Training modules/dashboard/slides/12306-training-topics

Training topics

Community members at a regular editing event in Ghana, showing how uploads to Wikimedia Commons works. By focusing on skills most directly relevant to the topic of your event, participants learn what they need.

When running article writing events focused on writing Wikipedia articles, it is important to introduce new editors to:

• A high level overview of Wikipedia, including the 5 Pillars.
• The principles behind Notability and Verifiability.
  • These concepts can be hard to explain verbally, it might be useful to use the following video: on Sourcing and Verifiability.
  • It is also important to highlight that Wikipedia summarizes the sources it cites. Some new editors may not be familiar with best practices for avoiding plagiarism or accidental copyright violations.
• How to create a draft in User space or Draft space.
• Using Visual editor to add the following:
  • References using the “Cite” toolbar
  • Basic formatting and structure to an article, including bolding article titles, italics, etc.
• How to develop the structure for the type of article you expect attendees to be working with, such as biographies, buildings, or events.
  • The Wiki Education Foundation in North America has created subject-specific advice for different types of articles that can be found on Commons
  • If there is not a handout available for that article type, consider showing editors the structure of high quality articles in the relevant format, such as a Good Article, a Featured Article, or a B class article.
• The difference between Visual Editor and WikiText editor and how to switch between the two. Though most new editors do not show a preference for WikiText editor, it’s important to show folks how the WikiText editor works because they will have to interact with it eventually in talk pages or when fixing complex formatting on pages.

Creating handouts or tailored welcome documents with important links and a short introduction to wiki-text can help participants follow along. Examples of existing ones can be found on the Commons category for Wikipedia Reference cards.