Wikimedia

The current, editable version of this book is available in Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection, at
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimedia

Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Contributing to this book

The content of this page is a proposal for the local Manual of Style of this book.

Book structure

Keep the book structure "flat" (i.e., no subchapters) for easy reading and linking.
Use proper book title naming (i.e., Wikimedia/Subpage Name, not Wikimedia/Subpage name (administrative pages like this one being a notable exception).
No transcluded categories (if templates are used, don't include categories, so that the book's category structure can be kept as simple as possible).

General MOS

This is a wikibook, so it should be worked on in the spirit of all wikibooks. Wikipedians should resist the urge to link every term or phrase, because wikibooks really just doesn't work that way. (If you feel you absolutely must link terms used here, use the [[w:term to be linked|]] format (don't forget the pipe at the end, which makes the "w:" disappear... this will be discussed further in chapter on the wikibooks MOS).

Sections on particular Wikimedia projects

"History" sections should start at the beginning, but need not be kept "up to the minute" (this is a book, not a newspaper).
"Culture" sections should be as NPOV as possible, pointing out both the strengths and weaknesses of the communities built around each project.
"MOS" sections (which need a better name) are about the policies and guidelines of each project. It should include the policies, how they evolved, why they were adopted, and why they are important. Remember that policy changes should not be discussed here, as this is just a book about Wikimedia, and shouldn't be mistaken for an administrative page.

What is Wikimedia?

Wikimedia is a not-for-profit organisation that owns some of the largest wikis on the internet, the most famous of which is Wikipedia. Wikimedia's goal is to deliver free information to every single person in the world. There are 16 wikis maintained by Wikimedia, each covering numerous languages, either via multi-lingual applications (Meta, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata), or separate webservers (Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wiki source, Wikiversity, Wiktionary). This book is about the foundation as a whole, and the wikis it maintains.

Wikimedia is also used a general term to either refer to specific technical platforms, applications, user projects, (yearly) campaigns or conferences, national chapters, or user groups.

The general software is called MediaWiki.

How to Use Wikis

To do:
Rename this page to something else and reuse this name to discuss how to use wikis.

Wiki culture

Each Wikimedia project has its own culture consisting of values which are commonly shared across Wikimedia and also some which have evolved which are specific to that particular project. These variances may be attributable to the different purposes, such as the distinction between a wiki-dictionary as opposed to a wiki-university, the latter emphasizing creativity whereas the former may emphasize accuracy.

Other differences may be attributable to differences between linguistic communities or peculiar accidents in the history of a particular project, each of which consists of individuals with different perspectives. Precedent in wiki project arbitration of disputes may differ in different projects, which might thereby have diametrically opposed policies. In most cases, however, there are broad similarities in wikimedia culture and etiquette, and the use thereof.

Editing

Wikimedia projects use the wikitext markup language which is easy to learn. Edits are subject to modification or deletion by other editors. Each edit provides a comment line which aggregates to a separate page. This comment line typically provides an opportunity to provide a brief characterization or justification of the edit.

Basic Markup Language

MediaWiki's markup system may sound daunting and complex at first glance, but it's not nearly as hard as it seems! First, let's start with "bold", all you do is wrap the text you want to be bold in '''. For example: if I wanted to make the word "Cat" bold, I would type '''Cat'''. It would produce this result: Cat. To put text in italics, you'd do the same but in two ''s. Example: ''cat'' would produce the result cat.

Next, linking. To link to another article, you would wrap the article name in square brackets. For example, to link to the page History, you would type [[History]]. That would produce the result History. To link to an external link, you would set it out like this [URL Text]. For example, if one types [http://www.google.co.uk Google], the system would produce the result Google. It's that simple.

The next important thing is templates. To transclude a template, one would type (let's take the template Lorem ipsum for example) {{Lorem ipsum}}. However, some templates require that you determine variables. To determine variable X on template Y one would type {{X|Y=Test}}. This is especially useful in infoboxes that rely on the information you enter. To substitute a template for its code (only recommended for warnings, and similar circumstances), you simply add the subst: prefix. Finally, categorisation. To add a page to a category you simply type [[Category:Category name]]. This code would add the page to category Category name.

