Slides for "Getting to Grips with Wikipedia: a Practical Session" to be facilitated by Brian Kelly, Cetis and Nancy Graham, University of Roehampton at the LILAC 2014 conference on 23 April 2014. See http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/lilac-2014-getting-to-grips-with-wikipedia/

1. Getting to Grips with Wikipedia:
a Practical Session
Brian Kelly
Innovation Advocate
Cetis
University of Bolton
Bolton, UK
Contact Details
Email: ukwebfocus@gmail.com
Twitter: @briankelly
Cetis Web site: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/
Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
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Slides and further information available at
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/lilac-2014-getting-to-grips-with-wikipedia/
Event hashtag: #lilac14 Session hashtag: #wp
Co-facilitator: Nancy Graham, University of Roehampton
14.25-14.55 on Wednesday 23 April 2014

2. Abstract
Abstract
Wikipedia provides an ideal tool for making information
more readily accessible to a wide community, ranging
from school children, students, researchers, policy
makers and the general public.
This session will provide an opportunity for those
who may be new to Wikipedia to create a Wikipedia
profile and even update existing Wikipedia articles.
In this workshop participants will edit and perhaps
even create Wikipedia pages. The session will take
place in a PC cluster or you can use your own laptop or
WiFi-enabled device.
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3. Keeping a Record of the Session
To help future sessions
(which you may run):
• Live tweeting encouraged
• Use #lilac14 #wp
hashtags
• Photos welcomed
• Storify summary of tweets
• Helped to gain feedback
and monitor timings
3
Timings of tweets:
14.30-15.30 Workshop
14.30-14.58 Interests described
14.49- User profiles published

4. Motivation
Let’s accept these
arguments and the
important role of
librarians in supporting
use of Wikipedia and
focus on how to create
or edit Wikipedia
articles
https://wiki.wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Expert_outreach
Note see also on Wikipedia:
it’s not the evil elephant in
the library reading room

5. About the Facilitators
Brian Kelly:
• Innovation Advocate at Cetis, Bolton University
• Was UK Web Focus at UKOLN from 1996-2013
• Accredited Wikipedia trainer
• Contact details:
 Email: ukwebfocus@gmail.com
 Twitter: @briankelly
 Wikipedia: User:Lisbk
Nancy Graham:
• Library Academic Liaison Manager,
University of Roehampton
• Chair of the CILIP Information Literacy Group
• Contact details:
 Email: Nancy.Graham@roehampton.ac.uk
 Twitter: @msnancygraham
 Wikipedia: User:Msnancygraham
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6. About You
Who has:
• Little or no experience of Wikipedia?
• Created or made significant edits to Wikipedia
articles?
• Not yet registered for a Wikipedia account?
In less than 30 minutes you will attempt to:
A. Create a Wikipedia account and add information
about yourself and your interests
B. Identify pages to improve and make improvements
C. Possibly identify gaps and create stub articles
Let’s multitask
– login and
begin tasks
while we talk
6

7. Creating an Account
You will:
• Create a Wikipedia
account
• Go to
https://en.wikipedia.org/
and click on Create Account
• Then complete the form
A: New
users
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8. Creating an Account
You will:
• Create a Wikipedia account
• Create a user profile & add personal details (e.g. name,
organisation, interests, …)
• Add hyperlinks to:
 (a) external Web sites (e.g. your organisation)
 (b) Wikipedia articles (e.g. areas of interest)
• Add simple formatting
See the following user profile examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ukwebfocus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andrew_Gray
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:msnancygraham
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ToniSant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lawsonstu
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A: New
users

9. Today’s Goal : Create a User Profile
Nancy Graham’s user profile
9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Msnancygraham

10. Today’s Goal : Create a User Profile
http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/User:Lawsonstu
10

11. Heading
Body text
Links to Web site
Links to Wikipedia articles
Templated content
Formatted
text
Automatically-generated
table of contents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ToniSant
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12. Metadata (based on
controlled vocabulary) …
References displayed
using {{<reflist>}}
can be processed
References defined using
<ref>citation info</ref>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ukwebfocus
Bulleted list
12

