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User:Cumbrowski/WikiResources

{{User_talk:Cumbrowski/header|Wikipedia Resources|Important Information}}

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What is this Page

This is a page in the Wikipedia user space and not the article main space. That means that most Wikipedia rules to not apply to it. The page is my (User:Cumbrowski) personal reference to Wikipedia, which I use myself and also refer other Wikipedians to in the hope that they will find it as helpful as I do, to better collaborate together at Wikipedia and beyond. Please note, that the statements and comments are my own and express my view and understanding of things here at Wikipedia. Some editors will certainly disagree with me on specific details here and there, but that is Wikipedia too. It would be too easy, if everybody would have the same view and opinion on things. See this as an exercise for the real Wikipedia main space :).

You are free to add resources to this page. This page is for everybody and not just for myself. Don't be shy, use the "edit" link at the top, just like you do in the main space of Wikipedia. Cheers!

If you are new to Wikipedia, then you might got already the :Template:Welcomeg added to your users talk page. It contains already a good overview and links to useful resources for new editors of Wikipedia. The resources below will still be useful to you and compliment the "Welcomeg" template. If you did not get the template that I mentioned on your user talk page check it out and/or add it to your user talk page yourself, if you'd like. Simply paste following statement into your user talk page: {{subst:welcomeg}}.

The Rule That Rules Them All

If you have to say in one sentence what Wikipedia is (the content), this would be it IMO.

{{cquote|... the three key policies, which warrant that articles and information be verifiable, avoid being original research, and be written from a neutral point of view are held to be non-negotiable and cannot be superseded by any other guidelines or by editors' consensus.}}

Quote from WP:DGFA.

Try my [http://www.cumbrowski.com/sourcessearch.asp News Sources and Statistics Search Engine] (beta) to find content at reliable news sources for citation and reference in Wikipedia articles.

Wiki Links, Help, Tutorials and Guides

If you are new to Wikipedia, I recommend that you check out the references in the left column. It is sorted by priority so simply work it down by starting at the top. The right column has various other resources that caught my attention. Also references to Wikipedia related stuff on other Websites, including Blogs and Podcasts.

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|valign=top width=50% bgcolor=whitesmoke|General Rules and Guidelines

|valign=top width=50% bgcolor=whitesmoke|Help Files, Tools, Stats and Comunity

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;Important Wikipedia Guidelines

:Below are the core guidelines of Wikipedia. All other guidelines are usually related to those "prime directives" or simply refine them. There are also other guidelines that serve the purpose to ensure smooth operation of the site or describe how to go about problems, conflicts and disputes.

;What is Wikipedia?

:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. That is what this is all about, everything else is secondary and only to support and reinforce the purpose of Wikipedia. It's not an outlet to express personal believes or opinions, no social network, no Facebook, MySpace, Digg and not a Web directory either. It's also not a dictionary although the lines between dictionary and encyclopedia are in some cases very fine and blurry. Keep that in mind and you will be fine.

;Everybody is Human

:It is sometimes necessary to remind others or yourself of this purpose. Everybody goes over board some times. We are all human. Be nice, be polite and have no fear to ask others, if you don't know what to do or don't understand what others are talking about. Veteran editors sometimes forget that newbies are not familar with all the abbreviations for the various guidelines and procedures let alone with their content or details.

:Be bold

:Don't be scared to stand to your opinion because of seniority. Even admins do not have more weight or right than you have. They only know the procedures better (in most cases), which does not make them automatically right when it it is about the content and facts for a specific article to a subject they might not even know anything about. Don't be stubborn and try to be right, just for sake of it.

;Also at Wikipedia is 1+1=2

:The middle ground is often the right solution, unless the dispute is about cold, hard and meassurable facts (1+1 = 2, you don't have to settle for 1.5 if the other editor believes that the correct answer is 1). If nothing helps, get an outside opinion or find a mediator. See the resources to "Resolving Disputes, Challenging Contributions".