That's it for the basics of Wikipedia markup!

Images

Images are a key part of illustration in Wikimedia wikis. Most images are uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons, but some are uploaded to the site itself (mostly CD/DVD/game covers for copyright reasons). The Wikimedia Commons, the main upload centre for images, is meant to be used exclusively for content under a free license, including Content in the public domain, content under compatible free licenses, and content you created yourself and consent to release under a free license. To insert a photo for commons, you have to link it. I am going to use the example of a flower.

[[File:Flower.png|thumb|left|Caption]]

This code produces this result:

Templates

Templates are automatically generated text boxes which pipe user-entered data in a nice format which may also include a small graphic element. By typing a shortcut an editor can create a prefabricated presentation which permits a better user experience for viewers (end-users) who are not editing.

Templates in Wikimedia belong in the Template namespace. In a page, a template is surrounded by braces, such as {{Example}}. The need to type in {{Template:Example}} is negated, because the braces defaults to the Template namespace unless specified.

Templates can be displayed in two ways. You can either transclude them or substitute them. Normally, a template is transcluded, which shows the version on the original page. If the source page is updated, the template is updated. Substitution copies over the source code of a page as it is. Instead of viewing a page with the parameters specified, it directly pastes the code for the template into the page. The substituted code does not change if the source page changes.

To specify parameters in a template, you use the symbol |. This separates the template name/another parameter from the current parameter. Normally, you have to name the given parameter. For example, if {{Example}} requires a name, then you will have to specify a name by using a parameter, such as {{Example|name=A name}}. If no name is specified, then {{Example|A name}} is the same as {{Example|1=A name}}.

What are namespaces?

Namespaces are a system of categorization of content using the MediaWiki software. It clusters together similar content. For instance, every wiki has a "user" namespace that consists of pages about users, talk pages to contact users, and other materials generated by users to help them in their work, such as drafts. The user namespace, like most other namespaces, is an identifying word followed by a colon--User:.

The one namespace that doesn't have an identifying word is the "main" namespace, where the word is absent and the colon is optional. In Wikipedia, this main namespace is reserved for articles. In Wikibooks, for books.

There are many namespaces, which differ according to which project you are using in the Wikimedia universe.

Administrators

Most Wikimedia wikis have a group of trusted users called administrators (or sysops). They are normally appointed following a community discussion were users present arguments in favour and arguments against appointing the user. These discussions typically last a week. These discussions are closed by bureaucrats, a higher role in the community (as the administrator right can only be granted by bureaucrats and staff). Once the right is granted, the user will receive advanced rights, including the right to delete pages, protect pages, view/edit abusefilters, block users and grant and revoke basic rights such as reviewer, rollback and patroller.

Bureaucrats

Bureaucrats are administrators that have access to several higher functions. Until recently, bureaucrats could locally rename users. This right was revoked in favour of Global Renamers. Now only Stewards and Global Renamers can rename users. Now, a bureaucrat's core right is to grant and revoke the administrator right, and grant the bureaucrat right. They cannot make users CheckUsers or Oversighters, however, that has to be done by stewards.

Oversighters

Oversighters have the ability to hide revisions from both the public's view, and the view of regular administrators. This only occurs in special cases, however, such as personal information being given on a userpage. Other cases are normally handled by normal administrators. As this involves handling personal information, Wikimedia requires proof that the user is at least 18 years old.

CheckUsers

CheckUsers have the ability to "check" a user. This consists of two functions: Listing all IPs used by a user, and listing all users used by an IP. This is essential when administrators are investigating cases of sockpuppetry. As this involves handling personal information, Wikimedia requires proof that the user is at least 18 years old.

