image licensing is complicated.
  • If you find an image on Wikimedia Commons (illustrate this with an animation), you can always use it on Wikipedia if it has an open source license that allows commercial use. To check the license of an image, you'll want to check at the bottom of the file's page. (Demonstrate how to do this.)
  • However, you shouldn't take an image from English Wikipedia (as opposed to Commons) and use it on another wiki.
  • Images to avoid using are ones that have no license listed. Also, if you're editing anywhere except English Wikipedia, don't use images with "Fair Use" licenses.
  • Image uploads are even more complicated. We'll talk about that later, when we talk about Wikimedia Commons.
  • For now, just know that the easiest thing to do if you want to illustrate a Wikipedia article is to use an image that's already on Commons.

(After this module, go to overviews of specific projects such as Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata, or Wikisource)

Introduction to Wikipedia (5 minutes) (priority 2)

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Click here for the draft script for Module 7: "Introduction to Wikipedia" on Google Docs. Comments are welcome.

Intended audience: everyone interested in Wikipedia who is unfamiliar with it or wants a big-picture overview of it

Introduction: "This is an encyclopedia" by Catherine Munro (20 seconds)

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  • Make use of the Wikipedia wordmark and globe logo in combination to familiarize viewers with them

How many languages of Wikipedia are there?

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  • Get the number from stats.wikimedia.org. Reference the source for this in "Additional Materials" due to the upcoming change of URLs.
  • Mention that this number fluctuates.

How much are Wikipedia and its sister projects edited?

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How many people edit Wikipedia

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  • How many total editors are there?
  • This is difficult to know because there are many "anonymous" editors, who don't have registered Wikipedia accounts but still edit. Yes, you can edit most Wikipedia articles without an account, but you lose the benefits that we discuss in the "How and why to create an account" module.
  • How many active, registered editor accounts are there on various language editions of Wikipedia? Show a chart. (Can provide more information about this in "Additional Materials". Note the interchangability of editors, contributors, and "users". Distinguish "users" from "readers")
  • What subjects does Wikipedia cover? (see the list that I created for the 5 million article milestone)

The principles and WP:FIVE Pillars of Wikipedia

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"¿Qué es Wikipedia?"
  • See the video on the Outreach wiki homepage: File:¿Qué es Wikipedia?.ogv
  • The 5 Pillars will be discussed in more detail in the Policies video
  • Note that different language editions of Wikipedia may have varying interpretations of the five pillars. For example, English Wikipedia has strong policies about conflict of interest, particularly undisclosed conflicts of interest, and the English Wikipedia community makes active, sometimes exhaustive, efforts to identify and disrupt the activities of editors who have undisclosed COIs in order to protect the neutrality and integrity of the encyclopedia. Other wikis have more permissive approaches. Individual Wikipedia editors also have varying attitudes about COI, so you may find that what one editor considers to be a problem would be supported by another editor. We'll talk in more detail about policies in a separate module. For now, just remember the 5 pillars. (Show them again on a slide.)
  • Not a sixth pillar, but also a very important principle: en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a work in progress. People constantly add, remove, and change content. Notable events regularly happen around the universe. New discoveries are made, new theories are proposed, and old theories are re-evaluated. Wikipedia benefits from lots of people adding something, whether that something is a little or a lot. And if you need to leave your work unfinished, that is usually okay. Quote from Jimbo's talk page:
"Because you don't hear it enough":
"I love it here. I love Wikipedia. It's got its problems - lots of them. It has its issues. It's not perfect. But that, in its way, is the point. It's not a complete encyclopedia, it's an encyclopedia that you, and I, and everyone else on the planet (and maybe people not on it) are welcome to edit, as long as we're trying to make it a better encyclopedia. It is flawed, but that is the essence of humanity's works. So I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this magical, wonderful, flawed, human endeavor." - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 19:24, 2 April 2014 (UTC)"

Mobile interfaces

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  • Mention that Wikipedia has different formats for mobile web, and mobile apps for Android and iPhone.
  • In these videos we'll mostly use the desktop interface.
  • If you're using a tablet or other mobile device, the concepts will be similar but the interface may be different.
  • In general, editing Wikipedia can be done relatively easily on tablets, but as screen sizes shrink the difficulty of editing Wikipedia increases.
  • The mobile apps for Android and iPhone have more limited editing features than the interface that you'll see in a mobile web browser, so I recommend using mobile web when you want to edit. If you want to read and explore Wikipedia but aren't interested in editing, then the mobile apps for Android and iPhone may be good choices.

