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I. Editing, Creating, and Maintaining Articles
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I. Editing, Creating, and Maintaining Articles
by John Broughton
Wikipedia: The Missing Manual
Wikipedia: The Missing Manual
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A Note Regarding Supplemental Files
The Missing Credits
About the Author
About the Creative Team
Acknowledgements
The Missing Manual Series
Introduction
About This Book
About the Outline
The Very Basics
Mac OS, Windows, Browsers, and Keyboard Shortcuts
About→These→Arrows
Late-Breaking News
About MissingManuals.com
Safari® Books Online
I. Editing, Creating, and Maintaining Articles
1. Editing for the First Time
The Wikipedia Way of Editing
Practicing in the Sandbox
Starting, Previewing, and Saving Your Edit
Adding Text
Previewing
Saving
Dealing with an Edit Conflict
Wiki Markup: From Edit Box to Screen
Types of Markup
How to Create Internal Links
Understanding and Using Templates
Editing Article Sections
Editing One Section
Editing the Lead Section
Editing for Real
Wordsmithing Versus Adding Information
A Few Words about Content
Selecting a Random Page
Working on a Known Problem
2. Documenting Your Sources
Documentation Guidelines
Not All Sources Are Created Equal
Some Sources Apply Only in Specific, Limited Circumstances
You Don’t Have to Provide Citations for Information Already Sourced
You Must Provide a Source for Controversial Text
Citing a Source Doesn’t Justify Copyright Violations
Adding an External Link
Citing Sources
The Three Ways to Cite Sources
Two Styles of Footnotes
Creating Footnotes
Creating a Simple Footnote
Footnotes with a Citation Template
Multiple Footnotes for the Same Source
Advanced Citation Techniques
Automated Citation Tools
Viewing Footnotes When Editing Only a Section of an Article
Adding Page Numbers to Footnote Numbers
3. Setting Up Your Account and Personal Workspace
Why Register?
Advantages of a Registered Account
Disadvantages to Using Your IP Address
IP addresses are traceable
IP addresses change
Picking a User Name
Using Your Real Name
Other People’s User Names as Examples
What Isn’t Allowed
Registering
Setting Up Your User Page
Uses for Your User Page
Creating Your User Page
Personal Subpages
Creating Your Personal Sandbox
Deleting Your Subpages
4. Creating a New Article
What Makes a Good Article
The Right Motivation
Notability
Reliable Sources
What Articles Don’t Belong on Wikipedia
What Wikipedia Isn’t
Don’t Repeat Someone Else’s Words at Length
Tutorial: Creating a New Article
Ideas for New Articles
Resources for Writing Articles
5. Who Did What: Page Histories and Reverting
Understanding Page Histories
Why Wikipedia Keeps a Record of Everything
Reviewing a Page’s Prior Versions and Edits
Reading a page history—The basics
Reading a page history—Making inferences
Seeing What Changed
Looking at a single edit
Looking at multiple edits simultaneously
Looking at a Page’s Prior Version
Reverting Edits
Two Options: Revert to a Prior Version and Undo
To revert or to undo
Option 1: Undo
Option 2: Revert to a prior version
After You Fix a Page
Advanced Techniques
Customization
Automated Identification of the Editor of Specific Text
Counting and Sorting Edits
6. Monitoring Changes
The User Contributions Page
Wikipedia’s Standard Watchlist
The Standard Watchlist Report
What you can learn from your watchlist report
Adding Pages to Your Watchlist
Removing Pages from Your Watchlist
Modifying the Standard Watchlist Report
Temporary changes
Permanent changes via your preferences page
Expanded and Enhanced Watchlist Reports
The expanded watchlist report
The enhanced watchlist report
Choosing Your Watchlist Report Format: Standard, Expanded, or Enhanced?