New wikis

New wikis (ones that have just been exported from The Incubator) generally don't have local administrators. Normally, it's preferable if an administrator is appointed as soon as possible via community discussion. In the meantime, a steward can fulfill the role of a Bureaucrat or Administrator.

User Rights

Different Wikimedia wikis have different user rights. User rights are flags given to a user account, that let them perform certain actions. Some of them are listed below, with a brief description of each.

Autoconfirmed : A right automatically attained after 10 edits on the wiki. This right allows users to edit semi-protected pages, and perform certain advanced actions, such as using some gadgets.
Autopatroller: A right that automatically marks the user's edits as patrolled.
Patroller: Patrollers can mark edits and pages as patrolled, so other patrollers don't have to check it. Once an edit is patrolled, other patrollers will assume the edit was constructive (or was unconstructive, and was reverted by you).
Rollbacker : Rollbackers can undo multiple edits at once. This tool is especially useful for anti-vandalism cases.
Reviewer: A right introduced on some wikis which allows users to approve edits for the public to view. Anyone can revert these edits, however.
File mover: A right that allows the user to move files. Only active on some wikis.
Template editor: A right that allows the user to edit protected templates. Only active on some wikis.
IP block exempt: Allows the user to avoid IP bans.

Administrative

Administrator: Unlocks many administrative functions, such as protection, deletion, revision deletion, blocking etc. This right automatically grants all rights listed above, except IP block exempt, which has to be granted separately. Basic rights to Special:UserRights have been given.
Bureaucrat: Allows the user to use the full installation of Special:UserRights, allowing the user to grant and revoke bot and administrator rights. Until the feature was revoked in 2014, Bureaucrats could rename users locally.
Oversight: Allows the user to hide revisions from the public and admins. This should only be used in exceptional circumstances. WMF requires that Oversighters should be over 18 years old.
CheckUser: Allows the user to list all IPs that have been used by a user, and vice versa. WMF requires that CheckUsers should be over 18 years old.

Protection

By default, most Wikimedia pages can be edited by anyone, with or without an account. Some Wikimedia wikis are more restricted than others, but this is the standard approach. Wikimedia is based on the principle that anyone can edit.

However, protection does exist to prevent changing of certain pages or by certain people as necessary. For example, pages which have legal meaning on a project may be protected permanently to prevent errors being introduced. Some pages that are subject to vandalism may be fully protected to prevent changes by anyone except the most trusted users or partially protected to prevent unregistered or new user accounts from changing them. Pages that are fully protected can only be edited by users that have "sysop" or "administrator" rights or above. Pages that are partially protected are generally editable by logged-in users or by users who have had registered accounts that meet a certain participation threshold over a specific number of days.

The Wikis of Wikimedia, and What Goes Where

Wikipedia - Hosts original encyclopedic content. This is a place to put informational articles and informative lists.
Wiktionary - Hosts word definitions. This is the place to put definitions of words, and thesaurus entries.
Wikiquote - Hosts quotes. This is place to compile quotes related to an event or person.
Wikibooks (What you're reading right now) - Hosts informative text books and informational books. It also hosts cookbooks and a mini-Wikipedia for kids, Wikijunior.
Wikisource - Hosts free texts, which must obide with copyright laws.
Wikinews - Hosts news. This is the place to put original, or derived news reports.
Wikiversity - Hosts free educational material for schools and universities.
Wikispecies - Hosts detailed taxonomy information.
MediaWiki - Hosts documentation of the MediaWiki software, which is used by all the above wikis and hundreds more. It is currently being maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikimedia Commons - Hosts free images for use on all other Wikimedia Projects. Feel free to post images that you have taken yourself here, or that are free, and if you have gained permission from the content creator.
Wikidata - The only Wikimedia wiki to use Wikibase. The primary purpouse of this is to provide structured data, and to connect all Wikimedia projects together without the need for Interwiki links.
Wikivoyage - Hosts free travel guide information.
Meta-Wiki - Used for co-ordination within the Wikimedia network. This is the place to propose new languages of projects and to propose new projects.
Wikimedia Incubator - A place to develop projects in new languages (where the corresponding wiki does not exist), before they are proposed at Meta.
Wikimedia Labs - Allows users to host tools that are used to edit Wikimedia project, run automated programs, or present information based on the content of a Wikimedia project.
Wikimedia Foundation - A restricted wiki that hosts Wikimedia's official policies and terms of service.

