Wikimedia Space/Publishing checklist

This page attempts to document the steps to publish an article on Wikimedia Space from a meta and technical perspective. See the editorial guidelines for definitions on the scope for Space, general overview of the editorial process, and further details on taxonomy.

First, be sure you have successfully logged in to Wikimedia Space. You can join Wikimedia Space by using your Wikimedia account. Once logged into the blog you will see the editing interface. If you have the text of your post prepared, you can copy/paste into the editor. You can also start from a blank entry in the blog and make multiple updates and edits.

Media

Any media used in your post will need attribution. You can do this two ways. The first is the suggested method.

Embed Wikimedia plugin

If you want to use media on Commons or other Wikimedia wikis, you can embed the file directly by copy/pasting the file name into the Wikimedia Commons block.

WordPress will expand the URL into an embedded image.

<image>

Add a new block
Select Wikimedia Commons
Paste the full File: name from wiki (File:yourmedianame.jpg)
Preview the image to see how it will appear. Attribution is automatic.

Direct upload to Space

The second method is to directly upload media to Wikimedia Space. This requires you to add the meta data manually.

<image>

Add a new block
Select "Image"
Upload a copy of the image from your computer. For photos, we suggest using one that is 1,280 pixels along the longest dimension.
Click/tab beneath the image in the editor where it says "Write caption..." to add attribution.

We suggest the following structure to captions. Please link the title of the work to the source. Again preferably on Commons.

Title of media by Author License
i.e Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto, Japan by Martin Falbisoner CC BY-SA 4.0

Note: If you are copying and pasting a draft from a source like a Google Doc, please make sure you manually upload any images into WordPress. A copy/paste will incorrectly reference images from the Google doc.

It is recommended not to use the "Featured Image" feature in WordPress.

You can also embed content from YouTube and other services by simply copy and pasting the full URL into the editor. WordPress will expand the media automatically.

Metadata

Make sure the metadata attributes for your post are correct.

WordPress metadata

Publish date and time - the blog uses UTC. Be sure that the date and time is what you want before publishing. The default setting is "Immediately". It is possible to publish something with an older date (and it won't appear correctly in the news feed) or with a future date (it won't publish until that date arrives).
Blog categories - These are pre-defined high-level categories. Posts can be in multiple categories, but only one will carry over to Discuss.
Blog tags - these are open-ended tags specific to a blog post. Posts can have multiple tags. These should match the tags in Discuss.
Authorship - make sure the desired name is selected. You can change how your name and bio is displayed in your profile.
- If a blog post is written by multiple authors provide attribution beneath the title.
  - ie. Post written by Susan Sanders and Kris Knudstorp
Languages - If writing in a language other than English, make sure you have the correct language selected here.

Discourse metadata

Select "New Topic" for most blog posts. If you wish to point discussion to an existing topic you can change that setting here and provide a URL to an existing topic by selecting "Link to Existing Topic".
Category is a drop down of existing Discuss categories. Only one category may be selected.
Tags - this is a field where you can provide a comma-separated list of tags. Every post should include "wikimedia-space-blog" as the default tag. Tags should match the tags in Discuss. Adding a new tag here will create that tag in Discuss.
Publish to Discourse - this box should be checked when publishing posts so that a discussion topic is automatically created.

Scheduling

Users with administrative rights on the blog can publish posts, but any editor can prepare a post to make scheduling easier.

You may select a proposed date and time for publication, or leave this step to the Editorial board. If you'd like to propose a time, take a look at the editorial calendar. You should see your post on the current date by default. Drag and drop your draft to the desired date. Make sure there are no other posts scheduled to go out around the same time. You want you post to shine, so give it some space!

Take a look at the calendar and see what other topics are being posted in that week. Do we find ourselves very heavy with posts in a specific category? Can we schedule a post for a later or earlier date to spread things out a bit?

Blog times are in UTC. Wikimedia is international. We recommending posting when natural breaks in the day occur. In the morning (07:00-9:00), afternoon (11:00-13:00) and evening (18:00-20:00). These times are flexible depending on your intended audience.

As items are moved around the editorial calendar the date and time set to publish can sometimes be incorrect. Check the publishing settings before scheduling. The status in the editorial calendar should be "Scheduled" and will be indicated with a purple color. Note that the post will not be published until a review is complete.

Then you'll need someone to review it. The editorial board will receive a notification when a new post is submitted for review. This review follows the editorial guidelines – checking for grammar, structure, and scope.

Unique blog features

The Space blog uses a plugin called WikiLookUp. This is a feature that is similar to Page Previews. It allows authors to highlight certain phrases or words when authoring a post and readers can view a summary of the referenced Wikipedia article. You can see an example in this Space post. Each location mentioned is using the WikiLookUp feature. This feature is optional and how to use its syntax is documented.

Other notes

Republishing

If your post is republished content please be sure to put a link to the initial publication at the bottom of the article. Use italicization for the entire citation. Select the "small" font size in the editing sidebar.

Originally posted by <author> to <original venue> on <date>.
Example: Originally posted by Jimbo Wales to Wikimedia-l on 1 April 2019.

Be sure to take the time and format any republished content for the blog. Don't just copy/paste from existing sources. Take advantage of the various layout options in WordPress to make your post more accessible. Check for line breaks and formatting when you do copy over. Make any footnotes (like those found in mailing list posts) into hyperlinks.

Authorship

By default posts you write will appear with your user name in the attribution. You can change how your attribution appears in your WordPress profile. If publishing on behalf of someone else, please try and have them create an account in Space you can assign authorship. If that is not possible you may assign your post to the "Wikimedia Space" user profile and add a note of authorship at the end of your article.

You are also encouraged to check the metadata for your author profile. You can fill out your profile about yourself. Once you have published an article a box will appear under the article giving readers more information about yourself.

Blog administrators

If new categories are added in Discourse you will need to update WordPress to use them.