Project Pragati/Resources

Basic

Get started

Create your account

Decide on a username that is not your institution's real name.

Note that sharing an account is not allowed in Wikipedia, so you should not create an account for your organization as a whole.

Click on the blue link "Create Account" in the top right corner.
Click on the blue link "Create One" in the sign in box.
Fill out the information on the page (email is not necessary) and click the "Create Account" button.
Your username will now appear in red in the top right corner.

Wikipedia tutorial

Begin this tutorial to get you started on basic editing, formatting, and citation guidelines. If you learn better in interactive tutorials, we recommend doing the gamified Wikipedia Adventure

Introduction
Editing: After you finish reading this tab, be sure to Try Editing in the Sandbox as they suggest.
Formatting: After you finish reading this tab, try to add bolding, italics & headings in the Sandbox.
Wikipedia Links: After you finish reading this tab, try to add some links and categories in the Sandbox.
Citations: After you finish reading this tab, try out using the reference markup code in the sandbox.

Important readings

It is important that you read about the Five Pillars of Wikipedia.

Userpages & sandboxes

Create your userpage

Creating a user page will be your first time editing in Wikipedia!

The "Creating a userpage" document will walk you through the steps involved in setting up your userpage.
Use the WikiMarkup Cheat Sheet as you begin your edits.

Make sure you're signed in.
Click on your user name, which is a red link, in the top right corner.
Click the "Edit" tab (located between "Read" and "View History") to make several edits to your userpage.
State your relationship with the institution you work for and that you are working with W:GLAM. If you intend to edit about other topics in Wikipedia feel free to mention that, but please don't use your Userpage as a personal webhost or to promote your employer. (See W:USERPAGE about what userpages are for and what they are not for.

Create a sandbox

A sandbox is a subpage of your userpage that can be used for drafting articles.

A "sandbox" is a place to experiment and draft content, related to your work here in Wikipedia. They are not live articles but your personal workspace.

When you are logged-in, look in the upper-right hand corner and you will see a link to your sandbox.
When you click on this link, it will bring up the Edit box. You can paste {{User sandbox}} in and click the big, blue Publish button, which will create your sandbox page and add a header, stating that this is your sandbox.
That page will always be your "main" sandbox, but can also create additional pages in your userspace:
1. Edit your user page and type the following: [[User:You/Name]]. Be sure to exchange "You" for your username, which is what will make it be a subpage of your own userpage and replace "Name" with whatever you want to call the new page.
2. Click Publish to save your edits and to take you back to your user page. The link will be red, which means that the page does not exist yet.
3. Click on the link, and it will bring up a screen that says "Wikipedia does not have a user page with this exact name."
4. Type something in the Edit box and click Publish. This will create the page, and make it available online.
5. Please be aware that all pages in your userspace are subject to our userpage policy and are solely for doing work related to Wikipedia. The P:COPYVIO and WP:BLP policies apply everywhere in Wikipedia, including your userspace.

Commons

Introduction

Join one of the largest photo and multimedia communities in the world. Wikimedia Commons is not only the image repository for Wikipedia, but an independent project that seeks to document the world with photos, videos and recordings.

Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, but you do not need to belong to one of those projects to use media hosted here. The repository is created and maintained not by paid archivists, but by volunteers. The scope of Commons is set out on the project scope pages. You can improve Wikimedia Commons most if you contribute what you can do best. If you're a good photographer, don't hesitate to contribute your valuable images. If you're a good designer, look which diagrams and animations are badly needed.

In order to be able to upload files on Wikimedia Commons, you need to be logged in. You can register at the "Log in / create account" link in the upper right corner and enter a user name that will be used at all of your uploads/edits on images and texts. However if you just want to edit pages you don't need to be logged in (although it is encouraged). If you have taken advantage of unified login, then you are already signed up at Commons.

Sign up

Before contributing in commons, you have to create an account from here.

Upload in commons

Go to the link and follow the instructions step by step to upload media in commons. Before contributing, review the article to understand which kind of media can be upload in commons. Here is a useful article about uploading video.

License

Read the article to get an overview about license. Here are some basic license details.