External links

Wikimedia Incubator

The logo of Wikimedia Incubator.

Wikimedia Incubator is where new languages of Wikimedia projects are developed before being deployed for general use.

Wikimedia Incubator, inaugurated on June 2, 2006, stands as a remarkable digital crucible within the expansive landscape of the Wikimedia Foundation's endeavors. This wiki-based platform, orchestrated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, shares its virtual home with celebrated projects like Wikipedia, and yet, it carves out a distinctive niche of its own. The Incubator, as its name suggests, serves as the nurturing ground for aspiring language editions of Wikimedia projects, a hallowed space where linguistic diversity finds expression, and cultures take root in the global digital encyclopedia. It is a testament to the Wikimedia Foundation's commitment to inclusivity and the preservation of linguistic heritage that the Incubator was conceived and continues to thrive.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia "created and edited" by volunteers around the world and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Project

History

Wikipedia was started in January 2001. Several software changes were made before converting to today's MediaWiki. The community grew rapidly until 2007, when it started to decline.

Vision

Jimmy Wales,
founder of Wikipedia.
Larry Sanger,
co-founder of Wikipedia.

Impact

Controversy

One of the main controversies is that anyone can edit it, thus increasing the chance for factual errors.

Future Projects

Future projects

((/ Ideals/))
((/Criticism/))

Usage

Getting Started

Usage

((/Getting started/))

The History of Wikipedia

Before Wikipedia — Jimbo Wales, Nupedia and other artifacts
The Early Days
Developments
When Wikipedia Became Popular
Wikipedia Today
Wikipedia Tomorrow

The Culture of Wikipedia

Wiktionary

Wiktionary is a multilingual free online dictionary. Wiktionary runs on the same software as Wikipedia, and is essentially a sister project. It is currently owned by the Wikimedia Foundation. The project was started in 2002 following a proposal by Daniel Alston. It was originally located at wiktionary.wikipedia.org, but was later moved to its current domain (http://www.wiktionary.org/). It currently has over 3 million entries in English alone and in total more than 7 million content pages.

Wikibooks

The Wikibooks logo.

Wikibooks (previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks) is a Wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation for the creation of free content textbooks and annotated texts that anyone can edit.

In April 2010, Alexa ranked wikibooks.org as the 2,462nd most popular web site in the world. Compete.com estimates that Wikibooks had 576,838 unique visitors, and Quantcast estimates 646,500 unique visitors, from the United States in that month.^[1]^[2]

History

Wikibooks was launched on July 10, 2003, in response to a request made by Wikipedia contributor Karl Wick for a project to host and build free textbooks on subjects such as organic chemistry and physics. Two major sub-projects, Wikijunior and Wikiversity, were created within Wikibooks before its official policy was later changed so that future incubator type projects are started according to the Wikimedia Foundation's new project policy. In August 2006, Wikiversity became an independent Wikimedia Foundation project.

Wikijunior

Wikijunior is a subproject of Wikibooks that specializes in books for children. The project consists of both a magazine and a website, and is currently being developed in English, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. It is funded by a grant from the Beck Foundation.

Book content

While some books are original, others began as text copied over from other sources of free content textbooks found on the Internet. All of the site's content is covered by a Creative Commons license. This means that, as with its sister project, Wikipedia, contributions remain copyrighted to their creators, while the copyleft licensing ensures that the content will always remain freely distributable and reproducible.

Wikibooks differs from Wikimedia/Wikisource in that content on Wikibooks is expected to be significantly changed by participants. Raw source documents such as the original text of Shakespearean plays are hosted on Wikisource instead.