Article Structure, Critical Reading, and Quality (6 minutes) (priority 1 for written, priority 2 for video)

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Intended audience: Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM activities, and edit-a-thon participants.

Click here for the draft script for Module 8: "Article Structure, Critical Reading, and Quality" on Google Docs. Comments are welcome.

In time-limited circumstances I recommend skipping this module. On the other hand, instructors and students in education programs who want to understand Wikipedia better are likely to benefit from this module. Contributors who view this module may find that it helps them become better Wikipedia writers as well as readers, because it will help them to understand what's already inside of a Wikipedia article as well as how to structure a new article.

"Quote: "Of course it's true. Everyone knows it's true. Do I have to put it on Wikipedia before you'll believe me?" - https://ntweblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/in-defence-of-wikipedia.html

Anatomy of a Wikipedia article

 
  • Title
  • Sections and subsections
  • Infobox
  • Hatnotes
  • Article talk page (similar to user talk page)

Quality rating scale. On English Wikipedia, quality rating templates are often unreliable below the level of a GA. Articles which have passed peer review are good articles (GA), A-class articles (A), and featured articles (FA).

Possible dimensions on which to measure quality: completeness, verifiability, and neutrality. See also the rating systems used for GA, A, and FA.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Statistics. Keep in mind that article quality can change after an article is rated, and articles of B quality and below don't get formal peer review so their quality level may vary significantly from the quality shown. For example, if a stub article is significantly expanded, it may continue to be rated as a stub until someone changes the rating.

Possible discussion of ORES article ratings. See discussion on AI mailing list about putting ORES ratings on talk pages via a bot.

This section might want to mention ORES. Waiting for feedback from the AI list about whether ORES scores are available on a template for talk pages.)

Number and quality of references

How many contributors?

History of contributions

Discussions on the talk page

Hatnotes

"Further reading", "External links", and other additional information

Basics of navigating categories

Additional resource: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Understanding_hoax_articles_on_English_Wikipedia

Article editing for beginners (3 minutes) (priority 2)

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Intended audience: Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM events, and edit-a-thon participants

Finding things to edit on Wikipedia that interest you

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  • Searching for the title of an article
  • Using autocomplete in the search function
  • Category system (use this, starting from an article that interests you)
  • WikiProjects (see templates on article talk pages. Start from an article that interests you)
  • In Additional Resources:
  • Article hatnotes
  • Portals
  • Pageviews
  • On ENWP: rankings of article by importance and quality
  • On ENWP: articles that are awaiting review in the Guild of Copy Editors

Tasks for beginners

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  • Tasks for beginners, like linking and copyediting ("I fixed the Internet!")
  • See E3 onboarding ideas. Fix a typo, and what else?
  • More advanced tasks (discussed in other modules):
  • Common mistakes
  • Copying within Wikipedia requires attribution, generally in edit summaries. If you're going to copy from one Wikipedia page to another, see Additional Materials for more information.
  • Don't reference a Wikipedia article to another Wikipedia article. We'll talk more about referencing in a separate module.

Certain articles may require user rights

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  • Brief discussion of confirmed, autoconfirmed / semi-protection, extendedconfirmed, and full protection
  • If you come across one of these articles, select a different article until you have the appropriate user right
  • Autoconfirmed and extendedconfirmed rights are granted automatically once you reach certain thresholds.
  • On ENWP, autoconfirmed is granted after 4 days and at least 10 edits.
  • On ENWP, extendedconfirmed is granted after 30 days and at least 500 edits.

Go to module: Communications, collaboration, getting help, and making friends

Editing existing articles with VisualEditor on Wikipedia (7 minutes) (priority 1)

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Intended audience: Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM activities, and edit-a-thon participants

VisualEditor is a rich text editor for Wikimedia sites. VisualEditor, frequently abbreviated "VE", works with most modern web browsers that have JavaScript enabled.

