Slides for Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. Many thanks to Stacey Allan for sharing her slides and materials with us!

1. Women in Art+Culture
Whittier College | Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
• Whittier College, Thursday 3/5,
• FemBot/Ms./U Oregon, Friday, 3/6
• UC Irvine, Saturday 3/7
• LACMA, Sunday 3/8
• UC San Diego, Sunday 3/8
• UC Santa Barbara, Sunday 3/8
• Cal Poly Pomona, Monday 3/9

2. Wikipedia is the world’s free encyclopedia, accessed by nearly 500 million
unique visitors per month in more than 250 languages. It hosts more than 4.5
million articles in English with about 800 new articles created each day by
volunteer editors around the world.

3. Who edits Wikipedia?
• 87% men
• 13% women
• 75% under the age of 30

4. Female-made
edits, by article
category:

5. “Wikipedia will only contain ‘the sum of all human knowledge’ if its
editors are as diverse as the population itself: you can help make
that happen.”
—Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation

6. “A historian might spend decades undertaking research in
archives and writing up discoveries in scholarly journals, but if the
work does not have a presence online—and, specifically, a
presence that is not behind a paywall—it is all but invisible outside
academia.” — from Unforgetting Women Architects: From the Pritzker to Wikipedia

7. 1st Meetup at Greene Exhibitions, July 13, 2013
Today:
1. Learn Wikipedia’s basic
principles.
2. Tutorial: Anatomy of a
Wikipedia page, basic
editing, inline citations
3. How to improve existing
articles and start a new
article or ‘stub’
4. Common mistakes to
watch out for.

8. WIKIPEDIA IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA

9. Neutral point of view – All Wikipedia articles and other
encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point
of view, representing significant views fairly, proportionately
and without bias.
BASIC RULES: BE NEUTRAL

10. AVOID CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Note: If you think you have a Conflict Of Interest (COI), don’t create the article.
Instead, you can suggest that someone else create it by posting this on a related
talk page.
Avoid Conflict of Interest – Wikipedia has an extensive
COI policy, but most importantly for our purposes: Don’t
create an article for yourself or your organization. For any
borderline conflict of interest concerns, it can be helpful to
disclose affiliations on your User page.

11. No original research – Your article should summarize the
existing, published knowledge on your subject. Even if you
know something to be true, do not include any previously
unpublished anecdotes, data, opinions or theories.
BASIC RULES: NO ORIGINAL RESEARCH

12. Verifiability – The information you include—especially
quotes and anything likely to be challenged—must be
attributed to a reliable, published source.
In Wikipedia, verifiability means that anyone reading and
editing the encyclopedia can check that the information has
come from a reliable source. It is accomplished by adding
inline citations (footnotes).
BASIC RULES: VERIFIABILITY IS KEY

13. BASIC RULES: DO NOT PLAGIARIZE
Do not plagiarize – Anything you add to Wikipedia must
be written in your own words. Do not copy and paste
information from other websites or sources. When including
quotes, be sure they are attributed.

14. ANATOMY OF A WIKIPEDIA PAGE
 Select Edit to make changes to the article.
 A record of page edits can be found in the View
History tab. Every page edit can be traced to a user
account.
 Talk pages are where editors can discuss the article
and any editing issues that arise. The talk page also
has edit and view history tabs.

15. ANATOMY OF A WIKIPEDIA PAGE: VIEW HISTORY

16. ANATOMY OF A WIKIPEDIA PAGE: EDITING
 Select Edit to make changes to the page.
Use the formatting tools to add links and
more.

17. ANATOMY OF A WIKIPEDIA PAGE: EDIT SUMMARY
 You can enter an explanation of your changes in the Edit summary box,
which you'll find below the edit window.
 If the change you have made to a page is minor, check the box "This is
a minor edit."

18. You should always use the Show preview button. After you've entered a
change in the editing window, click the Show preview. This lets you see
what the page will look like after your edit, before you actually save it to
Wikipedia.
ANATOMY OF A WIKIPEDIA PAGE: SHOW PREVIEW

19. DEMO: MAKING A SIMPLE EDIT TO A WIKIPEDIA PAGE
By Michael Mandiberg (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

20. USER PAGES
• Click on your Username in the top left
to view your User Page.
• Select Edit to make edits to your User
Page.
• Use the markup tools to format your
text and add links to other Wikipedia
pages or to external websites

21. By Michael Mandiberg (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons
Take a few minutes to edit your own user page.

