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This is a master list of questions from the Philadelphia WikiSalon. Feel free to add questions that you have about Wikipedia or Wikipedia projects (Encyclopedia articles, Wikimedia Commons images, Wikidata) and to suggest resources in response, for discussion during WikiSalon.

Wikipedia projects

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“What is the difference between the different projects? And what is the easiest for someone who is still learning to become a Wikipedian?”

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  • I gave a talk about this to PACSCL (Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries) on April 30, 2020. I introduced the three best known projects, the encyclopedia (articles), commons (images) and Wikidata (structured data). You can find the video recording of the talk along with slides and handouts here. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 16:09, 4 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Wikipedia has many other sister projects about which I'd like to learn more. What types of projects are there?"

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What is the difference between Wikidata and Wikisource?

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  • Wikidata is a database of structured data that stores and links information in a machine-readable way and can be used by computers to provide information and answer research queries.
  • Wikisource is a project for crowd-sourced editing and proofreading of online editions of previously-published out-of-copyright written works, which then become freely available to readers.
  • Wikibooks also provides books, but their books are collaboratively written by project volunteers, e.g. open-source textbooks and cookbooks. So someone who wanted to study a novel from 1920 might find the original text on Wikisource, but if they wanted to write a teacher's guide for it, must use Wikibooks.

Wikipedia articles

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"How do you know whether to label an edit on Wikipedia as minor? Why does it matter?"

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  • The only things that should be labelled "minor edit" are changes in punctuation, spelling, and some types of formatting. Breaking a long paragraph into 2 shorter ones could be considered a minor change; making one of them into a new section, maybe not. Any change that affects the meaning conveyed or the sources provided is not a minor change. "If there is any chance that another editor might dispute a change, the edit should not be marked as minor."
  • Some people spend most of their time making minor changes, like fixing misuse of "it's" and "its". Others spend much of their time editing and sourcing content.
  • Wikipedia software allows users to see the proportion of minor changes made by a particular user. It allows users to ignore minor changes when they are reviewing edits, to streamline workflow. Robots may use the minor/major distinction when making decisions.

“In general, what level of sophistication of the audience should Wikipedia articles aim for?”

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  • Should it be like World Book Encyclopedia or Britannica Encyclopedia or something higher or something lower? Nolabob (talk) 15:17, 11 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • This may depend in part on the article. Ideally the goal is to communicate clearly to someone who may have little knowledge of the topic, someone at an entry level.
  • Science communication can be particularly challenging (also math). The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University teaches science communication.
  • Medical articles require a higher level of sourcing (MEDRS), based on scientific publications rather than popular science or news sources, to ensure that they can be relied on for accurate information.

"Is there a best practice for editors to follow to make their articles mobile-friendly?"

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  • It has been reported that many people around the world research Wikipedia using mobile and tablet devices.
  • There are best practices that come into play at a variety of levels, such as principles for Responsive web design. Wikipedia's user interface (UX) for mobile was designed separately and independently from the historical desktop version, as is described here.
  • Many of the layout conventions for both mobile and desktop are determined at the level of the implementation. For desktop, many options exist and it is possible to choose skins that alter the interface.
  • Wikipedia has its own particular content policies and writing style -- factual, neutral point of view etc. The lead should be a brief summary of content, and establish notability.
  • There are general writing best practices that are consistent with Wikipedia style -- the ABC's "Accuracy, brevity, clarity" are certainly things to strive for.
  • Accessibility can also be useful for thinking about how to write.
  • Pages evolve over time. Even if they are well organized to begin with, they may not end up that way. It is useful to ask yourself what someone coming to a page might be looking for, and whether they will find it. Major reorganizations are challenging, but sometimes they are needed. It can help to rework a page in stages.

“Can I create a new article on Wikipedia using an article from another language Wikipedia?”

