User:Ocaasi/The Wikipedia Game/Level 8

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LEVEL 8

Dialogue 1

Hi! Now that you know the basics, let's get a little more familiar with the Wikipedia project. This mission is about what Wikipedia is and what makes it successful. To start, let's visit the main page and take a look around. The main page is Wikipedia's front door, where thousands of readers every day get started on their reading and editing. The link is easy to find, you can either click on the big globe in the top left of the page or you can click on the Main page link in the left-hand sidebar.

Action 1 - Highlight Wikipedia Globe and Main page link

Click here to visit Wikipedia's Main Page

Dialogue 2

While were looking at it, let me tell you a little about the Globe. To begin with, like almost everything on this site, it was designed by an editing volunteer. No matter what your specialty or skill set, there's an area of Wikipedia that can benefit from it. There are people who only work on images, people who help fix typos, people who do research, people who cleanup edits by unconstructive editors, and people who do a little bit of everything. Whatever you can contribute, it helps, and there is always lots to do. Back to the globe... If you look closely, you'll see different symbols on each piece. Those represent the different languages that have a Wikipedia encyclopedia. That's right, in addition to the English Wikipedia there are Wikipedias in 266 languages! In some languages, Wikipedia is the only encyclopedia that has ever existed. This is a very special project, and for many people it gives them access to information they otherwise could not access, understand, or afford. Wikipedia's stated mission is to give every person on the planet access to the sum total of the world's encyclopedic information. Isn't that a wonderful goal? Let's see what's happening on the main page.

Dialogue 3

The main page is updated every day, but it includes some regular sections. On the top left is the day's Featured Article. Featured Articles show off the best that Wikipedia has to offer. These are articles that are complete, well sourced, neutral, and well-written. They have been gone over with a fine-tooth comb to fix any errors. You may have been reading an article with a star on the top right, that means it was given the Featured Article rating.

Action 2 - Highlight Featured article
Dialogue 4

What's so impressive about Wikipedia is that even the articles featured on its main page are usually open for anyone to edit. Even you! Keep in mind, of course, that those pages typically have a few hundred people who are watching them closely that day, so it's unlikely any changes will get through that are not good improvements. Even Featured articles are not perfect--everything on Wikipedia is in a constant state of advancement.

Action 3 - Highlight Featured article link

Click here to go to the Featured article

Dialogue 4

You'll notice a few things about Featured articles. For one, they have a lot of content. They are 'complete', because they cover every major aspect of a subject. They also have nice introductions which summarize the body of the article. They have good images to illustrate the content in the article. They have references for every statement. They are pretty much finished, even though no article is ever truly finished. One day, with some time and practice, you can work on an article which will be featured on the main page. Let's go back there now.

Action 4 - Highlight In the news section
Dialogue 5

You'll notice to the right of the featured article is the 'In the news' section. This is where current events go. Even though Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a news website, we still cover events that have received significant attention from... published, reliable sources. You guessed it! Remember those 3 words! Below the news section, the 'On this day' section has links to articles which are about events that have anniversaries today.

Action 5 - Highlight Did You Know section
Dialogue 6

To the left of that is the 'Did you know' section. This is a cool section where articles that are very new or very recently expanded can have an interesting clip from them highlighted. Full or great, random facts!

Action 6 - Highlight Featured Picture section
Dialogue 7

This is where the best photographs submitted by Wikipedia editors go. Wikipedia actually has a sister website which deals only with free images and files, which I'll tell you more about a little later. A few more things to point out on this page...

Action 7 - Highlight Other areas of Wikipedia
Dialogue 8

We won't spend much time here today, but just know that Wikipedia is a very big and busy place and there's somewhere to discuss almost anything. The Community Portal is a place we'll definitely visit. The Help Desk you've been to already. The reference desk is where you can ask real questions about researching subjects, just like in a real library. The Village Pump is our community water cooler, where all kinds of interesting discussions happen about how to improve the encyclopedia. Moving on down...

Dialogue 9

Remember that sister project I mentioned? Well there are actually 8 of them. It's a big family. Each one takes on a different slice of the world of information, images, news, definitions, quotations, books, documents, species, and instruction books. Still, just between us Wikipedia is by far the most active of all of them combined.

Dialogue 10
  • Commons: Images and other media
  • Wikinews: News
  • Wiktionary: Dictionary and thesaurus

Wikiquote: Quotations Wikibooks: Any kind of publication Wikisource: Source documents Wikispecies: Species encyclopedia Wikiversity: Instruction

Dialogue 11

Free is a very important word around here. There are two kinds of free in this world, free as in really cheap, and free as in anyone can do whatever they want with it. Wikipedia content is both. It has not cost to read, and you can reuse it, remix it, or even sell it. Really. But that's not why were here. Almost all editors work for nothing but love of the project's mission. Any profit that comes from this is purely a bonus. Oh, one more thing. All of those sister projects share a site for coordination called Meta-Wiki. Here's one more fact: Wikipedia and all of the sister projects are actually run by a non-profit organization called the Wikimedia Foundation. Every year, cute donation banners pop up on Wikipedia which are from the Wikimedia Foundation. The Foundation also keeps the servers running, and develops the software and a bunch of other stuff. Did you know Wikipedia is among the top five most visited websites in the world, but it has the smallest budget and fewest employees of any of the top 10 sites?