"Own work, attribution required, copyleft" ({{CC BY-SA 4.0}})

This selection requires that the author of the media be credited for the work and any derivative works to be licensed similarly. This is the recommended choice, as it makes using your media files very easy while still allowing you to keep some rights to the work.

"Own work, attribution required" ({{CC BY 4.0}})

Another multi-license, this option requires attribution and/or releasing derivative works under similar licenses.

"Own work, public domain" ({{CC0}})

With this choice, you grant everyone the permission to use your media for whatever purpose they see fit. People don't even have to credit you. Once within the public domain, your image cannot be relicensed later on. Other free licenses allow you to retain at least some of your rights.

These licenses were created by Creative Commons, who created a group of modular licenses which can be mixed in many variations. All published versions of the two licenses are accepted. As of 2015, the 4.0 version is the most recently released one; the 2.0 version is often used for uploads from Flickr since it is the only version available there. Files only available under licenses containing "Noncommercial" and/or "NoDerivatives" are unfree and therefore not accepted.

Quality and description

Please submit images that are as large as possible and do not “downsize for the web”. Wikimedia Commons is a media repository that values high resolution images for many purposes including print. Images below 5 megapixels are less likely to be considered for a prize as they lack usability at larger sizes, especially in print. There are some technical terms about media. To get the whole overview read this article.

Generally speaking, image quality and resolution should be as high as possible so images can be used in high-quality printouts, for example. MediaWiki, the server-side wiki software behind Wikimedia projects, can scale images in most formats on the fly as needed and storage space is not restricted, so concerns about download time and size should not keep you from uploading the highest resolution file available.

Format: For photographs, use JPEG (file extension .jpg or .jpeg). While TIFF offers higher quality, these files tend to be rather large, especially when they are not compressed.

Reuse

All media files on Wikimedia Commons can be used by anyone, including commercially and each media file has information about which license it uses. The most common licenses used are created by Creative Commons which require the author to be credited. Learn more about Reusing content Here.

Necessary Links

Basic Upload

Basic upload form, is the original upload interface. It is still useful if uploading files that do not use Information template, like files that use Artwork, Photograph, Art photo or Book templates.

Upload wizard

The default tool, accessible from the "Upload file" link in the left menu. Supports fields prefilling.

Community portal

Image guidelines

These image guidelines are used by the Featured Picture/Quality Image projects to select featured pictures and quality images. The Valued Image project uses other criteria.

Village pump

Ask questions about features, problems you may have, or policy. Similar pages are available in several other languages.

Graphic Lab

A place where you can request wikigraphists to improve, clean up, or color your images. We also have a place for videos and sounds.

Photography critiques

A place where you can get feedback on your photography.

Help desk

Anyone, from newbie to experienced, can ask a question here. Questions will be replied to here as well. Any answers you receive are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them.

Bots

Useful bots that you can request services from.

Software

This is a selection of programs designed to aid in media (graphics and audio) manipulation, as recommended by the Wikigraphists and Graphics Labs. These programs are considered very useful tools for the tasks of retouching, editing and in creation of images, illustrations, maps, photographs and animations. They also aid in the recording, editing and conversion of audio files.

Changing E-mail preference

Email is disabled unless you specify and verify an email address with your account. This can be done while you are setting up your account for the first time, or at any time by adding one to your user preferences. Your preferences can be accessed from the top-right corner of any page on Wikipedia while you're logged into your account. If you are enabling the ability to send emails to other users, MediaWiki requires you to verify that the email address you provide actually belongs to you. It will do this by sending a confirmation email to the address that you provided. Simply access your email's inbox, open the confirmation message, and click on the link that is provided in the message. The link will navigate you to the Wikipedia site, which will mark your email address as 'confirmed' and inform you of the successful completion of the process. The confirmation link will expire seven days from the time that it was generated and sent to you. If you don't click on the link within that time, you will need to have another one resent. See mw:Help:Email confirmation for help and additional information.

Once you have confirmed an email address to your Wikipedia account, you may enable or disable the email ability. Follow these steps to do that:

Check the top right of your screen, and log in if you have not done so already
Go to your preferences
Scroll down to Email Options
Enter your email address and click "Allow other users to email me"
Click Save

You can also prevent users without the autoconfirmed permissions level from emailing you by un-ticking the "Allow emails from brand-new users" option. Email notification is a feature of the MediaWiki software on which Wikipedia runs. It allows editors who have registered an account and provided an email address to receive automatic email notifications when their user talk page or other watchlisted page is changed, and when they receive alerts generated by the in-wiki notification system.