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  • Yes! Starting with a Wikipedia article in another language can be very useful in creating a new article. Because Wikipedia requires everything on it to be released under a copyright license that allows reuse, there are no copyright issues. An existing article can give you a nice overview of what is known about the person. Be aware that requirements for sourcing may be very different on different language Wikipedias. English Wikipedia will require you to cite sources for all information; the other Wikipedia article is not a citeable source. Be sure to verify all your information; some very strange errors can creep in during translation. Check all names. By the time you go through the entire article, verifying, citing, and expanding, your final article may look very different from the article you started with!
American Ruff by Jan Yager

“What is the "Did you know" item referred to in the "Special mentions" section of this agenda?”

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  • "Did You Know" (DYK) is a section on the main page of English Wikipedia. Twice daily, it lists several facts from new (or recently expanded) Wikipedia pages, one of which is accompanied by an image. For example, on 19 March 2020, the DYKs included "Did you know... that Jan Yager's artwork American Ruff (pictured) is made from discarded crack-cocaine vials and caps?" Hundreds or thousands of readers may click through to read each DYK article. To appear as a DYK, an article must meet several criteria, be nominated, and go through a review process. You can see more about this, including proposed DYKs under review, at Template talk:Did you know.

“How are Article Ratings determined? Should we as Wikipedians be concerned about ratings of articles we've written or edited? How do we solicit a re-evaluation of an article we've written or edited?”

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  • Everybody is concerned about the quality of the articles they write and there are many ways that quality is assessed on Wikipedia. As long as the article is good enough to avoid deletion and you are satisfied with the quality, don't worry too much. A page is always a moving target, so a rating may not accurately reflect what you are seeing on the page.
  • Ratings of article quality, like many things on Wikipedia, tend to be community based. Featured quality and good quality articles go through an extensive community review process. Some WikiProjects may have their own standards for rating articles, e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Assessment. Ratings supplied by different Wikiprojects may legitimately differ. At the end of the day, someone makes a judgement call and assigns a value to the page.
  • Rating an article properly is a lot of work, so please be patient when requesting a rating. Generally all you need to do to get an article re-rated is to remove the rating on the article's talk page, leave a short note there and in the Wikiproject's talk page. Then wait six months.
  • If you want a ballpark assessment, ORES software uses artificial intelligence to predict the rating an editor would give an article. It's fairly consistent, but can't detect some issues that a human will spot.
  • A quick example: James M. Baxter as of this comment has a permanent ID of 961281489. To get the permanent ID, go to the article, click "permanent ID" in the left hand column and the number appears at the end of the URL. Then open https://ores.wikimedia.org/ui/, enter "enwiki", "article quality", put the permanent ID number in the big box and click "Give me results". Immediately scroll down, and ORES tells you that it predicts that an editor has a 63.5% chance of rating the article as "Start" but only 11.8% chance of rating it "C". For more information, see ORES.

“Wikipedia provides various metrics to characterize articles, for example, it provides a "pageviews" analysis. To what extent as Wikipedians should we be concerned with these metrics on our articles?“

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There are many Wikipedia:Statistics, including Wikipedia:Pageview statistics which can be used to indicate how often people view a page. In some ways this is a bit of a vanity metric, but if you want to pick topics that are read by more people to maximize your impact as an editor, you can certainly do that.
Strategic choosing of articles to work on may be helped by looking at a Wikiproject like Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry. They have a table of "Chemistry articles by quality and importance " that can be useful in identifying important articles that need work.
This can also be useful if you are working in a field where you are reporting on your work and its impact to others to show impact.


"Proper citations are indispensable to any good Wikipedia article. However, with the decline of print media, citations in Wikipedia articles are more dependent on on-line citations which may not be permanent. How does Wikipedia manage the transient nature of these citations? How should Wikimedians manage citations in this regard?"

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  • The issue of whether any lasting record of electronic media will continue to exist, comparable to printed media, has relevance far beyond Wikipedia. A number of archiving projects attempt to record electronic publications and capture the ephemeral nature of the internet. One of the best known is archive.org whose Wayback Machine has been used for decades to store copies of electronic pages from websites.
  • Wikipedia has the capability of Help:Using the Wayback Machine to do lookups of no-longer-available urls and to serve pages that no longer exist. However, this will only work if the page has previously been archived. It is possible to request the archiving of existing pages on archive.org and to look up urls that no longer appear to work, and add template code that will retrieve archive.org's stored value.

