Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Poverty Justice and Human Capabilities (Kimberly Hoang)/Initial Contribution

Entry to Wikipedia Mainspace

""Due: Tuesday, October 23rd""

The next step in creating your Wikipedia contribution is to begin writing directly for Wikipedia. By the end of this stage, you will have added your content to the main Wikipedia site where it can be accessed by other editors and Wikipedia users. General goals and tips are below and more detailed, step-by-step, instructions follow.

1. First, carefully consider the advice you have been given, both to your proposal when it was reviewed and graded, and to your contributions to your Project and Talk pages by any Wikipedia editors.

2. You may begin by contributing to the entry directly in Wikipedia’s main namespace. If you choose this option your changes will “go live” as soon as you make them. If you prefer to practice Wikimarkup language prior to uploading to the main space, you may start your work in your Sandbox.

3. All contributions must include an outline of your article. This outline should include all of the sections in your article, as they would appear in a Wikipedia “Contents” outline. If you are revising an already existing article, be sure to indicate which sections, specifically, you are adding or editing.

4. Your proposed entry or revised edits should be a minimum of 2000 words, not including references. If you are working with a partner, your joint contribution should be 3500-4000 words minimum.

5. Be sure to continually check your article’s discussion page and any WikiProject talk pages for user feedback and suggestions.

6. Consider using Wikipedia’s Article Wizard. The Wizard is a tool designed to help users creating articles for the first time. To access the Article Wizard, type “wp:article wizard” into the Wikipedia search bar. The Wizard is a six-step process that will ensure that you are ready to create a new article.

7. A good way to familiarize yourself with Wikipedia writing language is to visit well developed pages and view their source code. To do this go to the page you want to exaine, click on the "edit" tab and then view the source code.

Technical Details for New Entries and Revisions to Existing Entries

▪ Plan your article to include a number of short sections. Headings allow a reader to jump around and find the information they want easily. (When you include a heading, a table of contents will be automatically generated when you later post to Wikipedia.) Wikipedia allows the creation of article headings with relative ease. (Refer to the WP:Training/Newcomers/Editing basics)

▪ To create headings and the table of contents feature found all Wikipedia pages, use equal signs ("=") to denote heading levels. For example =First Level Heading=;==Second Level Heading==;===Third Level Heading===; and so on. Using this formatting will automatically generate a table of contents for your page.

▪ Include links in your article. The links to related pages is one of the greatest assets of Wikipedia articles. To add a link double-bracket the word you wold like to link. (For example, "[[Capability Approach]]" would link to the capabilities approach page: Capability Approach. A link to a page that "[[doesn’t exist]]" will appear red: doesn't exist.)

▪ Include citations for your research. When something in your article needs to be cited just type . Anything between the will be read as a citation. It will not appear at that point in the article, but will appear at the bottom of the article as a citation instead. (For more information refer to Wikipedia:Citing sources)

▪Be sure to add the course-supported banner to your article’s Talk page (if you haven’t done so already) by copying this text on the top of the talk page:

{{ WAP assignment | course=Wikipedia:USEP/Courses/Poverty, Justice, and Human Capabilities (Kimberly Hoang and Diana Strassmann) | university = Rice University | term = 2012 Q4 | project = }}

Instructions

If Creating a New Entry Using the Sandbox

The sandbox feature of Wikipedia is a place where you can start and edit your contribution until you are ready to fully release it on Wikipedia. You will create a sandbox inside your user space. This sandbox will allow you to practice Wikipedia syntax and editing without being fully held to the standards in Wikipedia:Manual of Style. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style.

Instructions for creating sandbox

• Go to your user page (space you are in after you click on your Username) and click “Edit” (among the options on top right).

• In the textbox go to the line after the sentences describing yourself and type {{My sandbox}}. This will create a sandbox link with an illustrative picture that will look like this:

My sandbox

• Scroll below the box and click on "Save page" to save the changes.

From here, begin creating your new article by typing in the text box, making sure to save changes frequently.

Once you have practiced in your sandbox, copy your pages into the Wikipedia mainspace for your page.

If Creating a New Entry Directly to Wikipedia Mainspace

The easiest way to create a new article on the Wikipedia Main Namespace is to log into your account and then type in the name of your topic into the search box on the right-hand side of the main page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page). If no article exists, you will be prompted to create one. Click the italicized “Your topic” hyperlink colored red. This link will take you to a large text box where you can write your article. When changes are complete, press the “Save page” button.

If Revising an Existing Entry

1. If you are contributing to and revising an existing entry, you may edit directly on the existing page or you may copy the existing article into your sandbox to begin editing. In either case, it is important to record the existing article before making your edits. To do so, before editing, save the pre-existing article as a PDF. You will be required to submit the relevant sections of the original article, without your edits, with your final contribution.

2. Once you have saved the original page, if you choose to edit in your sandbox for practice, proceed with steps 3-6. If you choose to edit immediately on the main space skip to step 7.

3. Click on the “Edit” tab in the top-right corner of the article page and copy everything located within the editing text box.

4. After copying the article contents go to your user page sandbox, click “Edit,” paste the material from the original article’s editing text box, and click “Save page.”

5. At this point your user page sandbox should look identical to the existing entry, except for the title. With the contents of the existing article now contained within your sandbox, you can make edits to the page and add content as you see fit.

6. Once you are satisfied with your changes, copy them back onto the Wikipedia mainspace page. Note: it is important to copy your changes back to the mainspace so that other editors may assist you. It is also required for this assignment that you make a contribution to the mainspace, not only your sandbox.

7. Click the edit tab on your page. Begin making edits as you see fit. Note these will appear “live” for all users of Wikipedia to see.

Submitting Assignment

Submit to OWL-Space Deadline: Tuesday, October 23rd at 5 pm

You will be assessed on the quality of contribution to the Wikipedia mainspace. You can turn in this assignment in one of two ways: 1) Take screenshots of all sections that you have edited, copy these into a word document, briefly describe the changes you made and save as a PDF or 2) create a PDF of your entire page and highlight the changes you have made. Submit your PDF and outline to the relevant assignment tab on OWL-Space. For full credit, the files you submit must be labeled as follows: <LastName>InitialContribution.pdf and <LastName>Outline.doc.

Be sure to include page numbers (in Word documents) and to proofread and double-space all text, except the outline, which may be single-spaced. For pdf entries, be sure the font size is legible. Points will be deducted for proposals that do not follow these instructions.

Other Tips

How to take screenshots

If the page you are viewing has unnecessary information, please use a selected screenshot instead of a full screenshot as this will make the image larger and, therefore, more legible.

To zoom-in on the screen

In Firefox and Google Chrome, you can zoom in by simply pressing “Control” or “Ctrl” and scrolling up. Then you can take your screenshot and the font will be larger.

On a MAC

For a selected screenshot, hold “command” and “shift” and then press 4. Use your cursor to then select the area to screenshot.

For a full screenshot, hold “command” and “shift” and then press 3.

The screenshots save to your desktop and can be renamed to .jpg or .pdf (they default as .png files).

On a PC

please follow the steps provided at this link: http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-in-Microsoft-Windows

Highlighting Changes on MACs

1. Save your page as a PDF.

2. Open the PDF in preview.

3. Click tools, then annotate, then highlight text.

4. You can now highlight all sentence level changes you made. This will assist reviewers in knowing which changes are yours and which are not.