See:

Categories

Tables (see separate module)

(See also: Referencing with VE)

Show the Universal Language Selector (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Universal_Language_Selector) in VE

Include discussion of how to add images with VE

Article and user history tools, statistics, and special pages (3 minutes) (priority 2)

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Intended audience: Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM activities, and edit-a-thon participants

  • User preferences ("Special")
  • Search bar
  • Other languages
  • Page history
  • Tools
    • Page information
      • Pageview statistics

Adding references on Wikipedia (4 minutes) (priority 1)

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Quote: "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundation under them." --Henry David Thoreau

Quote: "Of course it's true. Everyone knows it's true. Do I have to put it on Wikipedia before you'll believe me?" - https://ntweblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/in-defence-of-wikipedia.html

Intended audience: Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM activities, and edit-a-thon participants

The terms "references" and "citations" are interchangable; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing sources

Basic referencing with the Wikimarkup editor

Verifiable and reliable sources (again)

Basic referencing with VisualEditor

Mention the option to apply for a Wikipedia Library account; discuss this further in Additional Materials

Common mistakes (expanded from the Tasks for Beginners module)

  • Copying within Wikipedia requires attribution, generally in edit summaries. If you're going to copy from one Wikipedia page to another, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copying_within_Wikipedia for more information. A summary of this information is available within Additional Materials.
  • Don't reference a Wikipedia article to another Wikipedia article. Instead, either wikilink, or look at the other article's references. You can copy information from the other article, including the text of the article and the references, if you follow the guidelines about copying within Wikipedia.
See this Spanish language video for ideas, including regarding "Fake news" and adding Citation Needed tags


Wikipedia policies for contributors (7 minutes) (priority 1)

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Intended audience: Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM activities, and edit-a-thon participants

(See also: Five Pillars)

Notability

Verifiable and reliable sources

Neutral point of view (NPOV) and undue weight

Conflict of interest, how to avoid it, and how to spot it; Conflict of interest noticeboard; WikiProject Cooperation/Paid editor help

Advocacy; undisclosed advocacy; paid advocacy; undisclosed paid advocacy (mention the TOU and the {{paid}} template)

Attribution, plagiarism, close paraphrasing, copyrights and trademarks

Personality rights

Biographies of Living People (WP:BLP)

Psychology and health content (MEDRS): see specialty module

Civility

Policies
No personal attacks
No harassment
No trolling (also see Revert, block, ignore)
No legal threats
No edit warring; see 3RR
No outing (the policy on ENWP is particularly strict about this; other wikis' policies may vary)
How to respond to uncivil behavior:
In general, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Incivility. May want to consult with User:The Earwig about this, to provide a more concise guideline for LearnWiki participants.
For harrassment...
For legal threats...
For other threats...

Privacy (including privacy of potential COI editors; report them to ArbCom)

Multiple user accounts: when it's ok, and when it's not

Brief discussion of deletion criteria and nominations

Semi-protection and protection

Pending changes

What Wikipedia is not:

  • Censored (some NSFW material may be flagged or obscured, but some may not, so view at your own risk)
  • A dictionary (see Wiktionary, and mention language preservation possibilities with Wiktionary)
  • A web directory
  • A publisher of original research (mention Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, and PLOS ONE)
  • A provider of professional advice, including legal and medical advice
  • A soapbox
  • A crystal ball
  • A battleground
  • Compulsory (unless you're a paid contributor or a student who is editing Wikipedia as a part of coursework)

Communication, collaboration, getting help, and making friends

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Initial suggestions:

  • Do introduce yourself on your userpage. This can be basic or elaborate, and you can choose how much information to reveal about yourself. See the modules about (1) userpages and basic wikitext editing and (2) privacy.

In the module about reversions and disputes, AND also for the help module:

  • Explain that reversions are normal (be patient about explaining this); no need to get upset. Can discuss on the talk page. This is very important; there are many anecdotal reports that reversions are discouraging and frustrating to newbies, to discuss how to handle them.
  • Be civil. "This is the internet"; some people are nicer than others; language skills vary; cultural backgrounds vary; temperaments and roles vary. Refer people to Village Pumps for questions that aren't resolved on article talk pages or user talk pages.

On Wikipedia

  • Article talk pages
  • User talk pages (watchlisting someone's talk page is the closest equivalent that Wikimedia has to "friending" or "following" someone; more info to follow about befriending people over the Internet and in real life)
  • WikiProjects (for collaboration and help, and for meeting people with similar interest or backgrounds. For example, I have heard that people with Native American heritage have met each other on Wikipedia. While the cautions about revealing real-life identity stand, it's certainly possible to make friends here.)
  • Finding active WikiProjects: https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/12335. To re-run the query, sign in to Quarry, select "Fork" near the top of the page, then select "Submit query" at the bottom right corner of the black box.

If you sign into Quarry and 'fork' this query, you can re-run it any time you want to get updated numbers.

