How Wikipedia Works

From phoebewiki

How Wikipedia Works,
by Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates, is now published by No Starch Press (September 2008)!

"In How Wikipedia Works, you’ll learn the skills required to use and contribute to the world’s largest reference work—like what constitutes good writing and research and how to work with images and templates."

This is a page for information, updates and feedback about a book about Wikipedia, called How Wikipedia Works, authored by Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates, and published September 2008 by No Starch Press. The book is, like Wikipedia itself, released as free content under the GFDL license and (will be soon) online.

We cover Wikipedia from soup to nuts:

for readers trying to understand what's in Wikipedia, how and why it got there, and how to analyze the quality of the content you might find on the site;
for current and future editors, from basic editing techniques and wikisyntax to not-so-basic information on complicated syntax, referencing and researching content, and editing collaboratively and harmoniously;
and for anyone interested in how Wikipedia's vibrant and complicated community comes together to produce content, resolve disputes, and keep the site running.
Finally, we touch on the wider world of Wikipedias in other languages, other Wikimedia projects, and the Wikimedia Foundation itself.
We close with appendices about reusing Wikipedia content according to the terms of the GFDL license, and thoughts on using Wikipedia in a classroom setting.

Thoughout, we provide community consensus viewpoints and our own thoughts on a common-sense approach to using and participating in Wikipedia, and a selection of carefully-chosen links to the thousands of pages of documentation, help and Wikipedia-space pages that we discuss -- not to mention a sprinkling of humor. In every discussion, we try to provide a sense of the community that supports and is at the heart of the Wikipedia project and mission.

[edit] For more information

press release for HWW
The O'Reilly catalog description
visit the publisher's site
Thesis writing
Research paperbr/>
- Buy the book from No Starch Press
- or from Powell's Books
- Or ask for us at your favorite bookstore
Updates since going to publication and Errata
some more tips for using Wikipedia

[edit] Read the book

* Read the book at howwikipediaworks.com

[edit] Annotated Table of Contents

See also: (unannotated) Table of Contents
For the full text, see howwikipediaworks.com

Introduction -- Why we wrote the book, how to access Wikipedia, and what the funny [[Links]] mean that appear throughout the text. Also includes a cheatsheet of editing syntax for those who just need a quick reference.

Part I: Content -- This part of the book is aimed at readers trying to understand Wikipedia and what content can be found there

Chapter 1: What's in Wikipedia? -- Article scope and content policies, including the big ones: Neutral Point of View, No Original Research and Verifiability -- not to mention a sense of just how much content is in Wikipedia. Includes a discussion of namespaces, which is crucial to understanding the other chapters in the book
Chapter 2: The World Gets a Free Encyclopedia -- What's the history behind Wikipedia? What projects have influenced the site, and what are the basic values (such as free content and openness) behind it?
Chapter 3: Finding Wikipedia's Content -- How to search Wikipedia but also how to browse it to find the articles you are looking for; discovering the main page portal, content that is updated daily, and hidden nooks and crannies of interesting information
Chapter 4: Understanding and Evaluating an Article -- Once you've found an article, how do you tell how good the quality of it is? How to read all the parts of an article, including the discussion page and history, and a short introduction to posting on discussion pages with questions about article content

Part II: Editing -- This part of the book is aimed at anyone who wants to contribute to Wikipedia

Chapter 5: Basic Editing -- Basic wikisyntax; how to change a page, what the editing window looks like and how to correct mistakes and vandalism
Chapter 6: Good Writing and Research -- Once you've got the basics down -- now what? Making more major changes, writing collaboratively, research techniques for finding good references for articles (and how to add them), and how to start a new article
Chapter 7: Cleanup, Projects, and Processes -- What is there to do on Wikipedia? What tasks constantly need volunteers to work on them? This chapter explains how to help out with cleanup tasks and how processes for managing articles (such as deletion and featuring) work, and how to find and get involved with WikiProjects about topics of interest
Chapter 8: Make and Mend Wikipedia's Web -- Articles don't exist in a vacuum -- they are part of the larger Wikipedia site. This chapter explains how to manage articles in relation to other articles, including categorization, merging, splitting, and creating redirects and disambiguation pages
Chapter 9: Images, Templates, and Special Characters -- Once you've mastered basic wikisyntax you might want to add more complicated formatting to articles. This chapter covers adding images (along a note on image copyrights and Commons; using and creating templates, and using math markup, non-Latin Term Papers characters and HTML.
Chapter 10: The Life Cycle of an Article -- How does it all come together? This chapter takes a look at a possible lifecycle for an imaginary new article as it is created and lives on the Wikipedia site.

Part III: Community -- Who's behind Wikipedia? Why are they there, and how can you best work with other editors? This part explains how.

Chapter 11: Becoming a Wikipedian -- Creating an account, advice on whether to use a real name and what to put on your user page, and how to set your preferences. Includes information about administrators, becoming an administrator, and other classes of users
Chapter 12: Community and Communication -- How does the Wikipedia community hang together? This chapter delves into some of the culture of Wikipedia, from jokes and humor to deep philosophical debates over content. This chapter also covers how to find other Wikipedians, where to ask for help, and advice on how to best participate in discussions on talk pages
Chapter 13: Policy and Your Input -- Wikipedia operates according to a body of policies and guidelines, which have been created over the years by the editing community. What are those policies, how did they get there, and how can you Term Papers to the policy-making process?
Chapter 14: Disputes, Blocks, and Bans -- Not everything is harmonious -- sometimes editors disagree. This chapter covers how to gracefully resolve a content dispute or an interpersonal dispute between editors, as well as the mechanisms in place to help editors do so.

Part IV: Other Projects -- The English-language Wikipedia isn't the whole story. What about the other wikis that the Wikimedia Foundation runs, and what's the organization behind Wikipedia?

Chapter 15: 200 Languages and Counting -- There are over 250 Wikipedias in various languages, each with their own exciting community. This chapter describes these projects and how to get involved, as well as a technical note about using and viewing different language character sets in Wikipedia.
Chapter 16: Wikimedia Commons and Other Sister Projects -- Wikipedia has eight sister projects, ranging from a collaboratively-written news site to a wiki-based dictionary. This chapter covers those projects, with a focus on Wikimedia Commons, the projects' image and media repository
Chapter 17: The Foundation and Project Coordination -- How do all these projects coordinate? This chapter covers the Wikimedia Foundation, which is the organization that runs Wikipedia, and how to find editors from other projects and get involved in Foundation and cross-project work. We close with a note about the recent history of Wikipedia, thoughts on how the site got where it is, and where the project might be going.

Appendix A: Reusing Wikimedia Content -- Wikipedia is released under the GFDL free content license, which means anyone can reuse the site's content under certain conditions. This appendix explains how.
Appendix B: Wikipedia for Teachers -- Wikipedia is a classroom phenomenon. This appendix offers some classroom-tested ideas for using and discussing Wikipedia in an educational setting.
Appendix C: Edit Summaries Jargon -- Just what does +cat mean?
Appendix D: Glossary -- Wikipedia jargon is dense and occasionally impenetrable. This glossary offers a guide to some commonly used terms and abbreviations.
Appendix E: History (List of Wikipedia Pages Referenced in This Work) -- This book is also licensed under the GFDL. One condition of that license is that the author history of all the content used must be included. This section includes a list of the Wikipedia pages we directly quote and the top five authors of each page.
GNU Free Documentation License -- The text of the GFDL license
Index -- A handy index to the whole book