User:Ocaasi/The Wikipedia Game/Level 5

LEVEL 5

Dialogue 1

You're still going strong! Great, let's get back to it. This mission you'll learn about verifiability, which is how Wikipedia creates articles based on good published sources. Also, we'll cover what to do if you get stuck and need help. Here we go!

Action 1 New messages

Click on the link to new messages to go to your talk page.

Message 1

I see you've been working on the article on Earth. It looks better. But I'm concerned that it doesn't cite any sources. How do I know that the information there is something I can trust? Would you write back and tell me what Wikipedia's policy on sources is all about? Thanks! --GaiaGirl1988

Dialogue 2

Ok, a good problem. That's a question we want to answer, but you don't know how yet. Who can you ask? Luckily, Wikipedia is full of pages, places, and people to find help. You just have to know where to look. Let's go over the options:

• Ask an editor on their talk page
• Help desk
• Help search
• Place a {Help me} template on your talk page or article
• Use the IRC live help chat channel

Asking for help is a natural part of learning and becoming a good editor. There's a lot to learn here and new editors as well as old editors are always checking out new tips and tricks. Let's ask for help, this time at the Help Desk. Hmmm... how to find the help desk. How about we use that Search box.

Action 2 - Highlight Search box

Type here to search for a page.

Dialogue 3

Try typing "Wikipedia Help Desk" into the search bar and see what comes up. Click enter when you're done.

Action 3 - Type Search query

Type "Wikipedia Help Desk" and click Enter.

Action 4 - Load result page.

Dialogue 4

Great it took us right to the help desk. This is a place where you can ask any question about Wikipedia anytime, and someone will write back to you if they can help. Let's try asking them about sourcing policy. In general it's best to search through past questions, but today, we'll just go ahead and add a new one. Hmm... how to add a new post to the page?

Action 5 - Highlight New Section link

Click here to add a new post to the page.

Dialogue 6

Great, an editing window. You know how to use these! I'll add the question, you go ahead and add your signature (remember, four of these ~ and an edit summary ("question about sourcing"). Then click Show Preview and Save, like normal.

Action 6 - Add question

I'm trying to learn about sourcing on Wikipedia. What is the policy? Thanks!

Action 7 - add signature, edit summary, preview and save.

Dialogue 7

Nice work. Someone should get back to you shortly. Hmm... how will you know when they do? This kind of message won't show up with a banner notification like when someone writes on your talk page. How about we add this page to your watchlist? Remember that, the watchlist is your personal feed of pages you want to watch. You can check it anytime to see what has been added to articles you are following.

Action 8 - Highlight Watchlist star

Click the star to add the page to your watchlist.

Dialogue 8

Nice work. Now we can check to see when your post has been updated, along with any other pages which we add to the watchlist. Hey, let's go add Earth to it! You can get there using the Search bar just like before.

Action 9 - Highlight Search bar

Type in Earth and click enter to go to the article.

Action 10 - Load article, Highlight Watchlist star

Click the star to add the page to your watchlist.

Dialogue 10

Now let's check the watchlist and see what's been going on.

Action 11 - Highlight My Watchlist link

Click on My Watchlist to view changes to the articles you are following.

Dialogue 11

Okay, this looks a bit confusing at first, but you'll figure it out shortly. Each article has a listing and the most recent changes to it show up. I'll walk you through it quickly.

(diff | hist) . . Help:Help Desk . . (+168) . . {Username} (talk | contribs) (question about sourcing)

• On the left is (diff | hist). That's a handy way to compare versions of an article. We'll come back to it another time.
• The page or article title.
• The time of the edit. It might look different than your time, because the time is displayed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is based in Greenwich.
• Number of bytes which were added or removed from the page. That's a quick measure of whether content was added or taken away.
• The user who made the change to the page.
• The edit summary they left with the changes. That's why it's important to leave short, informative notes so that others can follow your work.

Dialogue 12

It doesn't look like anyone has responded yet, or made changes to Earth since you did. Let's reload the watchlist by clicking the reload button in the browser.

Action 12 - Highlight browser Reload Page

Click here to reload the page.

Action 13 - Reload page

Dialogue 13

Oh look, someone responded.

(diff | hist) . . Help:Help Desk . . (+350) . . {HelperUsername} (talk | contribs) (reply about sourcing policy)

Click the page title (Help:Help Desk) to go to the help page and see what they said.

Action 14 - Highlight help page title

Click here to go to the help page.

Dialogue 14

Okay, let's check out what they said.

Message 2

Hey {Username}. Glad you asked about our sourcing policy. Sources are so important to Wikipedia. Sources are the way we know that information is reliable. Everything on Wikipedia must be able to be backed up by a good, published source--one that has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Good sources include published books, newspaper articles, magazines, academic journals, and expert websites. These are much better than self-published books, blogs, personal websites, and other personal writing. They're what we rely on for every article. It's part of the policy called Verifiability. In practice, not every single sentence has a source, but the key is that it could be sourced, and if someone asks you to provide a source, you have to do that or remove the information until you can. So glad you asked! Feel free to come back any time for help. Cheers, --NeverSleepsAWink

Dialogue 15

Wow, bet most people didn't realize Wikipedia is not based on editor's personal knowledge but always on published, reliable sources. Good to know. Most people are relieved and impressed when they find this out. Even though Wikipedia is still a volunteer-written project, put together by mostly non-experts, it's still based on good sources. Let's do a quick exercise to review that.

Interface 1

Choose an example which summarizes the Verifiability policy in a way that's easy to remember.

• All information on Wikipedia should be written by someone who swears that the information is true.
• All information on Wikipedia should have a source to support the information right now.
• All information on Wikipedia should be supportable by a reliable, published source.

Dialogue 16

That was great. You learned how to ask for help and you learned about Verifiability. In the next mission, we'll see how we can put it to use.

Action 15 - Break or continue?