User:Smaug123/Adoption

Hello, and welcome, to my adoption program! I will give you several tasks and you must complete them all in order to "graduate" from the program. Good luck! Eddie 23:23, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Lesson 1

The Rules and Tutorials

Before diving into the wonderful world that is editing Wikipedia, you should read The Five Pillars of Wikipedia, Wikipedia:How to edit a page, Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia, the policies and guidelines, the editing FAQ, the tutorial, and the cheatsheet. Once you have read all of them, please proceed to the next section.

Basic Wiki Markup

As you may have noticed already, Wikipedia is written in a language called wiki markup. The cheatsheet provides the basic information, but you'll learn more about wiki markup as you edit Wikipedia. Once you have taken a look at the cheatsheet, please complete the exercises below. Good luck!

Italicise and bold the following text: Hello. My name is Smaug123.

- (Complete number 1 here): Hello. My name is Smaug123.

Create an internal link to my userpage.

- (Complete number 2 here): Boricuaeddie

- - Correction: User:Boricuaeddie

Create an internal link to your userpage and display the following text: This is my userpage.

- (Complete number 3 here): User:Smaug123 This is my userpage.

- - Correction: This is my userpage.

Create an external link to wikipedia.org.

- (Complete number 4 here): Wikipedia.org

Create an external link to wikipedia.org displaying the following text: This is the directory of Wikipedias.

- (Complete number 5 here): This is the directory of Wikipedias.

The Buttons

When editing, you will see several buttons. They are the save button, the preview button, the show changes button, the minor edit check box, and the edit summary box. Use the save button when saving an edit. Always use the preview button before saving an edit to make sure you don't make mistakes and to avoid clogging up the page history. A minor edit is exactly that; a minor edit. Examples of minor edits include: correcting typos, reverting vandalism, formatting corrections, etc.. An edit summary is a summary of the content you have changed in a page. Always use edit summaries. Be sure to make them descriptive and civil. When saving a page, you may get an edit conflict. Read the link provided to learn how to deal with them.

Lesson 2

Vandalism

Of the many problems encountered by this encyclopedia, one stands above the rest: vandalism. According to Wikipedia:Vandalism, "Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia." As Wikipedians, one of our many duties is to make sure every act of vandalism is reverted and every vandal is warned.

Reverting Vandalism

Vandalism is removed by reverting it. The easiest way to catch and revert vandalism is to monitor the Recent Changes and look for edits made by IP editors and new users. When you revert an edit by a vandal, always remember to warn them so that they do not continue vandalizing. You can find a list of warnings here. If vandals continue vandalizing after you warn them, don't forget to report them to the admins! Please read Help:Reverting, Wikipedia:Vandalism, Help:Diff, Help:Recent changes, and Wikipedia:Cleaning up vandalism for more information on vandalism. Also, please visit my Counter-Vandalism Center for more detailed information on fighting vandalism.

Join the Patrol

There are many Wikipedians who fight vandalism. In order to keep themselves organized, they have created different groups focused on fighting vandalism. The most common is the Recent changes patrol. Another common vandal-fighting group is the Counter-Vandalism Unit (often abbreviated CVU).

The Tools

Fighting vandalism can be hard and time-consuming. Because of this, users now use vandal-fighting tools in order to more effectively and quickly catch and revert vandalism. You can find the full list of tools on the CVU main page and on my Counter-Vandalism Center. There are many to choose from. Choose the ones that you like the most and you think will most effectively help you fight vandalism. Personally, I recommend getting Twinkle, the most commonly used tool (you must use the Firefox internet browser in order to use Twinkle). When you combine it with Lupin's anti-vandal tool, it can be very powerful. When you have more experience and edits, you can also get VandalProof, a powerful vandal-fighting tool for Windows users.

Lesson 3

Articles

Articles, obviously, are the most important part of an encyclopedia. In Wikipedia, all articles must follow the Manual of Style guidelines. To ensure that articles of subjects that are not really appropriate for an encyclopedia, many users set out to check that all articles meet both the Manual of Style and the Notability guidelines. The best way to find articles and make sure they meet the guidelines is to click on the "Random article" link, or just search for articles about themes you are interested in.

Maintenance Templates

If you find an article that needs improvement, the best thing to do is be bold and fix it, but, if you don't know how to fix it, or just don't have the time, then you can tag with with a maintenance template so others know that it has to be fixed. You can find more information and a list of templates at Wikipedia:Template#Article-related_namespace.