Action 8 - Highlight Wikipedia languages
Dialogue 12

Just below, at the bottom of the page is the list of all the Wikipedias. As I mentioned before, English Wikipedia is not the only one. 13 million articles in 269 languages. Remarkable. A few more little things.

Action 9 - Highlight CC license, sequential list of items
Dialogue 13

Do you see all of that small text at the bottom?

  • The first part is about freedom and copyrights. It means that Wikipedia is released free for anyone to use, modify, or sell as long as they give credit back to Wikipedia and others who use the content afterward do the same.
Action 10 - Highlight Sidebar menu, first toolbox
Dialogue 14

Coming up around the left, you'll see the sidebar menu

  • First there's a list of Wikipedias in different languages
  • Then there's Print/Export. You can actually make, download, print, or buy electronic and bound paper copies of Wikipedia articles. Make your own book!
  • Toolbox has some handy links for editors. You can find out what other pages link to the page you're reading, what has changed recently on those articles, the link for uploading a file, a link to "special" pages (I'll give you a hint, History and Watchlist are some of them), and a permanent link if you want to visit an article.
Action 11 - Highlight interaction links, click to visit each one.
Dialogue 15

The interaction links are for getting involved.

  • "About Wikipedia" is a great overview of the project. One its neat features is an updated counter of how many articles, edits, and editors are active. Let's check today!
Action 12 - Highlight About Wikipedia link

Click to find out information about the project

Action 13 - Load updated page
Dialogue 16
  • 3,648,651 articles, and 24,084,860 pages
  • 465,231,474 edits.
  • 845,104 uploaded files.
  • 14,660,108 registered users, including 1,789 administrators.

What an amazing collection of people and ideas! On Wikipedia you may just be 1 in 14.6 million, but you matter. Every article and every link and every bit of code was put in place by someone's hands (ok, or by a computer program they wrote to do it for them. Wikipedians are dedicated and crafty folks).

Dialogue 17
  • The community portal is where you'll find the most centralized location for what's happening and what's being worked on. Let's swing by for a look.
Action 14 - Highlight community portal

Click here to see what's happening in the community.

Action 15 - Load real/mock community portal page
Dialogue 18

The community portal is like a giant bulletin board of ongoing discussions, maintenance tasks, and news. On the right is The Signpost. That's Wikipedia's own weekly community newspaper. It comes out every monday and gives a great look at what has happened that week both on the site, in the news, and with the Wikimedia Foundations projects.

Action 16 - Highlight The Signpost
Dialogue 19

Scrolling down you'll notice Centralized Discussions. With so many pages, ideas, and topics being debated every day, this is a place to find the most pressing ones, the changes that would most likely effect you as an editor. RfC stands for 'request for comment', which is Wikipedia's way of asking people to give their opinion. Although we have a very democratic structure, we don't vote here. We try to talk about all sides of an issue, make compromises, and come to a consensus, an agreement.

Centralized Discussions (mock-up with perennial proposals)
  • RfC to permit advertising on the site
  • RfC to add Facebook like buttons
  • RfC to only allow registered editors to make changes
  • RfC allow any Copyrighted images to be used on the site
  • RfC to give Administrators 2 year terms
  • RfC to give the Arbitration Committee more governing power
Dialogue 20

Interesting stuff. So far the community has decided to keep Wikipedia ad-free, separate from social media, and open for anyone to edit. We also have a pretty conservative position on using Copyrighted work. Even though Wikipedia is free for anyone to use, we can't just copy other people's work and include it in the encyclopedia, only in very particular circumstances. There is that 'administrator' word again. Who are they? Wikipedia are a group of regular editors with some special rights. They have the ability to delete pages, add protections summarize complex discussions, and place blocks on editors who are causing a lot of trouble for the site. We don't punish people here, but we do make sure the project is safe and running smoothly (or as smooth as 14 million volunteers can be). Last, what's the Arbitration Committee? They're like a supreme court for Wikipedia. When an issue can't be resolved anywhere else, the Arbitration Committee, which is sometimes called "ArbCom," steps in to make a decision for the community.

Dialogue 21

Wrapping this up, at the bottom of the Community portal page are all kinds of links for where to help and how to collaborate. It looks like a lot at first--like I said, anything you can imagine being worked on on Wikipedia, someone is trying to do, and they could always use your help.

Action 17 - Highlight recent changes link
Dialogue 22

The last link in the sidebar I want to show you (last one for this mission, I promise) is the recent changes page. You've seen article histories and watchlists. The recent changes link is the watchlist of the entire encyclopedia. It's the history of all 465 million changes (loaded a few at a time). This feed is like the part in the movie The Matrix -- you can see what is happening in the background.

Dialogue 23

Ok, it's time for a snack. In the next mission we'll go back to Earth and see how to work well with other editors, even in tricky situations, and with great results. See you there!

Action 18 - Break or continue
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