13. Creating Your User Profile
Getting started:
• Go to home page at
wikipedia.org and
click on Create
account link
• Complete registration
details
You then have the option to:
• Fix spelling mistakes & grammatical errors
• Improve the clarity of a page
• Add links to pages
• Other tasks, such as create your user profile
NB: You’ll need to make
> 9 edits before you can
create a new article.
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14. Click on your username
Creating Your User Profile
The user profile page doesn’t exist
so create it
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15. ==Brief Intro==
I am the '''Innovation Advocate''' at [[CETIS]], the ''Centre for
Educational Technology, Interoperability and Standards'' based at the
[[University of Bolton]]. I started this new role on 28 October 2013.
===About The UKWebFocus Username===
From 1996-July 2013 I worked at UKOLN and my job title was '''UK Web
Focus'''. I have used that name for a number of social media accounts.
==Engaging with the Wikimedia community==
I created my first [[Wikipedia]] article, on [[Rapper Sword]] dancing, in
2004. I have created and edited a number of other articles since then
including articles on [[Amplified conference]]s and [[Microattribution]].
I have written a number of
[http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/category/wikipedia-2/ blog posts
about Wikipedia] on my [http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/ UK Web
Focus blog].
Heading
Formatted text (italicised)
Sub-heading
Link to Web site
Formatted text (bold)
Basic Wikipedia Edit Syntax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ukwebfocus
NB: There is also a WYSIWYG
interface for editing
Link to Wikipedia article
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16. Userbox {{userboxtop|}}
{{Template:User time zone|UTC+1|watch}}
{{User United Kingdom}}
{{User Wikipedian For|year=2013|month=11|day=06}}
{{userboxbottom}}
==Brief Intro==
I am the '''Innovation Advocate''' at [[CETIS]], the ''Centre for
Educational Technology, Interoperability and Standards''
based at the [[University of Bolton]]. I started this new role on
28 October 2013.
===About The UKWebFocus Username===
From 1996-July 2013 I worked at UKOLN and my job title was
'''UK Web Focus'''. I have used that name for a number of
social media accounts.
User’s timezone
User’s country
Date joined Wikipedia
Further Wikipedia Edit Syntax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ukwebfocus 16

17. Ukwebfocus profile Page
17

18. Improving Pages (1 of 2)
For novice users:
• Go to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Special:GettingStarted
• Select option to fix typos or
improve clarity
B: Novice
users
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19. Improving pages
Click here to edit page
Improving Pages (2 of 2)
B: Novice
users
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20. Creating (Stub) Articles
C:
Experienced
users
First ensure page doesn’t exist
Then:
• Make at least 10 edits to pages
• Create it (live or in sandbox)
• Provide links to it
• See if it persists
• See if it develops
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21. Life of the Microattributions Article
I created after the
SOLO 2011 conference
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22. Life of the Microattributions Article
The article on 6 Nov 2013 22

23. Life of the Microattribution Article
The article:
• Created after Microattribution
panel session at SOLO 2011
in Sept 2011
• Mike Peel encouraged
creation of article and gave
some suggestions
• Initial page created on 6 Sept
• Has changed significantly
since launch
• ~10 contributors
• 460 views in past 90 days
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24. Further Information
You should now have a Wikipedia account and user
profile page
Feel free to continue editing
Some optional topics which can be addressed:
• Strategies for creating a new article
• Key principles for content
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• About Wikipedia
• About the Wikimedia Foundation
• About Wikimedia Projects
• References in Wikipedia Articles
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25. Strategies for Creating New Articles (1)
When creating or editing Wikipedia articles you can:
• Engage with this new community with care
• Check proposed changes carefully with your
peers & Wikipedia experts
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26. Strategies for Creating New Articles (2)
Alternatively when creating or editing Wikipedia articles
you can:
• Be bold!
• Make changes – and see if they stick
• Engage in discussions with others, but be
prepared to argue your corner (though in a
graceful and non-confrontational manner)
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Such approaches are welcomed by the Wikipedia
community