Tips on photography

Go beyond the standard ‘tourist shots’

A single image of a building can give a general overview, but little else. Our aim on Wikimedia Commons is to collect as many educationally-interesting images as we can, not only to provide variety of choice for anyone who needs a general photo of the building, but also to capture differing aspects. So, if you see that your favourite listed building already has a high-quality image on Wikipedia that you can’t improve upon, don’t worry – concentrate on something different. For example, all of the following are of real interest to us:

Interior shots (where permission can be obtained)
Photographs from different angles or with different perspective
The building in its wider environment
Rear and side views (and preferably all of them)
Architectural details, from large scale to small detailing features
The outbuildings, if any
Views under different lighting conditions or at different times of the year
The building in use, for example during a fete, or open to visitors
Older images, provided that you personally took the photograph
Artistic images

Avoiding problems

Make sure the listed building or site actually features in your image. We don’t want photos that show only people, trees, flowers or movable articles, we want images that illustrate the actual building itself or a part of it.

If you are a beginner, check out our guides to taking better pictures.
Please be considerate to your fellow photographers, and to others. Some of the buildings to be photographed may be private residences. Please be especially respectful in these cases – do not continue to take photographs if asked to stop by the occupier.
If you are photographing building interiors, stop if you are asked to do so. Some places prohibit interior photography, but in others you may be allowed to continue if you ask for permission.
Do not trespass on private property (it is perfectly legal, though, to take photographs of a privately-owned building while standing in a public place such as the street).
Try to avoid taking photographs in which identifiable people appear prominently. You may not be able to avoid people entirely, for examples at tourist attractions, and where you have to you can include crowds or groups of people provided they are not a main part of your image.
Where possible avoid photographing vehicles, and particularly vehicle numberplates.

Copyright issues

Please do not upload photographs of posters, noticeboards, signs, modern murals, or anything else having text or two-dimensional images that might be copyright-protected. That applies even to text or images that are in a public place and that everyone else is taking pictures of. Ancient wall paintings in churches are fine, as are photos of stained glass windows of any date.

Museum photography

Museum photography involves producing photographic reproductions of objects on display in museums: utilitarian objects, 2D or 3D works of art. This is of capital importance for enriching Wikimedia projects, but involves difficulties of a technical, legal and psychological nature. Learn more about Museum photography here.

Concert photography

Concert photography involves taking photographs of "noisy" events such as rock concerts or political rallies, in which the sound of cameras shooting is not a problem.

Other events such as classical music concerts, dance shows or theatre, are similar in terms of lighting and composition, but the noise of the camera will not be tolerated there. Learn more about Concert photography here.

Tools

Find some tools from this pages.

List of tools
Name	Link
Magnus' tools on wmflabs	https://magnustools.toolforge.org/
Apps Gallery	https://apps-gallery.toolforge.org/
Toolhub	https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/
Commons Tools	https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Tools
Hay's tools	https://hay.toolforge.org/directory/
Toolforge	https://admin.toolforge.org/tools
GLAM-Wiki	https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Resources/Tools

Crop tools

CropTool is a MediaWiki tool for cropping images at Wikimedia Commons and other Wikimedia sites. It supports JPEG, PNG, TIFF and (animated) GIF files,

Quick Catagories

QuickCategories is a tool to add and remove categories from pages in batches.

FIST

WikiData Free Image Search Tool (WDFIST) allows you to easily add images to Wikidata items that lack one.

GLAMorous

Cat-a-lot

Cat-a-lot is a JavaScript gadget that helps with moving, removing and adding files (or subcategories) between, from and to categories.

Unused images

Find files in a Commons category tree not used on Wikipedia Project Korikath

Wikishootme

WikiShootMe is a tool to show Wikidata items, Wikipedia articles, and Commons images with coordinates, all on the same map.

GDrive to Commons Uploader

Upload your photos from Google Drive to Wikimedia Commons!

If you upload images with this tool, The Metadata won't be uploaded automatically.

Organizing Photo walk

Planning

Executing

Uploading