:Helpful related articles: WP:WFTE - Writing for the_enemy, Wikipedia:Describing points of view, Devil's advocate

:Related WP:RS or WP:RELY = Reliable Sources

  • WP:N = Notability (WP:NOTE) has nothing to do with importance. While the fact of the existence of every single grain of sand is probably not notable, so is the existence of a beach that is made of it much more likely to be notable. Disputes about what is notable and what is not are among the most common disputes at Wikipedia. If a believer in the chaos theory, somebody that fits the profile of an [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Inclusionist_Wikipedians Inclusionist], meets somebody who is best characterized as a [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Deletionist_Wikipedians Deletionist], you can imagine that a dispute is just waiting to happen. It's a tricky issue, which is not to 100% resolved yet. Also see: WP:WEB Wikipedia:Notability (web)


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;Also Relevant

  • WP:COI = Conflict of Interest. No doubt about the fact that you are a true expert on the subject, if the article is about you or your company. The problem is, that you are in those cases a very biased expert. Being objective about ourselves or about what we do or about our loved ones is a skill only few of us have mastered. The majority is actually very lousy and ill qualified to do that. For this reason is it recommended to keep your hands off those articles or add your comments and suggestion to the articles talk page and request that other editors will have a look at it and adjust the article where appropriate for you. You can of course make changes and factual corrections yourself, but make sure that you can provide proof and reliable sources that back up your claims. Changes that qualify as COI are being scrutenized much more by other editors.
  • WP:MOS = Manual of Style, also WP:STYLE
  • WP:AGF = Assume good faith. Its easier said than done, since most of us grow up with the attitude that you have to assume bad intention first and then find out how bad (or not) they really are. While everybody has different and even selfish reasons for doing edits at Wikipedia free of charge, are the interests and goals of most editors surpriseingly in alignment with the goal of Wikipedia, even if they are not the same. Try to keep that in mind and don't always expect to meet the devil if you see somebody doing something that might looks a bit odd or does not follow all of Wikipedia guidelines by the word.
  • WP:BIAS = WikiProject Countering systemic bias. Yeah, also "Wikipedia" is biased, because it is made up of people and people are by their very nature biased. But it is a start if you are aware of your own bias' and try to reduce it's impact as much as you can.


;SEO and Marketers, these ones are for you

  • WP:EL = External links (especially for SEO and Marketers)
  • WP:AUTO = Autobiography - writing one and selling it to a publisher who is interested might be okay, but writing one at Wikipedia is not. See WP:COI (conflict of interest) mentioned in the paragraph above.
  • WP:SPAM = SPAM as the shortcut already says, also WP:ADVERT = SPAM!
  • WP:SOCK or WP:MEAT = Sock puppetry. Wannabe actors or schizophrenic editors with 2nd, 2rd ... Xth additional editor account, pretending not to know the others to skew votes or to manipulate debates are highly unwelcome. Unfortunately is the use of them more wide spread and common than a lot of people would like to be true.


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;Resolving Disputes, Challenging Contributions

  • WP:DR = Deny Recognition - Resolving disputes
  • WP:AfD = Article for Deletion (WP:TfD = Templates for Deletion)
  • WP:3RR = The three revert rule to prevent WP:EW, a Wikipedia "Edit War"

:Getting a Wikipedia Admin involved might helps also in some instances where things seem to go out of hand. Requests for assistance can be made via the WP:ADMIN page. You can get a [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Listusers&group=sysop&limit=5000 list of all admins here].



;Solving specific conflicts

:The options are listed in the order they should be used

:related WP:CANVAS - Canvassing or don't ask every stranger or even buddy for help who has nothing to do with the dispute at hand.


:Like an Escrow, or better like parents locking the toy away from two children that can't solve a dispute about it.


;Debates


;Consequences of your actions


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;Copyright and Images

:The upload of copyright protected images caused quite some problems here at Wikipedia, which resulted in a tighter control and verification process of all images that are being uploaded by users. To avoid weird messages that talk about issues with an image you did upload for an article, check out the following guidelines. Make sure that you "tag" the images that were uploaded by you properly, to avoid issues and headaches in the future.

