User:Crtew/Mass Comm Tips
Traffic counter[edit]
Always think about your audience! You can use this stats reader to gather traffic numbers faster than digging through each article. Of course, this is no measure of what is important. Some articles are more important than popular.
Wikilinks[edit]
If you want to find out what article links to other articles, then you'll want to use this nifty tool! What links here?
Writing Articles for Keeps and not Articles for Deletion[edit]
Ultimately, you want to write the article so that it informs the public and adds to the general knowledge base. If you just focus on the events of a person's life in the most narrow sense, like a list of facts (which is what you should do in creating the initial infobox), without providing any of the context or communicating the significance of the person's life, then the knowledge base isn't improved. There are of course simple subject connections that are relevant to any life, such as geography, demographics, politics, crime rates, etc. Usually a journalist who is killed on account of his or her journalism is part of some specific and larger phenomenon, such as a war or revolution, international/regional or national problem, etc. Those connections need to be made through verified sources. Typically, you'll discover these in high profile reactions to the person's death. This also sharpens your focus (lead). You'll also find that this typically expands the wikilinks you use.
Start your article by gathering references. Then break down the person's life in terms of facts. Then sort data according to the sections of the article in the class template. Then you can move to appropriate tasks like making a map, adding wikilinks, or constructing a "works of journalism list," etc.
Still you can write a good article and face another person's nomination for deletion, known as Articles for Deletion. Here you have to be careful: Many Wikipedians seem to misinterpret policies about notability, such as WP:OneEvent (also known as WP:NOT#NEWS, WP:BLP1E, WP:WI1E, and WP:EVENT). It is commonly argued that a person who is notable for one event isn't significant or worthy of coverage and the article should be deleted. The Wikipedia policy, however, does not actually say that. Instead the policy discusses whether the focus should be on the "person" or on the "event". In some of these situations, it is highly appropriate to rename the article after "Death of ...", "Murder of ...", "Assassination of .." , "Killing of ..." (depending on the most accurate term) and its renaming improves the focus of the article. A useful indicator of importance has to do with the significance of coverage that a person receives in the media, known as WP:SIGCOV. The problem is that Western journalists seem to get more world press coverage than local journalists but more local journalists actually die as a result of their journalism but in lower profile situations. In these cases, it is best to look for significant coverage from that person's region and nation. Usually, you will distinguish between BLP (biography of a living person) in the case of WP:BLP1E and the dead, or WP:WI1E.
There are some situations where it is far better to focus on the event than on the individual journalist. If a journalist, for example, is killed or injured along with many others in a terrorism attack, then it makes more sense to focus on that attack, and the journalist would be one section in the article about the event. The same is true for situations where multiple journalists have been killed in one event, although if one journalist is well known it could be folded into this person's article or used to generate a new article (some judgment would be needed here that is harder to generalize). You can use "SIGCOV" about the event as is done with people to show notability.
A tool was constructed by User:Snottywong, called AfD Statistics Tool, for analyzing Wikipedians' voting records and their pattern of voting with or against the consensus/outcome in those deletion debates where participation has been registered. You can add "Crtew" in the username to see my own voting record and the outcomes of my debate participation. The caveat for me is that I don't tend to insert myself in too many AfD discussions (as it's not an interest of mine), but I normally search out journalists who are up for deletion and who are noteworthy for the journalism profession or for the safety and security project here yet the article stands in danger of being deleted. In several cases, I have saved articles from deletion by adding additional references or developing the article further. In these cases, I've found that most of those articles up for deletion didn't clearly state notability, lacked references to back up the subjects' importance, or poorly communicated the subject matter.
Wikipedia Tips & Tricks[edit]
The -ref- tag: Most high school students have some prior experience with MLA Style, but when they get to college, those new university students are suddenly exposed to more disciplines with their own style guides. My students are both learning about new styles and about how to use Wiki technology and code to develop the actual cite. I am developing links here to help them understand the technology better:
- Citation style examples
- All the citation templates you will need for different formats
- The "Citation needed" Template
- Templates that comment on source problems
- Citation tools
- How to fix bare link problems
Donating copyrighted materials
A process is outlined for photographs and texts.
Adding an image or photograph : Look at the finding images tutorial.
Many students have asked about adding an image or photograph to their encyclopedic articles. This is an excellent teaching moment! Freshmen are becoming aware of the difference between owned/copyrighted/"all rights reserved" and public domain/fair use/creative commons/"some rights reserved". According to Wikipedia policy, photos that carry a license that would "permit commercial reuse and derivative works" can be used in Wikipedia but should follow the owner's wishes (such as attribution). For further questions refer to Wikipedia's "Image use policy".
First attempt: The first place that students should check for available visuals is Wikimedia Commons, which is a sister site of the Wikipedia and is governed by the same policies of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedians upload media files for their articles there.
Second attempt: Try to take the photograph yourself or draw the image and then upload it Wikimedia Commons. In some cases, this will work, but in many it will be a stretch, especially if your entry is about a far away place where you might not have any access.
Third attempt: Let's say that didn't work. When I needed an image, I looked for a person who would have access to the subject. One day while looking at some YouTube video footage of my subject, I had an "aha moment." The person who made this video, I though, might be able to post a screen shot to Wikicommons. A few minutes later, I emailed the person and in less than 30 minutes, the photo was up. Not only one photo but two! I also made a new contact.
Before going on, try this tool: Fist
Fourth attempt: Government websites do provide photographs that are in the public domain, but make sure you look at the specific situation as not everything on a government website is public domain.
Check out these government websites:
Fifth attempt: The World Wide Web should be used carefully in this search because careless selection here can lead to copyright violations. However, it is possible to find content that is in the public domain and not on a government site as public domain.
You can use these useful websites for finding visual content but you have to keep in mind that the license must "permit commercial reuse and derivative works" or it must have a "free license" per Wikipedia's guidelines or that follows other general conditions for Public Domain:
If you use Google or Yahoo, search photographs using these filters:
- Find Creative Commons Images in Google Image Search
- Find Images to Use and Reuse with the New Creative Commons Filter
One more bit of advice: When in doubt, it is best to follow your intuition and DO NOT use the work. However, knowledge is always better! Use the following tools to research the origins of visuals:
Featured Article status
Signpost has a number of good articles about achieving the Featured Article status. A good place to start is a tutorial from somebody who has achieved this. This Signpost article provides insider insight from a number of editors who know what it takes to create the best articles.
Regular cleanup[edit]
Archiving talk pages Talk pages should be periodically archived using this simple procedure.
Deleting pages and housekeeping Some templates, typically from Speedy Deletion that I use from time to time when deleting pages I no longer need:
- Template:db-userreq to delete anything that falls within your own user space
- Template:Db-g2 to request deletion on a test page
- Template:Db-g6 to request deletion for housekeeping
- Template:Db-g7 to request deletion on the author's own work
- Template:db-g11 on blatant advertising/promotion
- Template:db-g12 on copyright violations
- Template:Uw-userpage