Exercise:

To pass this lesson, you must find an article that needs fixing and you must tag it with the correct template. For example, if you find an article that has no references, you must tag it with an {{Unreferenced}} template. When you finish this you may continue to the next section.

Creating an article

As I said before, articles are the most important part of an encyclopedia. While improving articles by fixing the spelling and adding wiki links is great, creating article is even better. You can create an article about basically anything, as long as it meets the notability guidelines, all other Manual of Style guides, and all other applying policies, such as Wikipedia:Verifiability and others. To learn more about creating articles, please read Help:Starting a new page, Wikipedia:Article development, Wikipedia:Stub, Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles, and Wikipedia:The perfect article.

Good and Featured Articles

When articles meet all of the guidelines and some special criteria, they may be promoted to Good or Featured article status. These articles represent Wikipedia's best work.

Subpages

Subpages are pages separated with a "/" (a forward slash) from their 'parent' page. For example, this page is a subpage. The parent page is User:Smaug123 and the subpage is /Adoption. Userpages are used to store additional information, execute tests (like a sandbox), and to archive talk pages when they get too long.

Lesson 4

The Namespaces

Wikipedia is divided in namespaces. There are 18 namespaces in total. They are: Media, Special, Main, Talk, User, User talk, Wikipedia, Wikipedia talk, Image, Image talk, MadiaWiki, MediaWiki talk, Template, Template talk, Help, Help talk, Category, and Category talk. For example, articles are in the main namespace. When you edit an article, you make an edit to the mainspace. Another example is when you leave a message on a user's talk page. When you leave a message to a user, you make an edit to the User talk namespace.

Lesson 5

WikiProjects

A WikiProject is a group of editors who focus on creating and maintaining articles relating to a specific topic or theme. For example, WikiProject Music is focused on improving articles that have anything to do with music. If a topic is not too big or notable, but an organized project is still necessary, a Task Force is created. A task force is a sub-WikiProject who helps the "parent" WikiProject improve specific articles within the project's scope. For example, the RuneScape Task force is a task force of its parent WikiProject, WikiProject Massively multiplayer online games. Anyone can create a WikiProject about anything, as long as it is about a notable and important subject and has several members to help with the project tasks. Although it is not obligatory, one can present a proposal for a WikiProject to the WikiProject Council to get help in creating the project, get interested members, announce it to the Community, and make sure it is notable and important enough.

Joining a WikiProject

Joining a WikiProject is important in helping build this encyclopedia, as they can help you focus on your area of expertise or knowledge. Joining a project is easy - just go to the project's page, look for a list of participants or members, and add your username!

Exercise

For this exercise, you must join a WikiProject. You don't have to join a big one; just a simple one like the Welcoming Committee or the Birthday Committee. When you have joined a WikiProject, you may continue to the next section.

Portals

If you read lesson 4, you'll know that Portals are pages that serve as the Main Pages for a topic, theme, or a WikiProject. They contain information such as a project's featured articles, news about the Portal's topic, and more. You can find a list of Portals here.

Lesson 6

Images

Images are media used to illustrate subjects described in articles. To learn more about using images, see Wikipedia:Images.

Uploading Images

Any logged in user may upload images. It is suggested that images uploaded to Wikipedia be free, but as you will learn below, other kinds of images may also be uploaded. To upload an image, go to Special:upload and follow the instructions there.

Licensing

All images uploaded to Wikipedia must have a license on their image description page. These are the several kinds of licenses:

Free Content Licenses- Images with these licenses are released so that anyone can use it, but require attribution.
Public Domain Licenses- Images with these licenses can be used by anyone without attribution. Images in the public domain (often abbreviated PD) include images by NASA, flags, images by the federal government, and images that have more than 100 years.
Non-free Content Licenses- Images with these licenses are copyrighted and must be used carefully. See the next section to learn more about non-free content. You can find a full list of tags here.

Fair Use Images

Sometimes, it is absolutely necessary that an image be used to illustrate the subject in question, but there are no free images that can be used. In these cases, copyrighted images must be used. The only way to use copyrighted images in articles is by licensing the image as Fair Use, as permitted by the Copyright Act of 1976. Fair use images must include the following in their description pages:

Where the image was found.
In what article(s) the image is used.
A proper tag.
A fair use rationale.

Fair use images must meet the Non-free content criteria.