  • WP:TAG = Image copyright tags

:See how they look

  • WP:FAIR = Fair Use but Non-free content

:Related Tags


;Helpful Articles you should read

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;External Wikipedia News Sites and Blogs

  • [http://www.wikipediaweekly.com/ Wikipedia Weekly] - Wikipedia Podcast
  • [http://daveydweeb.com/ Daveydweeb blog]
  • [http://www.tawker.com/ Tawkerblog] - Tawker is also one of the hosts of the Wikipedia Weekly podcast
  • [http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/category/wikipedia/ Andrew Lih Blog] Category: Wikipedia


;Sites about Wikipedia Criticism

  • Wikitruth.info Wikipedia criticism and different point of view
  • [http://wikipediareview.com Wikipedia Review] is another website that is critical about Wikipedia

::Also see Criticism of Wikipedia


;Essays and Posts

:[http://www.notaconmedia.com/2006/video/notacon-2006-scott-wikipedia.avi Video Version 370MB] - [http://www.notaconmedia.com/2006/notacon-2006-scott-wikipedia.mp3 Audio Version 4 MB] at Notacon 3 Media: April 7-9, 2006

  • [http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-November/008266.html Partial solution to rampant deletionism] by Jimbo Wales
  • [http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/25 Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism] by Larry Sanger
  • [http://www.searchenginejournal.com/all-wikipedia-links-are-now-nofollow/4288/ All Wikipedia Links Are Now NOFOLLOW] by Carsten Cumbrowski
  • [http://www.seomoz.org/blog/search-engine-optimization-article-at-wikipedia-doesnt-deserve-attention Search Engine Optimization Article at Wikipedia Doesn't Deserve Attention] by Rand Fishkin
  • [http://www.searchenginejournal.com/wikipedia-article-quality-assessment-and-ranking-tips-for-users-and-search-engine-engineers/6002/ Wikipedia Article Quality Assessment] by Carsten Cumbrowski
  • [http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-dark-side-of-wikipedia The Dark Side of Wikipeda] by Rand Fishkin about abuse of and spam in Wikipedia
  • [http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-add-content-to-wikipedia-the-white-hat-way/6067/ How to Add Content to Wikipedia the “White Hat” Way] by Carsten Cumbrowski


;Other Wikipedia Related Stuff

  • Wired's list of salacious edits (dead) wired.reddit.com/wikidgame/
  • WikiScanner (dead) wikiscanner.virgil.gr

:*.gov Edits Stats by WikiScanner (dead)

:*US Democratic Party Edits made from its office locations (dead)

:*US Republican Party Edits made from its office locations (dead)

  • Top 100 most visited articles in Wikipedia. A frequently updated statistic based on the actual web server logs data (dead) tools.wikimedia.de/~leon/stats/wikicharts/?wiki=enwiki
  • [http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/index.html WikipediaVision] Anonymous edits to Wikipedia (almost) in real-time
  • [http://wikidashboard.parc.com/wiki/Main_Page WikiDashboard] lets you use Wikipedia and shows in an overlay the editors who contributed the most to any given article within Wikipedia.
  • [http://stats.grok.se/ Wikipedia Article Traffic Statistics]
  • [http://similpedia.org/ Similpedia.org] finding similar content in Wikipedia
  • [http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page DeletionPedia] archive of over 60,000 pages which have been deleted from the English-language Wikipedia
  • [http://www.cumbrowski.com/sourcessearch.asp News Sources and Statistics Search Engine] to find content at reliable news sources for your Wikipedia article

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{{cite web|url=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/3/30/Wiki-refcard.pdf | publisher=User:mjanich| format = PDF | title=Single page reference card of MediaWiki editing commands.|date=|accessdate=}}


;Wikipedia Glossary

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;Help and Tutorials

  • Wikipedia:Questions is a portal page where you can find various options for finding help and information to Wikipedia. You can also ask your question and then place {{helpme}} before the question on your talk page (I have not used this myself, but I probably will one day, just to find out what happens :)).

;Help from META

  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:User_style Help:User_style]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Watching_pages Help:Watching_pages]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Enhanced_recent_changes Help:Enhanced_recent_changes]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Variable Help:Variable]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Category Help:Category]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Page_name Help:Page_name]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Redirect Help:Redirect]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Navigational_image Help:Navigational_image]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Interwiki_linking Help:Interwiki_linking]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Special_page Help:Special_page]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Testing Help:Testing]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Substitution Help:Substitution]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Magic_words Help:Magic Words] are like templates and could be described as "system variables" in programmer speak. Magic words include things like the current date or time, the current page you are on or things like how many articles exist in Wikipedia or how many users that have administrator level exist in Wikipedia.