"How do you know a permanent url when you see it?"

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  • Permanent urls (PURLS or permalinks) are urls that are written in a way that is supposed to remain usable even if underlying computer systems or sites change their link structure. Non-permanent urls can change over time, even from one session to the next. The url that is shown in your browser may not be the permanent url; it may be a temporary form that the permanent url has been converted to by the computer software.
  • It is desirable to use a permanent url in a Wikipedia citation or a Wikidata reference because it is more likely to continue to work and to be verifiable by someone else.
  • A finding aid or other web page may explicitly state its permanent url in the page's text. The easiest way to find it is to search for "http". You can also search for URL, PURL, permalink or permanent link. There is no standard for what term is used: some sites may simply cite it: e.g.

Alan G. MacDiarmid, interviewed by Cyrus Mody in University of Pennsylvania on December 19, 2005. Philadelphia: Science History Institute, n.d. Oral History Transcript 0325. https://digital.sciencehistory.org/works/z316q261v

“Can you say something about how the “short descriptions” tag is used?"

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  • It’s at the top of many (but not all) Wikipedia articles.
  • The Short Description appears at the top of articles in the Desktop View if you have the *ShortDesc* helper set in the *Gadgets* section of your profile preferences. It also shows by default on mobile views of articles.
  • It is meant to be very short: less than 40 characters, so maybe 4-6 words that explains the scope of the article (e.g. "American textile artist" "woodworking technique" "Nobel prize-winning chemist"). Dorevabelfiore (talk)

"What tools can be useful in reviewing an article (your own or others)? "

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  • Earwig's Copyvio Detector is a very useful tool for checking for copyright violations: Paste in an article title and press "Submit". Higher numbers may indicate use of quotations, long titles, or long names of organizations or awards, all of which are fine. The "Compare" buttons will show you what is the same in the Wikipedia article and a given source. I use this as a final step to check my new articles for cut-and-pastes or rephrasings that are still a bit too close for comfort. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 03:19, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Finding sources and images

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"I often use archived newspaper articles to research my Wikipedia projects. Is there a newspaper database that you'd recommend (and hopefully is low cost?)"

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We had a very active discussion of this question at the February WikiSalon! Here is a list of suggestions for finding sources.

  • The Online Books Page Serials list: links to free-to-use public domain serials, by title. They are using Wikidata to map copyright renewals for serials. This decision tree walks through the steps in determining if something is out of copyright. If you want to release images from a serial, you should check both the first issue renewed for the serial and whether there were any additional image renewals, which could be registered separately.

These projects are trying to build out information about newspapers on Wikipedia, and may have useful information or people who know about a particular newspaper.

"Are there other open-source or freely available sources that you would recommend for images, magazines, journals, ebooks, or other materials?"

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Yes there are! Here are some sources that Wikipedians might find useful:

  • The Online Books Page - Curated links to public domain and other freely available items from across the internet, including many of the following sites.
  • Digital Public Library of America
  • Internet Archive
  • Internet Archive Scholar - For open full-text scholarly content - NEW and still under development March, 2021
  • Hathi Trust - Some content is public domain and freely accessible. Other content is only available with single-sign-on from a member university, such as UPENN, Temple University, Penn State University, etc.
  • Google Books - Some content is freely accessible. In some cases, you can find enough information in previews to make citations.
  • Library of Congress Digital Collections
  • PA POWER Library Resources
    • Books, Movies and More --> Interlibrary loan catalog for the State of Pennsylvania, see your local library for loan details
    • PA Photos and Documents ---> Historical primary source documents - photos, maps, correspondence, journals, newspapers
    • E-resources ---> Licensed journals, newspapers and e-books - Requires PA library card or e-card for access
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“I'd like to better understand the various types of licenses governing use of photographs and other images.”