Multiple Watchlists
Creating Additional Watchlists
Using Additional Watchlists
Real-Time Monitoring Alternatives
RSS and Atom
Standard RSS and Atom feeds
Lupin’s Anti-vandal Tool
7. Dealing with Vandalism and Spam
Lines of Defense
Reverting Vandalism and Spam
Consider the Edit Summary
Consider the Source
The Less Clearly an Edit Is Vandalism, the More You Should Consider the Source
Explain Your Edit
Looking for More Vandalism and Spam
Issuing Warnings
Choosing the Warning and Warning Level
Posting the Warning
When Not to Post a Warning
Requesting Assistance of Administrators
Protecting Pages
General Guidance on Blocking Vandals
Reporting Vandalism
Don’t Get into a Revert War
II. Collaborating with Other Editors
8. Communicating with Your Fellow Editors
Identifying Yourself
Article Talk (Discussion) Pages
Posting Conventions
Posting to a Brand-new Article Talk Page
Posting to an Existing Article Talk Page
Adding a comment to an existing section
Starting a new section
Good Talk Page Practices
What Not to Post
Editing or Deleting Existing Comments
Archiving
User Talk Page Postings
User Talk Page Basics
Extended Conversations
Article Content
Editing or Deleting Existing Comments
Archiving Postings on Your Own User Talk Page
Creating an archive page for your user talk page
Archiving user talk page content
Communicating via Email and IRC
Email
IRC
9. WikiProjects and Other Group Efforts
WikiProjects
Topic-specific WikiProjects
Cross-cutting WikiProjects
WikiProjects are Everywhere
What WikiProjects Do
Goals and roles
Activities
Joining a WikiProject
Finding Other Participants and Encouraging Participation
Recruitment
Retention
Creating a New WikiProject
Considering the alternatives
Proposal
Creating the WikiProject page
Collaborations
Existing Collaborations
Creating a New Collaboration
Less Formal Working Groups
Organizations
One-time Initiatives
Creating Your Own
10. Resolving Content Disputes
Why Editors Disagree
Diversity of Backgrounds
Differing Motivations
Not Knowing Wikipedia Policies
Avoiding Content Disputes
Don’t Charge in Blindly
Explain Your Edits
Minimize Your Reverts
Discuss Edits, Not Editors
Reviewing Content Changes: A General Plan of Action
Policy Violations
Proper Weight and Balance
Proper Sourcing
When no source is given
When the source isn’t reliable
Correct Wording
Resolving Content Disputes Informally
Avoid Incivility and Personal Attacks
Look for Compromises
Disengage for a While
Resolving Disputes with Assistance
Editor Assistance
Subject Specific Pages
Third Opinions
Informal Mediation
Requests for Comments
Formal Mediation
11. Handling Incivility and Personal Attacks
Enforcing Norms of Conduct
The Norms
Enforcing the Rules
Actions by the community
Actions by administrators
Dealing with Incivility and Personal Attacks
Initial Responses
Don’t respond until you can respond unemotionally
Don’t attack back
Decide if you even need to respond
Don’t comment about problematical behavior on article talk pages
If you respond, be factual, not emotional
Your response should depend on the editor
Don’t argue about warnings
Read other editors’ essays about civility
Explore Less Formal Solutions
Editor assistance
Wikiquette
Informal mediation
Community enforceable mediation
AN/I
Use Formal Processes
User conduct RfCs
The Arbitration Committee
When You Get Irritated (or Worse)
If You Haven’t Yet Posted Something You’ll Regret
If You Have Posted Something You Realize You Shouldn’t Have
12. Lending Other Editors a Hand
Answering Questions
General Questions
Helping at the Help desk
Other places where general questions appear
Specialized Questions
Showing Appreciation for Other Editors
Reviewing Articles and Images
Reviewing Articles
Basic to fairly good articles
Going for the gold: better and best article candidates
Reviewing Other Content
Portals
Pictures
Coaching Other Editors
Helping Resolve Disputes
Effective Dispute Assistance
Where the Action Is
Discussions about content
Discussions about behavior
Grab bag
For Experienced Editors
Choosing Where You Want to Help
More Hot Spots
What to Consider When Deciding Where to Help
III. Formatting and Illustrating Articles
13. Article Sections and Tables of Contents
Getting Sections Right
Lead Section
Body of the Article
When an article gets too long
Creating a daughter article
Bottom
Getting Headings Right
Wording and Capitalization
Links and Footnotes
Single Subsections
Incoming Links to Article Sections
Improving the Table of Contents
Reducing the Length of the TOC
Fewer sections and subsections
Technical Solutions for Long TOCs
Floating the Table of Contents
14. Creating Lists and Tables
Creating and Editing Lists
Bulleted and Numbered Lists Within Articles
Presenting information: list, narrative, or neither?