27. Key Principles for Content (1)
No original research
All research must come from published sources e.g.
• Peer-reviewed journals
• Peer-reviewed books
• University-level textbooks
• Magazines, journals and books published by
respected publishing houses
• Mainstream newspapers
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28. Key Principles for Content (2)
Neutral Point of View
Content should be provided from a neutral point of view:
• If your viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be
easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly
accepted reference texts;
• If your viewpoint is held by a significant minority,
then it should be easy to name prominent
adherents;
• If your viewpoint is held by an extremely small
minority, then — whether it's true or not, whether
you can prove it or not — it doesn't belong in
Wikipedia, except perhaps in some ancillary article.
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29. The Five Pillars
Fundamental principles by which the Wikimedia
community operates...
Wikipedia:
1. is an encyclopedia
2. is written from a neutral point of view
3. is free content that anyone can
edit / use/ modify / share
4. editors should respect each other
5. does not have any firm rules
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30. About the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation:
• Is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to
encouraging the growth, development and
distribution of free, multilingual, educational
content, and to providing the full content of these
wiki-based projects to the public free of charge.
• Operates some of the largest collaboratively edited
reference projects in the world, including
Wikipedia, a top-ten internet property.
See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Main_Page
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31. About Wikipedia
Wikipedia is:
• Available in 140 languages.
• Attracting 470 million unique visitors monthly as of
February 2012.
• Based on five pillars which describe its fundamental
principles.
Wikipedia had (on 21 April 2014):
• A total of 4,497,538 content articles and 2,714,227
pages.
• Seen 711,415,506 edits by 21,187,675 registered
users.
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32. About Wikimedia Projects (1)
Wikimedia projects include:
• Wikipedia, a project to build free encyclopedias in all
languages.
• Wiktionary, a project to create a multilingual free
content dictionary in every language.
• Wikiquote, a repository of quotations from famous
people, books, speeches, films, …
• Wikibooks, which aims to build a collection of free e-
book resources, including textbooks, language
courses, manuals, …
• Wikisource, a multilingual project to archive a
collection of free and open content texts.
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33. About Wikimedia Projects (2)
Wikimedia projects include:
• Wikinews project has the mission to report the news
on a wide variety of subjects.
• Wikiversity is a project dedicated to learning
materials and learning communities, as well as
research.
• Wikimedia Commons provides a central repository
for free photographs, diagrams, maps, videos,
animations, music, sounds, spoken texts, and other
free media. It serves as a central repository for all
Wikimedia projects.
• MediaWiki is an open source community which
maintains several software projects including
the MediWiki engine used by all Wikimedia projects.
• …
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34. References in Wikipedia Articles
References for the Microattribution Article
<ref>{{cite web|title=On microattribution|
url=http://blogs.plos.org/mfenner/2011/08/28/on-microattribution/
|publisher=[[Gobbledygook]]|accessdate=3 October 2011}}</ref>
<ref>{{cite web|title=What is the Human Variome Project?|
url=http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v39/n4/full/ng0407-423.html|
publisher=[[Nature Genetics]]|accessdate=26 October 2011}}</ref>
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes on how to create references

35. Questions
Any questions, comments, …?
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36. This presentation, ―Getting to grips with Wikipedia: a practical session‖
was facilitated by Brian Kelly, Cetis at the LILAC 2014 conference.
The presentation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International Licence.
Note the licence covers most of the text in this presentation. Images may
have other licence conditions. Where possible links are provided to the
source of images so that licence conditions can be found.
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Slides and further information available at
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/lilac-2014-getting-to-grips-with-
wikipedia/
Licence and Additional Resources