22. A NOTE ON NOTABILITY
Notability – Every article on Wikipedia must prove the
notability of its subject. To help your article pass the
notability test, I recommend a rule of three: Be sure to cite
at least THREE reliable, published sources that are
independent of your subject. If you can’t find at least
three good sources, you may find it difficult to prove
notability and your article will risk deletion.

23. Good sources are independent of your subject and prove
notability.
When possible, focus on:
• university-level textbooks
• books published by respected publishing houses
• magazines
• journals
• mainstream newspapers
When using websites, focus on those that are most likely to have
undergone an editorial process that includes fact-checking.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD SOURCE?

24. DEMO: ADDING INLINE CITATIONS

25. EDITING IN THE SANDBOX

26. ADDING INLINE CITATIONS: FOOTNOTES
Use the Cite toggle to add inline citations that reference your
sources. From the dropdown Templates menu, choose to cite web,
cite news, cite book, or cite journal and the appropriate template
will appear.

27. ADDING INLINE CITATIONS: FOOTNOTES
Fill in the fields with as
much bibliographic
information as you have. It
will format the info and
the inline citation
(footnote) will appear at
the bottom of your article
under the “Notes” section.

28. On a new article page, you will need to create a section
named "Notes" or "References" at the bottom of the page:
ADDING INLINE CITATIONS: FOOTNOTES
Type the following in your editing window:
==Notes==
{{Reflist}}
This is where your footnotes will appear. The text of
your article should be typed ABOVE the notes.

29. By Failedprojects (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
QUESTIONS SO FAR?

30. • No conflict of interest
• No plagiarism.
• Written from a neutral point of view
• At least THREE inline citations to reliable published sources
that are independent of the subject and prove notability.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD ARTICLE

31. Click any red link to start a new article, or blue link to edit
an existing one.
CHOOSE YOUR SUBJECT

32. If there is already an article with the same name as the one
you want to create, you may need to disambiguate (or
make less ambiguous) by adding a parenthetical tag—for
ex., Russell Ferguson (curator), to avoid confusion with the
Wikipedia entry for a very different Russell Ferguson.
DISAMBIGUATION

33. WIKIPEDIA “STUBS”
In Wikipedia, a stub is a short article in need of expansion. A good stub provides
context so other editors can improve upon it. My recommendation: include at
least three inline citations and then PUBLISH! A short article is better than none.

34. Your introductory paragraph must:
• Include full name in bold, followed by dates of birth and death
in parentheses
• Provide context (most often, nationality and occupation)
• Assert notability (museum collections, awards, legacy, etc.)
HOW TO START YOUR ARTICLE
As you continue writing, you can add section headings like:
==Early life and education==
==Selected Works==
==Awards== To make a sub-heading, use 3[===] instead of 2.

35. Add categories to your article page so it will be grouped with
similar articles and easier to find on Wikipedia. Categories
should be placed at the very bottom of your article code, after
the {{reflist}}.
OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO

36. Add external links that point readers to further information
about the article subject that is accurate and on-topic, but
remember that these should be kept to a minimum.
Focus on material that is relevant to an encyclopedic
understanding of the subject but cannot be referenced in the
article—for example, official websites, artworks, movie or
television credits (IMDB), or finding aids.
OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO

37. • Using external links instead of inline citations.
• Creating footnotes in any other unorthodox way. Be sure they
are using the cite templates!
• Copying text directly from artist’s website (plagiarism) or citing
statement on website (not an independent source).
• Non-neutral POV: Feminist editing.
COMMON MISTAKES TO WATCH FOR

38. • Post your question at the Wikipedia Los Angeles Facebook
group page.
• Attend another edit-a-thon.
• Post a question on the talk page of another Wikipedia editor.
• Ask a question to the Wikipedia Teahouse question board.
ASKING FOR HELP AND RESOLVING DISPUTES

39. Over the next hour, try adding some well-cited sentences and
paragraphs to existing articles that interest you, or create a new
article for someone on our worklist.
Unforgetting L.A. edit-a-thon at 356 S. Mission, July 2014.
WHAT NOW? BE BOLD!

40. THANK YOU! // Q&A
By Michael Mandiberg (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via
Wikimedia Commons