How to create a list
Long lists within articles
Lists as Separate Articles
Bad lists
Good lists
Lists versus categories
Formatting alternatives
Editing and Creating Tables
Editing Tables
Creating Tables
Basics of creating tables
Making tables more usable and accessible
Sortable tables
15. Adding Images
Uploading Images
Before You Upload
Creating a User Account at the Commons
Uploading an Image to the Commons
Adding Categories to an Image Page at the Commons
Renaming, Replacing, or Moving an Image
Finding Images
Placing an Image in an Article
Location
Size, Alignment, and Caption
Galleries
Questions or Problems with Images
Uploading a Non-free Image
IV. Building a Stronger Encyclopedia
16. Getting Readers to the Right Article: Naming, Redirects, and Disambiguation
Naming and Renaming
Common Naming Mistakes
Renaming an Article
Discussing a rename
Renaming a page
When administrator assistance is required
For Old Names and Bad Spellers: Redirects
How Redirects Work (and Where They Come From)
Adding a Redirect
Creating a new redirect page
Enhanced redirects
Fixing a Bad Redirect
Fixing Double Redirects
Understanding double redirects
Fixing double redirects
For Multiple Meanings: Disambiguation
Disambiguation Pages
Naming disambiguation pages
Proper formatting and entries
Fixing incoming links to disambiguation pages
Disambiguation Links
17. Categorizing Articles
Fundamentals of Categorization
Category Links in Articles
Adding Categories to Articles
The basic category link
Category links from templates, for maintenance and stubbing
Fixing Category Links that Come From Templates
Effective Categorization
Finding the Right Category
Getting Articles into the Right Place on a Category Page
Category Pages
Hierarchy: The Categorizing of Category Pages
Changing the categories assigned to a category page
Renaming, merging, or deleting a category page
Creating a new category
Building Out Categories
Discussing Categories
Categories, Lists, and Navigation Templates
18. Better Articles: A Systematic Approach
Avoid Surprises
Don’t Suppress or Separate Controversy
Reorganize and Edit Existing Content
Reorganize
Rewrite
Don’t Take Article Scope as a Given
Too Much Content: Spinoffs
Overlapping Content: Merging
Doing a merge
Proposing a merger
Too Little Content: Merging
Improve the Citation of Sources
Fixing Bad URLs
Replacing or Deleting Unacceptable Sources
Converting Embedded Links to Footnotes
Build the Web
Look for Guidance and Examples
Add Sourced Content
Remove Cruft and Duplication
Get the Wording Right
Make the Article Look Appealing
19. Deleting Existing Articles
Responding to Problem Articles
First Analysis
Notability and Verifiability
The challenge of notability and acceptable sources
Possible responses
Alternatives to Deletion
Three Ways to Delete an Article
Speedy Deletion
Initial review
Making the nomination
Proposed Deletions
When you can’t use the proposed deletion process
Initial review
Making the nomination
Articles for Deletion (AfD)
Justification for an AfD nomination
Nominating an article at AfD
Participating in AfD discussions
After an Article is Deleted
V. Customizing Wikipedia
20. Customizing with Preferences
User Profile
Language
Email Address
Signature Change
Password
Login
Skin
Math
Files
Date and Time
Editing
Recent Changes
Watchlist
Search
Misc
Gadgets
21. Easier Editing with JavaScript
Setting Up Your Browser
Adding and Deleting Scripts
Your Personal JavaScript Page
Adding a Script
Preventing Code Overload
Importing Multi-Function Scripts of Other Editors
Removing Scripts
Fixing Problems
Resources
VI. Appendixes
A. A Tour of the Wikipedia Page
The Six Upper-Right Links
[Your Username]
My Talk
My Preferences
My Watchlist
My Contributions
Log Out
The Top Tabs
Article, Category, or Project Page
Discussion
Edit This Page (or View Source)
“New Section" (on Talk Pages Only)
History
Move
Watch/Unwatch
Left Boxes and Links
Navigation Box Links
Main Page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Interaction Box Links
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact Wikipedia
Donate to Wikipedia
Help
Search Box
Toolbox Links
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Printable version
Permanent link
Cite this article
Language Links
Links in the Body of the Page
Bottom Links
Additional Features in Edit Mode
Edit Toolbar
Edit Box
Below the Edit Box
Insertable Text
Notes
List of Transcluded Pages
Additional Options on User Pages
User Contributions
Logs
E-mail This User
Keyboard Shortcuts
B. Reader’s Guide to Wikipedia
Some Basics
What Wikipedia is Not
Wikipedia’s Sister Projects
Policy: What Wikipedia is Not
How Good is Wikipedia?
Navigating Within Wikipedia
Searching Wikipedia
Navigating from the Main Page
Categories
Portals
The A-Z index
Other entry points
Categories
Category links at the bottom of articles
Articles in two different categories
Searching for Categories
Other Ways of Navigating
Random article
What links here
Six degrees of Wikipedia
Images
Images in Wikipedia Articles
The Commons
Finding pictures in the Commons
Picture of the Day
You Can Help
Articles with Problems
Missing Articles
C. Learning More
Information Pages
Directories and Indexes
Places to Ask Questions
Coaching and Classes
Wikipedia News and Gossip
News
Gossip
Index
About the Author
Colophon
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The Very Basics
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1. Editing for the First Time
Part I. Editing, Creating, and Maintaining Articles
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