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  • I ask because it appears to be an important source of photographs for people of historical significance.
Resources: Find A Grave, Tin Eye, Possible license template: {{PD-old-assumed}}


"You mentioned the possibility of uploading things from archives to Wikipedia Commons. How would we know which things we have permission to add there?”

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  • Public domain images (Anything published before 1925 is public domain in the United States; there are additional rules that get more complicated)
  • Images whose license allows for commercial use AND reuse
An example search on google for releaseable items for cheese, the key test in the search is "Labeled for reuse with modification"
  • Reproductions of public domain works cannot be recopyrighted. See Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. However, derivative works which significantly change and adapt public domain images can be copyrighted.

“This is not my photo. So, how do I handle the licensure when I upload it?”

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“Information about how to find public domain jpeg files ... would be of help to some of my students.”

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OTRS generator: “Information about how to ... get permission to use a non-public-domain jpeg would be of help to some of my students.”

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The first step is to determine whether an image is still copyrighted, and who holds the copyright. Copyright is complicated. The copyright holder can be a person who took a photograph of something, a person who created an artwork that was photographed, or both. In the case of a two-dimensional work, taking a photograph of just the work (not its frame or surroundings) is not considered to add a creative element, and so does not warrant a new copyright for the photographer. In the case of a photograph of a three-dimensional artwork (which includes a picture in its frame), taking a photograph is considered to add a creative element, and so does warrant a new copyright for the photographer. In either case, the artist who created the original artwork may also hold a copyright. Copyrights have a time limit. Copyrights can be passed to others by sale and by inheritance. An employee may sign over his copyrights to his employer, a copyright holder may sell their rights, and a copyright holder's heir may inherit them.

As of January 2021, the steps for a copyright holder to follow in the OTRS generator, to authorize release of an image were as follows: 

------

Please go to :
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikimedia_OTRS_release_generator


------ next page ------
Click the  Start Button

------ next page ------
Select
I am the copyright holder

Scroll down and enter your name,
Hit continue

------ next page ------
Select
I want to release the media work
Hit continue

------ next page ------
Select
I or others have already uploaded the file to Wikimedia Commons

Paste in the file name(s)
File:whatever-the-name-of-the-file-is-on-Commons.jpg

------ next page ------
The next page will show a license, likely this:
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

You just need to Click on
I agree to the terms above

* I think it should generate a ticket number for you  to use. Write this down: You'll need it below.

---------------
Finally, I believe the copyright holder will need to email
permissions-commons@wikimedia.org

Please fill in the SUBJECT LINE of the email with the OTRS ticket number
(I believe it should have generated this for you when the steps happen above.)
 
The body can be a message such as:
"Permissions submitted via  Interactive Release Generator!"

Wiki Education

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“Can the Wikiedu program be publicized to get more college instructors implementing Wikipedia in their classes?”

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  • Wikiedu educators are doing a great job of developing a usable interface and teaching Wikipedia-related skills.

Wikidata

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“What is WikiData?”

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In Wikidata, is there a way to import any existing data such as NAF / SNAC or has that already been done as baseline bio data?

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Yes, there are tools for uploading bulk data points to Wikidata. The WikiSalon will be working on these for presentation later in 2021 for those interested.

Here are SNAC and NAF examples if anyone wishes to add data manually to Wikidata. Those identifiers are then pulled automatically from Wikidata into Wikipedia when one enters the Authority Control template ({{authority control}}) on an article.

  • SNAC (Social Networks and Archival Context)
  • NAF example: LC control no. n 80153256 authority control for Hetzel, Pierre-Jules, 1814-1886
  • Wikipedia page: Pierre-Jules Hetzel
  • Wikidata item: Q552619
  • Wikidata has an item Library of Congress Name Authority File (Q18912790). It also has a property Library of Congress authority ID (P244) which is accepted as an identifier on Wikidata items.
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