  • The Teahouse (primarily for help)
  • On Commons, Commons:Help desk (primarily for help)
  • Campaigns and competitions like Wiki Loves Monuments, GOCE drives, and the Wikicup
  • Off-wiki communications (tend to be a greater openness to general socializing and making friends, but as always be street-smart about sharing personal information with others)
  • IRC
  • WP:MEETUP (for socializing, collaboration and help. Also applies to other Wikimedia projects)
  • Facebook
  • Email

How to communicate and meet with other contributors to Wikipedia, Commons, and other Wikimedia projects (3 minutes) (priority 2)

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Intended audience: Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM activities, and edit-a-thon participants

  • Village pumps (go here if you want to find a chapter or user group but don't know where to start)
  • WikiProjects (mostly WP)
  • Mailing lists
  • Newsletters, particularly The Signpost
  • Wikipedia pages (especially helpful for policies like MOS)
  • Talk pages (again)
    • User talk pages
    • Wikilove
    • Barnstars
    • The "thank" button
    • Templates
    • WP:DTTR
    • Article or file talk pages
    • Template talk pages
    • "Project namespace" ("Wikipedia:", "Commons:", etc) talk pages (do use the word "namespace")
      • WikiProject talk pages
      • Essays, guidelines, and policies' talk pages
      • Village pumps
  • Online meetings
    • IRC
    • Google Hangouts
    • Google Voice
  • In-person meetups, events and projects
    • WP:MEETUP
    • Affiliates
  • meta.wikimedia.org
  • outreach.wikimedia.org
  • Other platforms
  • Facebook
  • Wikipedia page
  • Wikipedia Weekly page
  • GLAM page
  • Wikidata page
  • GLAM + Wikidata page
  • Twitter

How to get help regarding Wikipedia (3 minutes) (priority 1)

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Intended audience: Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM activities, and edit-a-thon participants

  • Show the basic help links for all Wikimedia projects
  • Commons help pages
  • Wikipedia-space pages
  • Favorite resources
  • WP:TEAHOUSE (The Teahouse) (emphasize this one)
  • WP:QUESTIONS
  • WP:CHEAT
  • Help in the Wikitext editor
  • Other resources:
  • WP:HELP
  • WP:WELCOME
  • WP:VP
  • WP:FIVE
  • WP:GNG
  • WP:BLP
  • HELP:DIRECTORY
  • WP:VRS and WP:RSN
  • Education program noticeboard
  • User talk pages, article talk pages, WikiProject talk pages, and Wikipedia talk pages (see discussion about talk pages elsewhere)
  • IRC (#wikipedia-en-help)
  • OTRS (email)
  • "To create a ticket in the OTRS system, send an email to one of our email addresses. A good example is info-en wikimedia org, which is the main address for the English Wikipedia. There are several hundred addressed used at any one time. We also have info-commons wikimedia org, for Wikimedia Commons related inquiries. (References: OTRS on Meta, en:WP:OTRS)
  • What if I have a disagreement with another editor? (see "resolving disagreements" module)
  • What if I have a suggestion for how to improve Wikipedia's technical features or community policies? (Village pumps)?

Creating new articles on Wikipedia (3 minutes) (priority 1)

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Intended audience: Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM activities, and edit-a-thon participants

Before editing your first article, I recommend watching the other Wikipedia modules, and making some edits to your userpage and your sandbox

(Mention New page patrol)

Your first article

Sandbox (again)

Notability (again)

The Draft namespace and Articles for Creation

(Go to: editing existing articles)

Uploading original images to Wikimedia Commons (6 minutes) (priority 1)

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Intended audience: Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM activities, and media uploaders such as participants in Wiki Loves Monuments

Click here for the draft script for Module 16: "Uploading Images to Wikimedia Commons" on Google Docs. Comments are welcome.

0. Searching for media on Commons. This is a common task for Wikimedians who are illustrating articles.

  • Using plaintext search
  • Caution: search results are not censored. You may occasionally find surprising images, particularly if using plaintext search.
  • Using categories

1. Upload tool on Wikimedia Commons

  • Per Adam Cuerden: "one should always upload an original, uncropped, untweaked copy where possible before uploading an edited copy". Show how to upload over the unedited copy afterwards - that's probably simpler (and just as effective in practice as linked uploads).
  • Image licensing
  • Very important: Images, animations, and other media with "non-commercial" or "fair use" licenses are prohibited on Commons. (Show an example of a license for each.)
  • Government works
  • US Federal Government
  • US governments and government agencies other than the Federal government
  • Other countries that use CC-BY or similar licenses
  • Personality rights (note that these vary by jurisdiction. Also note that permission to photograph may be treated differently than permission to suggest an endorsement.)
  • Privacy issues (note that laws and norms vary)
  • Special cases
  • Image permissions via OTRS
  • HIPPA and medical ethics for image uploads
  • Categories on Commons

2. Adding metadata (how important this is may be surprising. An image or other media file may be much easier to find if it has extensive metadata.)