;Articles and Tutorials

;Article Assessment and Grading

  • WP:ASSESS Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment, Article grading scheme: Stub, Start, B, Good Article (WP:GA), A, Featured Article (WP:FA)
  • WP:1.0/Criteria Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Release Version Criteria (Importance of topic): Low (specialists), Mid (minor details), High (depth), Top (must-have)

;Others

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Don't run off to the big guys, if the answer can be found near by :)

  • Wikipedia:Reference desk - Like a [http://answers.yahoo.com Yahoo! Answers] or [http://askville.amazon.com Amazon Askville]

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;Other Stuff


;Deletion

;User Templates/User Boxes

;Wikipedia Portals

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;Wikipedia Tools

  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Toolserver Wikimedia Toolserver]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Toolserver/Projects Wikimedia Toolserver Projects]
  • WP:TOOLS
  • [http://tools.wikimedia.de/sixdeg/index.jsp Six Degrees of Wikipedia]
  • [{{fullurl:Special:Whatlinkshere|target={{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}}} What Links to {{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}]
  • [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target= Wikipedia Web Links Search] find links to external websites (domains) at Wikipedia
  • [http://tools.wikimedia.de/~dapete/catgraph/ Catgraph] - tool to visualize category structures
  • User:Bluemoose/DataBaseSearchTool - program for searching the database dump
  • [http://www.domaintools.com/enwikipedia/forbes.com References of a Domain] in Wikipedia articles and[http://www.domaintools.com/en/Bulletin_board_system Domains referenced] by a specific article. Tools provided by Domaintools.com based on the Wikipedia article dump (= data are not realtime).
  • [http://www.wikiasari.com Wikiasari] and other projects of the [http://search.wikia.com/ Search Wikia Labs]
  • [http://www.wikiseek.com/ WikiSeek (beta)] Wikipedia search engine
  • [http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/ WikiScanner] List anonymous wikipedia edits from interesting organizations. Written by by Virgil Griffith

;Other Tools

;Spam Fighting Tools

;User Scripts (JavaScripts for Monobook.js)

  • Scripts that are part of the "WikiProject User Scripts"
  • Custom Live Preview
  • Twinkle - Twinkle is a set of JavaScripts that gives registered users several new options to assist them in common Wikipedia maintenance tasks and to help them deal with acts of vandalism.

;Edit Counters

  • [http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/count_edits Interiot's Edit Counter] requires Opt-In by Editor who wants his stats be public
  • [http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate Kate's Wanna-Be Edit Counter]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Edit_counting Edit Counting]
  • Edit Summary

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;Wikipedia/MediaWiki Tech

  • WP:VPT Wikipedia Village Pump - used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia
  • Naming conventions (technical restrictions)
  • [http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ Wikimedia BugZilla] - report bugs or make feature requests for the Mediawiki
  • Wikipedia:Technical_FAQ - technical workings of Wikipedia, including software and hardware
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:MediaWiki_database_tables MediaWiki Database Tables]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges&days=3&limit=10 Recent Changes (Meta)]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:MediaWiki_extensions MediaWiki Extensions]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiFeeds WikiFeeds Extension]
  • [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/monobook.js Interesting Monobook.js User Interface Customization]
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dumps Wikipedia Data Dumps] - [http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/ dump folder]
  • Help:Export
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Election_results_2005&curid=19333&diff=178548&oldid=178465 Difference between Edits]
  • Tools/Navigation popups
  • [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_DTD MediaWiki DTD]
  • Bad Words List from Lupin's Recent Changes Patrol Script (usefull Database for any spam fighting tool developer)
  • [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss Recent Changes RSS Feed] contains ALL recent changes made to pages in the article main space at the english Wikipedia.

;Developers/Source Codes/Scripts

  • [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php Wikipedia Query Interface]
  • [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php Wikipedia API (Alpha)]

:homepage of the [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API MediaWiki API]

:based on [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sylvain_Schmitz/Watchlist_RSS_feed_in_PHP Watchlist RSS feed in PHP by Sylvain Schmitz]

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;Lists, Directories and Wikipedia Information

  • Request for Checkuser to uncloak a Sockpuppet and its Puppeteer is gone

;Wiki Fun

  • Robot_Battle -> [http://robotbattle.wikia.com/ Robotbattle.Wikia.com]
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Note: No, you will not get paid for editing Wikipedia. Trust me on that one. But you can look at it from the bright side: The same is true for everybody else here. ;)

Cheers! Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Category:User essays