The project is working towards completion of textbooks on numerous subjects, which founders hope will be followed by mainstream adoption and use of textbooks developed and housed there.

References

↑ "Site Profile for wikibooks.org", compete, retrieved June 15, 2010
↑ "wikibooks.org", Quantcast, retrieved June 15, 2010

Internet links

The History of Wikibooks

passing references to the history of Wikibooks. These are going to eventually be added into this history, but represent original source material.
Growing Wikibooks contains at least some of the early attempts to try and figure out what Wikibooks was all about.

Wikipedia and Textbooks

On June 6th 2003, the Wikipedia page "Organic Textbook" was added to the votes for deletion page on Wikipedia.^[1]

The start of a new wiki

Direction lost and rebirth

Upheaval and redefinition

Wikinews

The current Wikinews logo

Wikinews is a multilingual free news source. It uses the same software as Wikipedia (MediaWiki). It is currently owned by the Wikimedia Foundation. The project was proposed by an anonymous user in 2003. The English Wikinews currently has more than 20,700 articles in English and 76,000 articles in Serbian.

Wikiquote

The Wikiquote logo

Wikiquote is a project of Wikimedia with many quotes. Wikiquote runs on the same software as Wikipedia, and is essentially a sister project. It is currently owned by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikiquote is a collection of references or quotations from well-known people, movies, books, etc.

Wikivoyage

The Wikivoyage logo

Wikivoyage is a wiki dedicated to developing free travel guides.

The History of Wikivoyage

The early history of Wikivoyage is quite complex. Wikivoyage joined Wikimedia in early 2013.

The Culture of Wikivoyage

In part because of it's long operational stint prior to becoming a Wikimedia project, Wikivoyage culture differs significantly from other Wikimedia projects. The style of writing on Wikivoyage tends to be more relaxed and direct then on other Wikimedia projects.

Wikiversity

Wikiversity hosts educational materials.

Wikiversity also includes several peer reviewed journals.

Wikisource

Wikisource is an online library of free content textual sources, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its aims are to harbour all forms of free text, in many languages. It also provides translation efforts to this end.

Library contents

Wikisource collects and stores in digital format previously published texts, including novels, non-fiction works, letters, speeches, constitutional and historical documents, laws and a range of other documents. All texts collected are either free of copyright or released under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. Texts in all languages are welcome, as are translations.

Wikisource does not host "vanity press" books or documents produced by its contributors.^{[citation needed]}

Early history

Wikisource had an eventful early history (2003–2005) that included several changes of name and location (URL), and the move to language subdomains in 2005.

The project was originally called Project Sourceberg during its planning stages (a play on words for Project Gutenberg). It then began its activity at a mistaken location, when source texts were placed at ps.wikipedia.org. The contributors understood "PS" to mean either "primary sources"^[2] or Project Sourceberg, and they erroneously took over the subdomain of the Pashto language's Wikipedia.^{[citation needed]}

Project Sourceberg started officially when it received its own temporary URL on November 24, 2003 (sources.wikipedia.org),^[3] with all texts and discussions moved there from ps.wikipedia.org. A vote on the project's name changed it to Wikisource on December 6, 2003. Despite the change in name, the project did not move to its permanent URL (at http://wikisource.org) until July 23, 2004.^[4]

Within two weeks of the project's official start (at sources.wikipedia.org), over 1000 pages had been created, with approximately 200 of these being designated as actual articles. On January 4, 2004, Wikisource welcomed its 100th registered user. In early July, 2004 the number of articles exceeded 2400, and more than 500 users had registered.

On April 30, 2005, there were 2667 registered users (including 18 administrators) and almost 19,000 articles. The project passed its 96,000th edit that same day.

Language subdomains

A separate Hebrew version of Wikisource was created in August 2004. The need for a language-specific Hebrew website derived from the difficulty of typing and editing Hebrew texts in a left-to-right environment (Hebrew is written right-to-left). In the ensuing months, contributors in other languages including German requested their own wikis, but a December vote on the creation of separate language domains was inconclusive. Finally, a second vote that ended May 12, 2005, supported the adoption of separate language subdomains at Wikisource by a large margin, allowing each language to host its texts on its own wiki.