  • Title and description
  • Multilingual
  • Categories
  • Geographic location

Uploading modified images to Wikimedia Commons

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How to upload a modified version of a file. Per Adam Cuerden: "one should always upload an original, uncropped, untweaked copy where possible before uploading an edited copy". Show how to upload over the unedited copy afterwards - that's probably simpler (and just as effective in practice as linked uploads).

Searching for and reusing media files from Wikimedia Commons (6 minutes) (priority 2)

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Searching for media on Commons. This is a common task for Wikimedians who are illustrating articles. 1. Searching for media files on Commons

  • Using plaintext search. (This can illustrate the value of good file titles)

Caution: search results are not censored. You may occasionally find surprising images, particularly if using plaintext search.

  • Using categories. This can illustrate how to navigate the category tree, and the value of having files in multiple categories.

2. Reusing media from Commons: Commons:Simple media reuse guide. Also consider adding this to the list of "additional materials".

For Additional Materials regarding Commons

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Resources, communications and help regarding Commons

Resolving disagreements on Wikimedia (5 minutes) (priority 1)

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Intended audience: Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM activities, and edit-a-thon participants

Quote, perhaps for the end of the module: "Our work together here should be our armor, not some sharp, angry, burning sword. I would strongly recommend that everyone here find an article to work on for a while; not the cliche "random article", but something that gives you a nice tug at the heartstrings. It feels great to be out there doing work on something you genuinely care about, and I assure you it'll help you regain the sense of why you're here." --User:The Blade of the Northern Lights

Introducing the concept of consensus

Introducing article talk pages and user talk pages

Introducing the concepts of boldness and reversion

In the module about reversions and disputes, AND also for the help module:

  • Explain that reversions are normal (be patient about explaining this); no need to get upset. Can discuss on the talk page. This is very important; There are many anecdotal reports that reversions are discouraging and frustrating to newbies, to discuss how to handle them.
  • Be civil. "This is the internet"; some people are nicer than others; language skills vary; cultural backgrounds vary; temperaments and roles vary. Refer people to Village Pumps for questions that aren't resolved on article talk pages or user talk pages.

Note that there is a difference between an edit conflict (define) and a dispute or disagreement (define).

Introducing the concepts of edit wars and 3RR (duplicated from the Policies module)

How to resolve disagreements

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Bold-revert-discuss cycle (WP:BRD)

Important: if you are reverted:
  1. A reversion or edit of your work usually isn't a personal attack
  2. Check for the reason given in the edit summary
  3. Reasons stated are sometimes wrong or incomplete, or edit summaries may be blank
  4. Feel free to discuss, particularly on the talk page (see above). If discussion doesn't lead to consensus (see above), then request a 3rd opinion (which is the next topic)

Resolving disagreements:

  • First, discuss on the article's talk page
  • Second, consider requesting a 3rd opinion.
  • Advanced dispute resolution: noticeboards such as education and ANI (and on some Wikipedias, arbitration)

Things to avoid

  • Assuming bad faith
  • Making personal attacks, even if you are attacked. Comment about the substance of the dispute, not the other people involved in the dispute.
  • Sockpuppetry
  • Posting information about another editor's identity on-wiki. If you have reason to suspect an undisclosed conflict of interest then you may email a functionary in private. (Note that not all wikis have functioning arbitration committees for handling this kind of situation.)

If your article is nominated for deletion

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If your article is nominated for deletion, see "Additional Materials" for guidance.

If your article is vandalized

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If your article is vandalized, see "Additional Materials" for guidance.

If there is a personal attack, harassment, or a threat

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If you experience or see a personal attack, harassment, or a threat, see "Additional Materials" for guidance.

