WikiZimbabwe/Inaugral meeting

This page documents an introductory Wikimedia training day for members of the newly formed WikiZimbabwe volunteer group. The objective is to introduce new Wikipedians to the many options they have and to assist in their effort to engage Zimbabwean content on the Wikimedia projects.

The event is part of the Wiki Loves Africa 2016 competition and is part of the continent-wide WikiAfrica movement. The event is supported by the following local partners:

Goethe-Centre
GIZ

Meeting details edit

Date
Time
Venue

Participants edit

Sign your name with 4 ~s

Apologies

Pre-attendance tasks edit

create a Wikimedia username by registering here:
bring a laptop or other communications device

Schedule edit

Create a Wikimedia userpage
Create a userpage on another Wikimedia userpage and link them
Use talk pages
Start or edit a Wikipedia page
Upload an image to Wikimedia Commons
Discussion on Gold Coast community work through Wikimedia projects

Feedback edit

Please write your feedback about the event here ... remember to sign all your comments with the 4 ~s to sign your name.

Budget edit

Total:

Other workshops and sessions to follow edit

Resources edit

Introducing the Wikis edit

Teaching to learn	With the great outdoors	Reaching more people	In all languages	I'm a volunteer too

Dumisani Ndubane taking about his use of Wikiversity for electrical engineering	Mike Cline talking about how he uses Wikipedia to extend his outdoor pursuits	Veteran maths teacher, Poongothai Balasubramanian uses Wikipedia to extend her teaching	Ganesh Paudel explaining how Wikipedia can be created in all languages	Founder, Jimmy Wales explaining the beginnings, and his role today

Information about Wikipedia edit

The Impact of Wikipedia A series of powerful videos of people from around the world explaining how Wikipedia has made an impact on them.
Contributing to Wikipedia
Wikipedia is not about YOU!
Featured content on Wikipedia Featured content is the best Wikipedia has to offer, via vigorous peer review. Presented by type: Featured articles · Featured lists · Featured pictures · Featured portals · Featured sounds · Featured topics
Featured content on the other projects
Good Article criteria
Wikipedia in projects at schools and universities
Best practices in assigning Wikipedia articles as coursework to students
Robert E. Cummings: Are We Ready to Use Wikipedia to Teach Writing?, in: Inside higher Ed (March 12, 2009)
Academic studies of Wikipedia

Other projects under the Wikimedia Foundation

Welcome to Wikipedia	Ten Simple Rules	Introduction to free licenses	Evaluating Wikipedia article quality	The Wikipedia Cheatsheet

This 17-page guide covers creating a user account, editing basics, communication, and how articles evolve and are evaluated, and includes a quick reference to help you to remember frequently used wiki markup.	This editorial from PLoS Computation Biology focuses on how to contribute effectively as an expert, and is great for setting expectations before students begin editing.	This brochure helps you understand the basic concepts of free licenses, as well as terms like "CC-by-SA" and "public domain".	This reference guide covers specific steps you can take to get the most out of Wikipedia, as well as a look at how its quality system works.	This one-page quick reference helps you to remember the most frequently used wiki markup commands.

Tutorials edit

There are several kinds of introductions to Wikipedia. Some you can do yourself, others you can with others.

The Wikipedia Adventure
Wikipedia Training Manual - A collaboration between the State Library of Queensland and Wikimedia Australia

Suggested training modules edit

Mechanics of editing Wikipedia edit

These printable PDF documents are designed to be handed out to students, either as part of a packet at the beginning of a Wikipedia assignment, or throughout the term at appropriate points.

Wiki markup quick reference – This one-page quick reference (included in the Welcome to Wikipedia brochure) helps you to remember the most frequently used wiki markup codes.
References – This handout explains why references are important, what the expectations for sourcing on Wikipedia are, where to place references, and the basics of adding "ref" tags.
Reference formatting – This handout explains in more detail how to create footnotes for citing sources, and how to cite the same source multiple times.
How to get help – explains the recommended way to get help and feedback for classes supported by Wikipedia Ambassadors: by posting on their course talk page and notifying their mentor. It also includes a glossary of additional help resources students might use.
Plagiarism – explains what plagiarism is on Wikipedia—including "close paraphrasing"—in addition to why and how to avoid it.
Convert tables and charts to wiki code or image files - Here are some tools, resources, tips, and instructions for converting tables and charts to wiki code or image files. Most of the tools and resources are free.

Starting a sandbox article	Basic editing: bold and links	How to use a watchlist	How to use talk pages

How to start an a sandbox page to play around with wiki markup or start an article draft (2m 11s)	How to use the most basic features of wiki markup to create bold text and links to other pages (3m 37s)	How to use a watchlist to keep track of pages you are interested in or have edited (2m 10s)	How to interact with other editors using talk pages, including article talk pages and user talk pages (2m 30s)

Basic editing: citing sources	Citing sources with RefToobar	Uploading files to Wikimedia Commons

How to add citations using "ref" tags (2m 3s)	How to use the 'Cite' tool for inserting automatically formatted references (2m 24s)	Uploading files such as images to Wikimedia Commons, using the upload wizard (2 min 48 sec)

Writing articles edit

Article creation	Article improvement	Article assessments	Article evolution

A demonstration, recorded live, of how to create a Wikipedia article (7 min 50 sec)	A look at how to assess the shortcomings of an article and improve it (4m 22s)	An exploration of the standard article assessment system, with examples of each quality level (11m 30s)	A trip through the history of an article, from humble beginnings to Good Article status (6m 25s)

Analysing Wikipedia edit

Why Wikipedians are the Weirdest People on the Internet (YouTube) – a humorous presentation by Wikipedian Steven Walling about the culture of Wikipedia and its editors.
Wikipedia Vision – an animated map that highlights live edits from users around the world as they happen, demonstrating the global nature of the project.
wikistream – a visualization showing a stream of edits to the most popular Wikipedia projects.
Live feed of all edits – a feed that outputs every new change to English Wikipedia, demonstrating the pace of Wikipedia's evolution: 1–2 edits per second. Requires an IRC client to view.
Wikipedia article traffic statistics – a tool for charting how many hits any given article gets, great for comparing different kinds of articles at different times, e.g., Genetics (in the school year) vs. (in the summer), or YouTube (with weekend spikes) and Simpsons (with spikes when new episodes come out). Students can also use it to see how many people are reading their articles over the course of the class (and beyond).
Manypedia – a tool for comparing a specific Wikipedia page from a language edition Wikipedia (for example, English) with its equivalent page on another language edition Wikipedia (for example, Arabic), exploiting automatic translation and additional statistics about both pages such as number of edits and editors.
WikiTrip – a tool for visualizing the animated evolution in time of two kinds of information about the Wikipedians who edited the selected page: their location in the world and their gender.
Mapping Wikipedia - World map visualisations of Wikipedia editing activity