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User:Quiddity/How it Works

A tour of Wikipedia, using navigation-boxes (navboxes) and annotations from me. Read the yellow, skim and sample the blue.

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Maps

These are the grand overview-style entry-points, to the worldviews and philosophies that drive Wikipedia. They're not the origin of all we do, but they are the map, such as it is.

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Archetypes

These archetypes (and more) all exist, and have to work together. It's great when they balance, and often aggravating/unhealthy (for the project, and the editors) when they don't.

(Images from the meta:Research:Editor Lifecycles study)

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Reading

Numerous ways to navigate the encyclopedia have been inherited and construed.

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Help

And many guides to the many Help systems have been written. (Or see Wikipedia:Editor's index to Wikipedia to be overwhelmed by them all-in-one-page.)

(v · t · e)

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(v · t · e)

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P, G, and S

And then there are the manuals themselves. The Policies Guidelines & Styleguides are a glorious mixture of:   technical recommendation, summarized precedent of older discussions, nuanced philosophical perspective, and practical how-to.   [We used to have the phrase "descriptive, not prescriptive" somewhere in there,1234 but it was too zen, and was excised a few years ago.   ╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻   So it goes.]

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Backstage

There are hundreds of projects engaged in cleaning and building specific-aspects, including:

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| {{Infoboxwatch}}

| {{Dabnav}}

| {{Glossaries}}

And so many more; including the overwhelming:

If you're not [confused / inspired / worried / surprised / outraged / overwhelmed / hopeful] then you're not paying attention!

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Essays

And with the essays, we loop back to philosophy. The essays are (almost) all nuggets of truth, but expressed in wildly different writer's voices. They variously offer: commonsense clarifications, fabulous epiphanies, metaphorical or satirical exaggerations, crude oversimplifications, besmirchments of opposing perspectives, and insights to laugh along with.

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~~ fin ~~

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{{User:Seppi333/Trifecta}}

(It's rarely simple!

  • Remain neutral.
  • Try to work/smile/love/laugh/work alongside the other humans.
  • Ignore nothing, detail is everything, but try not to get lost.)

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See also, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9zfCMp99-A Exformation] (4 min, YouTube) as brilliantly explained by Ze Frank. Our discussions (throughout Wikipedia, and throughout life) are overflowing with exformation. It's a useful thing to understand (wikt:exformation). The newcomers don't have any, and the regulars have too much!

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