Specialty module: translating Wikipedia articles (3 minutes)

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Intended audience: where translation is involved for Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM activities, and edit-a-thon participants

  • Policy variations between language Wikipedias
  • Style variations between language Wikipedias
  • Referencing variations between language Wikipedias (stricter on some than others)
  • Appropriately attributing authors of the original article
  • Link to case studies in Arabic Wikipedia Education Program content translation

Specialty module: Wikipedia articles about health and psychology (5 minutes) (priority 1 for written, priority 2 for video)

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Intended audience: when health or psychology content will be edited Education instructors, GLAM+STEM project leaders, students, participants in GLAM+STEM activities, and edit-a-thon participants

  • Global impact, especially in areas which are underserved by medical professionals and on public health
  • Epidemiology and Wikimedia pageviews
  • Specific to English Wikipedia: Identifying reliable sources (medicine) (MEDRS)
  • HIPPA and medical ethics for image uploads
  • Resources:

Specialty module: Wikimedia for educators (6 minutes) (priority 1 for written, priority 2 for video)

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Intended audience: Education instructors

  • (See the module about Wikipedia critical reading)
  • (See the module about health and psychology articles)
  • (See the article about translation projects; also consider a specialty module about how mark items for translation and how to translate Wikipedia articles)

Why have students contribute to Wikipedia instead of write papers? (Also note that Wiktionary, and translations, are alternatives. Translation is addressed in a separate module.)

There are many ways that students can contribute to Wikimedia projects (see this email thread: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/education/2016-July/001544.html)

  • The editing and writing of Wikipedia articles is best suited to students who have strong writing skills, and younger students may do best with concrete topics. See in particular this email on the Education mailing list
  • Students in some classes translate Wikipedia articles from one language to another; in particular, there are many translation classes involving Arabic Wikipedia. This requires more language skill, but less research skill, than editing existing articles or writing new articles from scratch.
  • Young students in Wikimedia Armenia programs contribute to Wiktionary. Wikimedia Armenia is also experimenting with Wikisource. See this email and this email on the Education mailing list
  • Students at Tec de Monterrey, a large private university in Mexico, contribute photography, video, audio and animation to Wikimedia Commons. Some of these materials can later be added to Wikipedia.
  • Similar to Tec de Monterrey, students in advanced placement biology courses at John Bapst Memorial High School in the U.S. state of Maine contributed illustrations to Wikipedia articles about biology

For "Additional Resources"


This section needs to be reorganized for better flow

Education noticeboard

Ambassadors (this may be someone who is already employed by the university, such as a librarian)

Wiki Ed Foundation, WMF Education team, and Wikimedia affiliates

Using the Education extension (being depreciated)

  • Dashboards
The new Education dashboard for Wiki Ed classes (US and Canada only) (http://dashboard.wikiedu.org/courses/Wiki_Ed-APS/Summer_Seminar_in_Psychology_%282015%29)
The Outreach dashboard https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/
Documentation for these is a work in progress and hopefully will finish by the end of 2016. Also, there may be a demo at WikiConference North America 2016 that can be videoed and saved to Commons.

For privacy reasons, allowance of students and instructors to use SPAs when participating in tracked education activities. Advice on making sure that SPAs are in compliance with policy.

ORES: en:User:Fuzheado/ORES experiment

Discuss the the Account Creator user right, and checking for blocks ahead of the start of a class or event

Also mention the possibility of using Wiktionary; refer to the reports from Wikimedia Armenia on Outreach wiki and in the Wikimedia Blog

Additional video to reference for a case study of Wikipedia in high school in Armenia

Provide a link to the "Wikimedia in Education 12-part video series" series in "Additional Resources" from the Educators' LearnWiki module

Use Outreach Wiki
Contact WMF staff, leaders in affiliates, Wiki Ed Foundation, etc
Have contests to motivate students to volunteer after class assignments are done
Class size around 30
Instructors need to supervise and grade; don't rely on the community to supervise and grade.
Need internal exemplars (e.g. instructors, and university librarians who can evangelize instructors)
Use of course pages (this fits with the "facilitate socialization at all times" principle
What is plagiarism?
What is close paraphrasing?
Why is it wrong?
How likely it is to be found?
How to avoid it?
For translators: translate from language which isn't native to students, to language which is native to students. Because communities may not appreciate an article that is written with poor language skills.
Wikipedia activity as classroom assignment OR as fulfilling volunteer requirements
Senior citizen courses
Adjust to writing interest and skills of contributor
  • Editing in Wiktionary, Wikibooks, or Wikisource
  • Editing in Commons
  • Editing edisting articles intead of creating new ones
  • Starting new articles in sandboxes

Specialty module: Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM), and STEM institutions (6 minutes) (priority 1 for written, priority 2 for video)

