User:AlMac/Wiki rules
This is a guide to WP links where the rules & How-tos are for doing things on Wikipedia. It is not an exhaustive list, just stuff User:AlMac|(talk) is finding most important at a stage of the WP editor learning curve.
- User:AlMac/Help template = Templates that other folks developed to help deal with some bad habits by some questioners at WP:RD and other places.
Category:Wikipedia official policy and Category:Wikipedia guidelines[edit]
The guidelines have approx 70 articles and 5 sub-categories. Some of these guildelines are also policy, which have approx 40 articles. Some articles are in both categories. Examples of one or the other important Wikipedia guideline and/or policy:
- Citing Sources is neccessary to substantiate facts in an article, because facts that cannot be shown to be true will have to be removed from Wikipedia by other editors, as verifiability is an important Wikipedia principle.
- This goes hand in hand with No original research ... material for Wikipedia needs to have a factual basis that other researchers can substantiate and cite reputable sources demonstrating the truth of the statements.
- Civility and etiquette = Be nice, don't edit when annoyed with other editor volunteers, cool off first.
- Assume good faith by other editors, don't bite newcomers to any task, remember that for some people, English is not their first language, even people in English-speaking nations.
- Copyrights ... We can't be putting something into Wikipedia without permission to copy the copyrighted work, except as permitted under fair use, which might not apply to images in userboxes, but it is Ok to have an external link to a copyrighted article. Remember to be sensitive to how copyright rules vary around the world, since Wiki is a global resource. Once something has been legally added to Wikipedia, then anyone else may use it under the GNU free license.
- Links to an article need to be relevant, that add to the encyclopaedic value, not WP:SPAM, that are vanity self-promotion, special interest, or advertising.
- We can do articles about commercial enterprises that are notable organizations.
- Wikipedia:Naming conventions for articles, such as upper lower case and priority of key words.
- Wikipedia:NPOV (neutral point of view) representing views fairly and without bias, ideally to make articles acceptable to everyone. Libel or defamation is a total no-no. Let's also use clean civilized language. Types of POV bias include:
- Prejudice against other groups of people, on aasis of color of skin, age, gender, national origin, etc.
- Not being fair to other religions, ideologies, how similar topics framed in other nations.
- For or against capitalism, socialism, open source, non-profit, some political party.
- Favor sensational exceptions over the ordinary.
- What Wikipedia Is and is not
- It is an on-line encyclopaedia.
- It is not a place for personal opinions, discussion forum. The community is here to help make the encyclopaedia have more and better content.
Category:Wikipedia how-to do a good job[edit]
| Manual of Style (MoS) |
|---|
The how to category has a few sub-categories and approx 100 articles, while the style guidelines category has links to over 100 articles.
Legal Guide for Bloggers[edit]
Here's something I found at the Harvard Wiki that might be useful here also. http://www.eff.org/bloggers/img/banner.png [1]
lists[edit]
- Conceptually how grouping information in different types of lists fit into Wikipedia as opposed to categories and other links.
- How to do tables, which are discouraged, due to code complexity, except where really useful ... see Hurricane Katrina for example.
- Help:List is a master list of stuff we can do in the wiki language, such as
- Help:Editor how to do piped links, inter-wiki, formulas, images, lots and lots of stuff worth a periodic review to see other techniques worth learning.