An initial wave of 14 languages was set up by Brion Vibber on August 23, 2005.^[5] The new languages did not include English, but the code en: was temporarily set to redirect to the main website (wikisource.org).

At this point the Wikisource community, through a mass project of manually sorting thousands of pages and categories by language, prepared for a second wave of page imports to local wikis. On September 11, 2005, the wikisource.org wiki was reconfigured to enable the English version], along with 8 other languages that were created early that morning and late the night before.^[6]

Three more languages were created on March 29, 2006,^[7] and then another large wave of 14 language domains was created on June 2, 2006.^[8] Currently, there are individual subdomains for Wikisources in more than 50 languages,^[9] besides the additional languages hosted at wikisource.org, which serves as an incubator or a home for languages without their own subdomains (31 languages are currently hosted locally)

wikisource.org

During the move to language subdomains, the community requested that the main wikisource.org website remain a functioning wiki, in order to serve three purposes:

To be a multilingual coordination site for the entire Wikisource project in all languages. In practice, use of the website for multilingual coordination has not been heavy since the conversion to language domains. Nevertheless, there is some policy activity at the Scriptorium, and multilingual updates for news and language milestones at pages such as Wikisource:2007.
To be a home for texts in languages without their own subdomains, each with its own local main page for self-organization. As a language incubator, the wiki currently provides a home for over 30 languages that do not presently have their own language subdomains. Some of these are very active, and have built libraries with hundreds of texts, such as Esperanto and Volapuk, and one with thousands (Hindi).
To provide direct, ongoing support by a local wiki community for a dynamic multilingual portal at its Main Page, for users who go to http://wikisource.org. The current Main Page portal was created on August 26, 2005, by ThomasV, who based it upon the Wikipedia portal.

The idea of a project-specific coordination wiki, first realized at Wikisource, also took hold in another Wikimedia project, namely at Wikiversity's Beta Wiki. Like wikisource.org, it serves Wikiversity coordination in all languages, and as a language incubator. But unlike Wikisource, its Main Page does not serve as its multilingual portal^[10] (which is not a wiki page).

Logo and slogan

Since Wikisource was initially called "Project Sourceberg", its first logo was a picture of an iceberg. Two votes conducted to choose a successor were inconclusive, and the original logo remained until 2006. Finally, for both legal and technical reasons – because the picture's license was inappropriate for a Wikimedia Foundation logo and because a photo cannot scale properly – a stylized vector iceberg inspired by the original picture was mandated to serve as the project's logo.

The first prominent use of Wikisource's slogan — The Free Library — was at the project's multilingual portal, when it was redesigned based upon the Wikipedia portal on August 27, 2005, (historical version).^[11] As in the Wikipedia portal the Wikisource slogan appears around the logo in the project's ten largest languages.

Clicking on the portal's central images (the iceberg logo in the center and the "Wikisource" heading at the top of the page) links to a list of translations for Wikisource and The Free Library in 60 languages.

Subsequent milestones

On November 27, 2005, the English Wikisource passed 20,000 text-units in its third month of existence, already holding more texts than did the entire project in April (before the move to language subdomains).

On February 14, 2008, the English Wikisource passed 100,000 text-units.^[12]

Special projects

English:

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
Easton's Bible Dictionary
The New Student's Reference Work (proofreading of scanned texts)
Annotated books:
- The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde
- Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

German:

All Projects will be proofread by scanned texts.