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Intended audience: GLAM+STEM institutional administrators, GLAM+STEM project leaders

Your organization's Wikipedia page

Your organization's Wikidata entry

Benefits:

  • Reach, viewership, distribution, and "engagement" with your organization and your holdings
  • Preservation, conservation and archival
  • Mention US National Archives and US Occupational Safety & Health Administration as case studies

About specific holdings of your organization

  • Wikipedia
  • Wikidata
  • Commons
  • Wikisource (See projects mentioned by User:Astinson (WMF), listed in a previous module. List them here as well)
  • Wikispecies
  • Wikivoyage

Including Wikimedia info inside your physical location:

  • Wikipedia Collections
  • QR codes

Evaluation tools for GLAMs (Wikimetrics): number of uploads, viewership, number of articles

Help for GLAMs:

  • GLAM mailing lists
  • Wikimedia affiliates
  • Wikimedians-in-residence
  • Examples: US National Archives; Consumer Reports

ORES: en:User:Fuzheado/ORES experiment (same as under Education module)

Discuss the the Account Creator user right, and checking for blocks ahead of the start of a class or event (same as under Education module)

Curation tools for Commons

In Additional Resources: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/08/23/wikidata-glam/

(Go to Commons modules)

Specialty module: 15 to 20 minute condensed introduction to Wikipedia for edit-a-thons

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  • For editing existing articles or creating new articles
  • Motivation: readership and sharing what you're passionate or interested in. Show number of visitors stats 24 hours to 10 days later; emphasize "share what you know and what you're passionate about" (like many writers), and talk about collaboration with others via WikiProjects and personal meetups.
  • Understand the 5 pillars
  • Know where to go to ask questions: the Teahouse, Wikiprojects, article talk pages, IRC, OTRS, etc.
  • Understand the basics of Conflict of Interest
  • Understand the basics of VisualEditor, including how to add sections and citations
  • Understand which kinds of references Wikipedia considers to be appropriate
  • Have available to you the English Wikipedia's "Cheatsheet" page or A printed Wikimarkup cheatsheet
  • Note: use preview; everything can be reverted, so mistakes are reversible. "Breaking the page" rarely happens, and it's fixable when it does.
  • Creating new articles
  • State that creating new articles involves more steps than editing existing articles. I suggest that you practice a few edits on an existing article before creating a new article.
  • Understand the Criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia: Notability (General Notability Guideline). Once you understand these, select your topic and look for references
  • Suggestion: start your new article in your sandbox. (Can also try Draft namespace, or Articles for Creation).
  • Walk through creating an article in a sandbox, posting notes on the talk page, asking a question at the Teahouse ("how do I move an article"?) and then moving the article

Specialty module: 15 to 20 minute condensed introduction to Commons for edit-a-thons

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Possible future developments

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Inclusion of 4K video clips in existing modules

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Resolving edit conflicts (which are different from content conflicts)

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What does "success" mean for Wikimedia contributors?

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  • Collaborating with subject-matter hobbyists and experts
  • Publishing and discussing knowledge, culture, language, beliefs, history, etc with a global audience
  • Examples: public health; physics (gravity wave detection); humanitarian relief (response to Paris bombings)
  • Fixing things
  • Gaining mastery of a subject
  • Protecting and/or nurturing things and people (keep the "bad actors" out, and support newcomers)
  • Meeting new people, particularly people with shared interests
  • Sense of purpose (example: retiree who wants to mentor; students and instructors who want to share what they learn)
  • See the notes on "why do people contribute" below
  • Gratitude from others
  • Recognition from others
  • Barnstars, featured content, etc
  • "Promotion" to more advanced roles; but be warned that "hat collecting" is frowned on
  • Sense of wonder

Why do people contribute to Wikipedia and its sister projects?

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  • Personal fulfillment of sharing knowledge with others
  • Affiliations: Sharing knowledge of my culture, language, religion, history, political beliefs; connecting with others who share the same (e.g. Native Americans)
  • To write people/events into history (see Emily's motivations for her video)
  • Required or encouraged as a part of a class for school
  • "I fixed the Internet": incorrect facts, missing facts, grammar and spelling errors
  • To enhance the visibility of a person, organization, event, or field of knowledge to the world (note: we'll talk about COI separately)
  • Supporting, enhancing, and protecting Wikipedia/Wikimedia itself as a knowledge platform
  • See File:Infographic-WMZA_survey_results_2015.png
  • More information at en: En:User:Pine/Motivations for contributing to Wikimedia

Addition to one or more of the intro modules: a more engaging main title sequence

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Wiktionary

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Wikivoyage

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Wikisource

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Wikidata

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Referencing with Wikimarkup editor

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Vandalism

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Flow

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There are two kinds of talk pages: Wikitext talk pages and Flow talk pages. Wikitext is used on Wikimedia Commons, English Wikipedia, and many other wikis. Flow is used on other projects like Chinese Wikipedia and Wikidata on certain talk pages. In this section we'll cover the basics of Flow.

