User:GumbyProf/Lab2-Fall 2006

Lab2 Page

This page is for my IDS 175 Class to record whatever they do for the Lab2 assignment.

Practice

For practice, here's the lab2 assignment, copied from Word. If someone wants, they can wikify this. Some of it wikifys itself; some of it wikifys itself, wrongly.

{{wikify}}

LAB 2:

LEARN MORE, WORK ALONE & TOGETHER

Due Wednesday, September 20 Wiki Lab 2: Learn More; Do

This assumes that you’ve completed Lab 0 and Lab 1, and are starting to get the hang of things, have some idea of syntax, and maybe even understand what’s going on.

I. RULES, CUSTOM, AND COMMUNITY: Read as much as you need to. Get to work as soon as you can, but maybe keep these links handy. (They help button on the side will take you to these pretty quickly)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Faux_pas_avoidance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold (but not reckless). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contributing_FAQ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Etiquette http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_angry_mastodons

Be sure to go through at least a little bit of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial

If you know what NPOV, four tildes (~ ~ ~ ~), and a “minor edit” box mean, you are likely ready to go. If you aren’t confident, remember that you can use the sandbox for practice, and you can view an edit before you make it official. Also remember that others can undo your changes pretty easily. You can also check out discussion or “talk” pages before you do anything drastic.

II. BE ACTIVE; GET BUSY; DON’T HURT YOURSELF I would like you to have made 10 edits in (main) space (not counting user pages or talk pages, although most non-trivial edits warrant some comment on an appropriate talk page.) before next Friday’s class, no matter how minor (it took me about 3 hours to make 15 edits (plus 15 edits to talk pages), and I was trying to be clever, doing at least one of each kind). Do whatever you want, but below are some easy places to start. These are articles about which other people have identified problems, and are looking for people to help them out. Don’t do all one single kind, though. The more experienced of you might try to do more challenging things, if you’re ready.

A general page first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pages_needing_attention

1) Translate into English. If you are fairly fluent in another language, there is a list of articles that people would like to see translated. Sometimes these have been auto-translated by a web applet, and read as though they were. Any improvement would be really helpful. Don’t worry if you aren’t perfect. Be Bold! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Translation_into_English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pages_needing_translation_into_English

   (note that this process may lead you to a deletion proposal, below)

2) Deletion Discussions. Wiki has three types of ways articles are deleted. a. The first one is “speedy,” but is usually just for administrator types, and deals with pure garbage and spam. Not for you. Yet.

b. The second one is “proposed deletion,” or “prod.” Anyone can mark any article for prod. An article that has been marked prod will be deleted in five days, unless someone else removes the mark. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Prod, you can find articles that have been marked prod. If you agree with the prod, you can add

or

. If you disagree, you can remove the {{subst:prod}} mark, and either give your reason on the article’s discussion page or try to fix the article to eliminate the problem the proposer mentioned.

c. The third one is “Articles Considered for Deletion,” or “Afd.” This is a longer process, and involves people weighing in on the reasons why you would or wouldn’t delete this article. You read more about the how and the wikiquette at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion or and look at current discussions linked from that page by date.

3) Cleanup, wikify, dead-end pages, and orphan control. These are all ways to make pages more acceptable to wiki. These might turn into deletion discussions. Remember to remove the {{tags}} if you take care of an article. a. Dead-end pages are those that don’t link to anything. To fix them, find things to link to, and add double brackets around the words. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dead-end_pages b. Orphans are articles that don’t have anything linked to them. To fix, you just need to find other pages that should link to them and add the double brackets needed to bring them back into the magical web of wiki-ness. The links at the bottom of this page are to starting letter of the orphaned article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Orphaned_Articles c. Wikify means to make an article fit the format of wiki, including style and such. Dead-end and Orphan fixes, above, are two specific kinds of wikify needs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_that_need_to_be_wikified d. Cleanup just means to improve the grammar, spelling, flow or clue of a particular page, including wikify. There are various tags and methods, depending on the problem, but many of them just need someone to do them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cleanup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Grammar

4) Finish some stubs. Lots of articles are too short to be useful; these are called stubs. Find an area you know a lot about in the stub types, and see what you can do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types You can also find uncategorized stubs and give them a category, or help out by writing stubs that other people can then fill out. Red links go nowhere, so they might be a place to start.

5) Do whatever you want. Find articles. Mark articles. Edit articles. Talk about Articles.

III. TELL WIKI ABOUT US, IN TWO PLACES In two places, the class will collectively add information about this class to Wikipedia. You can just act like the full Wikipedia does, with one person making the article, and others coming along to fix them. You can do some of it on Sept. 15, but probably not all of it. You can talk about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:GumbyProf/Lab2 I won’t be in class on Sept. 15, and I’ve reserved a computer lab for you to use (VH 1232). You can use it, go somewhere else, or whatever. Of course, you probably want to talk about it together sometime during class ahead of time, or maybe someone wants to make a draft version ASAP. Maybe Sept. 15 is when you make plans, and then you all do your editing later. Or, you decide to have one person upload it all at once. Whatever you want. On September 20, the entire class will receive the same grade on this project. In a way, you’ll be acting as a smaller community just like the entire wikiproject. In fact, nothing will stop anyone not in the class from joining in the editing. I’ll be able to tell, I suppose, but in this case, I care about the product as well as the process.

1) Remember from Lab 1 that if you look at the entry for interdisciplinarity, it links to some other schools, but not to us (although we ARE mentioned in the text). Make it meaningful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdisciplinary

2) Another page is about School and University Projects. So, finish the entry that I’ve started. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_University_projects

Adding to the fun is that I will send each of you an e-mail between now and next Friday, including some factoid, point of view, or task that I think should maybe be part of one or the other article. Maybe I’m wrong, and after discussion, you’ll edit it back out, but maybe it’s a good idea to consider what your professor asks.

Also, so we have a permanent record, make sure that whatever you put there you also put here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GumbyProf/Lab2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:GumbyProf/Lab2