References

↑ "Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/archive May 2004". Wikipedia. 10 June 2003. Retrieved 25 July 2021.
↑ Nostalgia.wikipedia.org
↑ Sources.wikipedia.org
↑ Wikisource.org
↑ Server admin log for August 23, 2005; a fifteenth language (sr:) was created on August 25 (above).
↑ See the Server admin log for September 11, 2005, at 01:20 and below (September 10) at 22:49.
↑ Server admin log for March 29
↑ Server admin log for June 2, 2006
↑ See the organized lists at Wikisource's Multilingual Portal and Meta's numbered, sortable list of Wikisources by size.
↑ Wikiversity.org
↑ Wikisource.org
↑ Wikisource:Wikisource:Scriptorium#100K

The History of Wikisource

Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content source materials. The project was born as an idea in 2001 following a disagreement about how to incorporate primary source materials into Wikipedia. In order to keep Wikipedia a tertiary source, the new "Project Sourceberg" was proposed. With the title meant primarily as a pun on the popular library archive site of public domain materials Project Gutenberg, it also carried the implication of "primary source" in its initials. Unlike the more inclusive Project Gutenberg, it had a focus on material of historical and cultural interest. It finally debuted on November 24, 2003, but in less than a month changed its name to Wikisource, following a vote that closed on December 6th. In March 2004, there was a proposal to change the name again, to Wikimedia Commons, and to fold into it other public-domain media source material, including pictures and artistic artifacts. Despite the proposal, Wikisource remained a distinct project. As of 2020, it is available in 70 language editions.

Wikispecies

Wikispecies logo

Wikispecies is a wiki that intents to be a directory of all species.

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons logo.

Wikimedia Commons (or simply Commons) is an online repository of free-use images, sounds, other media and JSON files.

Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used across all Wikimedia projects in all languages, including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikivoyage, Wikispecies, Wikisource, and Wikinews, or downloaded for offsite use.

Internet links

The History of Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons, more commonly called Commons, is a Wikimedia project created to host free-use images, sounds, and other media. As of December 2020, the project contained over 67 million free media files. These files are easily usable across Wikimedia projects and are free for reuse beyond, as long as the licensing terms described on each file's page is met.

The project was originally proposed in March 2004 as an expansion of the early Wikimedia "Project Sourceberg." Project Sourceberg was meant to house primary evidence and original source texts, and in 2004 a proposal was made on the Wikimedia mailing list "wikipedia-l" to retitle it to Wikimedia Commons to include images, public domain texts, and artistic works. While the proposal did not pass as originally posited, Wikimedia Commons was opened on September 7, 2004 to hold images and other media files that could be directly embedded in other Wikimedia projects. Project Sourceberg, with its public domain texts, became Wikisource.

Wikimedia Cloud Services

Wikimedia Cloud Services is a tool hosting domain that hosts thousands of tools that are used to access or edit Wikipedia in different ways, whether this be a complex edit counter, a Wikidata Game, or simply a piece of software that allows a bot to run. The current domain is https://wmflabs.org/. Before the Wikimedia Cloud Services were created, tools were hosted on a domain called Toolserver. But all tools have been migrated to the Wikimedia Cloud before December 2014, when the Toolserver has been completely decommissioned.

Wikidata

Wikidata logo

Wikidata is a wikimedia project intended to manage structured, computer readable data, about items.

One notable use of Wikidata items is the linking of articles across languages in a centralized way.

How Wikidata works

Wikidata is a very complex website, and will require a page in this book to explain. Wikidata primarily consists of two things: items and properties. Items are prefixed with a Q, whereas properties are prefixed with a P. There are other pages on the wiki of course, but these are the basics. An item in itself is very complex, and may appear disorientating to a new member of the community.

Once a new item is created, it will be created with a Q prefix, and a number. This is basically the what number item it is, for example: Q10 is the tenth item, Q123 is the one-hundred-and-twenty-third item and so on and so forth. There are around 10,000,000 items available on Wikidata. The first part of an item is the label, basically the title of the item. There is one label for every language, not one for all languages.

Second is the description, describing the item. There is again one description per language. The third part is the list of aliases. There can be an unlimited amount of aliases per language, unlike labels and descriptions. The fourth part is the properties, where properties are defined. This can be date of birth, date of death, occupation, given name etc. There are many properties that can be defined, but not all properties apply to all items.