Talk pages are used on "user talk" pages as well as "article talk pages". User talk pages are mostly used for communicating with a single person, while article talk pages are mostly used to communicate about the subject of an article. There are other kinds of talk pages also.

  • Flow is a discussion system that is a replacement for Wikitext talk pages. Its basics are simpler to use, but Wikitext has some capabilities that Flow lacks.
  • Flow is available on an opt-in basis on some wikis. As of July 2016, it is not yet a default on most wikis.
  • I'm going to demonstrate how to use Flow on a test page. (Show how to do this on the test page on Wikidata at Wikidata talk:Flow tests.)
  • On some wikis, talk pages are Wikitext by default but can be changed to Flow talk pages on an opt-in basis. More information on how to do that is in Additional Materials. (Show how to opt in on Beta, and also how to undo).)

Basic template editing

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A brief history of Wikipedia

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Editing Wikipedia on your tablet or other mobile device

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Adding infoboxes

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Table editing with VisualEditor

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  • Adding and deleting rows and columns
  • Moving rows and columns in a table
  • Copy part of a table to a new table
  • Copy and paste multiple cells concurrently

Social roles on Wikipedia

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  • IPs (in votes and discussions, they can comment but can't vote. Some are productive editors; some are not)
  • Confirmed and autoconfirmed editors
  • Edit count and other productivity statistics
  • Good and featured content; DYK/ITN
  • WikiProjects
  • The Signpost
  • Other news sources like This Month in Education, This Month in GLAM, Tech News, and the Wikimedia Blog
  • Reviewer, rollbacker, autopatrolled, AfC reviewer
  • Account creators and course instructors
  • IPBE
  • Administrators
  • CU and OS
  • Arbitration Committee; BASC; Audit Committee* Bureaucrats
  • Stewards
  • Meta-level committees (grants, ombudsmen, communications, elections, architecture, research, etc)
  • Mailing lists
  • Affiliate program leaders
  • Affiliate boards & EDs
  • WMF board & ED
  • Discuss role vs. status; how to join a role or move between roles
  • Common mistake: thinking of adminship as the exclusive or primary indication of a leadership role
  • Banned editors (local vs. global bans); blocks vs. bans

In the module about talk pages, include a demonstration of conversations by having the user interact with a bot.

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To possible future development: practice with leaving a comment on another user’s talk page. Questions to consider: (1) bot responder or human responder? Probably bot because it’s faster and cheaper. (2) on a project talk page or user talk page? Probably on a project talk page. (3) Use video for this or GuidedTours?

Example: (1) NewUser starts a new section (!) on the talk page of the Reception Desk (staffed by a human or bot?) and says “Hello! --~~~~" (2) Responder (human or bot? Bot will be faster but less personal) says, “Hello NewUser! --~~~~” (3) NewUser navigates away to Commons:Main. (If they don’t see the ping yet, have them refresh the page until they see it.) NewUser clicks the mention in their notification bar. (4) NewUser clicks the “edit source” tab to observe that they have been pinged with NewUser. (5) NewUser replies with “Responder (or ResponderBot) I am learning how to use talk pages and notifications. --~~~~". (6) User (responder or bot) responds “Good, NewUser. You are learning well. --~~~~" (7) NewUser navigates away to Commons:Main. (If they don’t see the ping yet, have them refresh the page until they see it. NARRATOR: “If we don’t receive a notification after a minute, then it is possible that we made a mistake in how we formatted the mention. If we need to fix our mention, then we will also need to delete and replace our signature. (see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T66778) (Show an example of fixing a mistyped notification, for example with a missing curly bracket. Include the edit summary “fix notification” and save the page.) Once our notification is saved correctly, we can return to the Commons main page and refresh until we receive a notification. We can pause the video here to check our work. (5 second pause). (8) User clicks on the notification to return to the page where they see the new message.