Wikipedia: The Missing Manual


Book Description

Want to be part of the largest group-writing project in human history? Learn how to contribute to Wikipedia, the user-generated online reference for the 21st century. Considered more popular than eBay, Microsoft.com, and Amazon.com, Wikipedia servers respond to approximately 30,000 requests per second, or about 2.5 billion per day. It's become the first point of reference for people the world over who need a fact fast. If you want to jump on board and add to the content, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual is your first-class ticket. Wikipedia has more than 9 million entries in 250 languages, over 2 million articles in the English language alone. Each one is written and edited by an ever-changing cast of volunteer editors. You can be one of them. With the tips in this book, you'll quickly learn how to get more out of -- and put more into -- this valuable online resource. Wikipedia: The Missing Manual gives you practical advice on creating articles and collaborating with fellow editors, improving existing articles, and working with the Wikipedia community to review new articles, mediate disputes, and maintain the site. Up to the challenge? This one-of-a-kind book includes: Basic editing techniques, including the right and wrong ways to edit Pinpoint advice about which types of articles do and do not belong on Wikipedia Ways to learn from other editors and communicate with them via the site's talk pages Tricks for using templates and timesaving automated editing tools Recommended procedures for fighting spam and vandalism Guidance on adding citations, links, and images to your articles Wikipedia depends on people just like you to help the site grow and maintain the highest quality. With Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, you get all the tools you need to be part of the crew.




Wikipedia @ 20


Book Description

Wikipedia's first twenty years: how what began as an experiment in collaboration became the world's most popular reference work. We have been looking things up in Wikipedia for twenty years. What began almost by accident--a wiki attached to an nascent online encyclopedia--has become the world's most popular reference work. Regarded at first as the scholarly equivalent of a Big Mac, Wikipedia is now known for its reliable sourcing and as a bastion of (mostly) reasoned interaction. How has Wikipedia, built on a model of radical collaboration, remained true to its original mission of "free access to the sum of all human knowledge" when other tech phenomena have devolved into advertising platforms? In this book, scholars, activists, and volunteers reflect on Wikipedia's first twenty years, revealing connections across disciplines and borders, languages and data, the professional and personal.




Wikipedia U


Book Description

Explores the battle between the top-down authority traditionally ascribed to experts and scholars and the bottom-up authority exemplified by Wikipedia. Since its launch in 2001, Wikipedia has been a lightning rod for debates about knowledge and traditional authority. It has come under particular scrutiny from publishers of print encyclopedias and college professors, who are skeptical about whether a crowd-sourced encyclopedia—in which most entries are subject to potentially endless reviewing and editing by anonymous collaborators whose credentials cannot be established—can ever truly be accurate or authoritative. In Wikipedia U, Thomas Leitch argues that the assumptions these critics make about accuracy and authority are themselves open to debate. After all, academics are expected both to consult the latest research and to return to the earliest sources in their field, each of which has its own authority. And when teachers encourage students to master information so that they can question it independently, their ultimate goal is to create a new generation of thinkers and makers whose authority will ultimately supplant their own. Wikipedia U offers vital new lessons about the nature of authority and the opportunities and challenges of Web 2.0. Leitch regards Wikipedia as an ideal instrument for probing the central assumptions behind liberal education, making it more than merely, as one of its severest critics has charged, “the encyclopedia game, played online.”




Introduction to Wikipedia


Book Description

Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia that provides knowledge and information on various topics. The website was launched in 2001 and is now one of the most popular sources of information on the web, with millions of articles written in multiple languages. Wikipedia is entirely written by volunteers worldwide who have a passion for sharing information, and it is constantly updated to keep up with the latest information and research. To ensure accuracy, Wikipedia has certain policies regarding the sourcing of information, which means only reliable sources can be used for content. This helps to avoid misinformation and ensures that the information is trustworthy. Additionally, Wikipedia's open contribution model allows anyone to add, edit or remove information, making it an ever-evolving source of knowledge and information. Overall, Wikipedia is an excellent resource for anyone who wants accurate information on diverse topics.




How Wikipedia Works


Book Description

Provides information on using and contributing to Wikipedia, covering such topics as evaluating the reliability of articles, editing existing articles, adding new articles, communiating with other users, and resolving content disputes.







The World Book Encyclopedia


Book Description

An encyclopedia designed especially to meet the needs of elementary, junior high, and senior high school students.




Oxford English Dictionary


Book Description

The Oxford English Dictionary is the internationally recognized authority on the evolution of the English language from 1150 to the present day. The Dictionary defines over 500,000 words, making it an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, pronunciation, and history of the English language. This new upgrade version of The Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM offers unparalleled access to the world's most important reference work for the English language. The text of this version has been augmented with the inclusion of the Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series (Volumes 1-3), published in 1993 and 1997, the Bibliography to the Second Edition, and other ancillary material. System requirements: PC with minimum 200 MHz Pentium-class processor; 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended); 16-speed CD-ROM drive (32-speed recommended); Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 200, or XP (Local administrator rights are required to install and open the OED for the first time on a PC running Windows NT 4 and to install and run the OED on Windows 2000 and XP); 1.1 GB hard disk space to run the OED from the CD-ROM and 1.7 GB to install the CD-ROM to the hard disk: SVGA monitor: 800 x 600 pixels: 16-bit (64k, high color) setting recommended. Please note: for the upgrade, installation requires the use of the OED CD-ROM v2.0.




Wikipedia, 3.5 million Articles & Counting


Book Description

Presents an introduction to Wikipedia, the world's largest electronic encyclopedia, describing its conception and development, the roles of its authors and editors, and its strengths and weaknesses as a source of reliable information.




Genre Analysis of Online Encyclopedias


Book Description

The book is the first complete discussion of the genre of online encyclopedias. The first part of the book, preceded by a theoretical introduction into the concept of webgenres, gives a detailed overview of the types of encyclopedic websites, presenting the characteristics of their content, form and functionality. The second part of the publication concerns Wikipedia--the most popular online encyclopedia. The presentation of the structure of the portal is followed by an in-depth discussion of Wikipedia discourse features, describing the most conspicuous properties of the stylistic layer of this encyclopedia. The value of the book is additionally enhanced by many illustrations reproducing the analyzed websites.