The fifth, and arguably the most important part of an item is the interwiki links. These link Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wikivoyage and Wikisource pages to an item. Once a page is linked, a full list of different languages will appear down the sidebar of the desired article, allowing quick navigation between languages.

Properties are a lot less complex. They require a special right to create, this right can only be granted by administrators. Properties only consist of three parts, a label, a description, and a list of alternate aliases. That's all there is to it. Once created, these properties can be easily defined in any item. All properties defined can be referenced, but these do not have to be via URLs. The user can state that it has been imported from a Wikipedia, i.e. the English Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia etc.

MOS

The content of this page is a proposal for the local Manual of Style of this book.

Book structure

Keep the book structure "flat" (i.e., no subchapters) for easy reading and linking.
Use proper book title naming (i.e., Wikimedia/Subpage Name, not Wikimedia/Subpage name (administrative pages like this one being a notable exception).
No transcluded categories (if templates are used, don't include categories, so that the book's category structure can be kept as simple as possible).

General MOS

This is a wikibook, so it should be worked on in the spirit of all wikibooks. Wikipedians should resist the urge to link every term or phrase, because wikibooks really just doesn't work that way. (If you feel you absolutely must link terms used here, use the [[w:term to be linked|]] format (don't forget the pipe at the end, which makes the "w:" disappear... this will be discussed further in chapter on the wikibooks MOS).

Sections on particular Wikimedia projects

"History" sections should start at the beginning, but need not be kept "up to the minute" (this is a book, not a newspaper).
"Culture" sections should be as NPOV as possible, pointing out both the strengths and weaknesses of the communities built around each project.
"MOS" sections (which need a better name) are about the policies and guidelines of each project. It should include the policies, how they evolved, why they were adopted, and why they are important. Remember that policy changes should not be discussed here, as this is just a book about Wikimedia, and shouldn't be mistaken for an administrative page.

Adapted from MOS of "Wikipedia" a Wikibook conceived and outlined by the user Johnny B.

Wikibooks

The Wikibooks logo.

Wikibooks (previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks) is a Wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation for the creation of free content textbooks and annotated texts that anyone can edit.

In April 2010, Alexa ranked wikibooks.org as the 2,462nd most popular web site in the world. Compete.com estimates that Wikibooks had 576,838 unique visitors, and Quantcast estimates 646,500 unique visitors, from the United States in that month.^[1]^[2]

History

Wikibooks was launched on July 10, 2003, in response to a request made by Wikipedia contributor Karl Wick for a project to host and build free textbooks on subjects such as organic chemistry and physics. Two major sub-projects, Wikijunior and Wikiversity, were created within Wikibooks before its official policy was later changed so that future incubator type projects are started according to the Wikimedia Foundation's new project policy. In August 2006, Wikiversity became an independent Wikimedia Foundation project.

Wikijunior

Wikijunior is a subproject of Wikibooks that specializes in books for children. The project consists of both a magazine and a website, and is currently being developed in English, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. It is funded by a grant from the Beck Foundation.

Book content

While some books are original, others began as text copied over from other sources of free content textbooks found on the Internet. All of the site's content is covered by a Creative Commons license. This means that, as with its sister project, Wikipedia, contributions remain copyrighted to their creators, while the copyleft licensing ensures that the content will always remain freely distributable and reproducible.

Wikibooks differs from Wikimedia/Wikisource in that content on Wikibooks is expected to be significantly changed by participants. Raw source documents such as the original text of Shakespearean plays are hosted on Wikisource instead.

The project is working towards completion of textbooks on numerous subjects, which founders hope will be followed by mainstream adoption and use of textbooks developed and housed there.

References

↑ "Site Profile for wikibooks.org", compete, retrieved June 15, 2010
↑ "wikibooks.org", Quantcast, retrieved June 15, 2010

Internet links

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia "created and edited" by volunteers around the world and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation.