how Wikipedia Works/Printable version

**Note**

Ray-finned fish < Bony fish < Fish sorted by classification < Fish < Aquatic organisms < Water

Water < Inorganic compounds < Chemical compounds < Chemical substances < Chemistry

Chemistry < Physical sciences < Scientific disciplines < Academic disciplines < Academia

Academia < Education < Society < Fundamental

Fundamental < Articles < Contents

==sheep foraging habits==
I was just wondering: what is the deal with the foraging habits of sheep? do the listed references cover this? I think we need some more detail  
about this important topic. -- Phoebe 19:11, 13 Jan 2007 (EST)

==sheep foraging habits==
I was just wondering: what is the deal with the foraging habits of sheep? do the listed references cover this? I think we need some more detail   
about this  important topic. -- Phoebe 19:11, 13 Jan 2007 (EST)
:* Sheep foraging habits are covered in Sheep of the world, listed in references. -- Sj 18:24, 10 February 2007 (EST)
::* There's also some info in Sheep Past and Present.—A New Zealander (talk) 18:55, 10 February 2007 (EST)
:::* ok, thanks everyone! -- Phoebe 12:11, 11 Feb 2007 (EST)

==Wool==
The paragraph about wool types is confusing. Could someone who understands the
subject rewrite it?  -- Charles Matthews 21:14, 14 Jan 2007 (EST)

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   As JSDA added above, Lansing, Michigan is now on his "Official Web Site" as his place of birth. How do you explain this one away??? Are you going to continue the hype? And as I've mentioned before, it's fine that he claims he's from the south, but it is not the truth. Again here's the website link. Burt Reynolds.com Lugnut215 00:47, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

   It is obvious the person doing the page is just regurjitating [sic] facts found on the web and not fact checking. Because here is another "LIE" that is in the personal FAQs .. Bottom line is in his televised interviews when asked his birthplace, he says Waycross, Georgia. He has said it about 10 different interviews, and there isn't one televised interview where he says Michigan. Rogue Gremlin 03:33, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

   "'Tom and Jerry'" are an animated cat ("Tom") and mouse ("Jerry") team who formed the basis of a successful series of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer theatrical short subjects created, written and directed by animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera (later of Hanna-Barbera fame). One hundred and fourteen "Tom and Jerry" cartoons were produced by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio in Hollywood from 1940 until 1957, when the animation unit was closed down. These shorts are notable for having won seven Academy Awards for Best Short Subject (Cartoons), tying it with Walt Disney's "Silly Symphonies" as the most-awarded theatrical animated series.

 and 
   Herbert George Wells (September 21, 1866–August 13, 1946), better known as H. G. Wells, was an English writer best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, and The Island of Doctor Moreau. He was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and produced works in many different genres, including contemporary novels, history, and social commentary. He was also an outspoken socialist. His later works become increasingly political and didactic, and only his early science fiction novels are widely read today. Wells, along with Hugo Gernsback and Jules Verne, is sometimes referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction."

   Who, what, where, when, why?

   Summary Lead section, then inverted pyramid.

   Omit needless words.

   The Economist style guide: clarity with precision.

   "Why" is almost more important than "what."

   Blood pressure (strictly speaking: vascular pressure) refers to the force exerted by circulating blood on the walls of blood vessels, and constitutes one of the principal vital signs. The pressure of the circulating blood decreases as blood moves through arteries, arterioles, capillaries, and veins; the term blood pressure generally refers to arterial pressure, i.e., the pressure in the larger arteries, arteries being the blood vessels which take blood away from the heart. Arterial pressure is most commonly measured via a sphygmomanometer, which uses the height of a column of mercury to reflect the circulating pressure (see Non-invasive measurement). Although many modern vascular pressure devices no longer use mercury, vascular pressure values are still universally reported in millimetres of mercury (mmHg).

   Her strange conduct brought upon her severe censures, in which she could see only manifestations of spite. Evidently, she too often fell short of due reserve and prudence; but after all that can be said in this sense, it must be acknowledged that her morality appears to have given no grounds for serious reproach. Bossuet, who was never indulgent in her regard, could say before the full assembly of the French clergy: "As to the abominations which have been held to be the result of her principles, there was never any question of the horror she testified for them." It is remarkable, too, that her disciples at the Court of Louis XIV were always persons of great piety and of exemplary life.

   Her conduct brought criticism, but her morality gave no grounds for it. Bossuet, one of the critics, said before the French clergy: "As to the abominations which have been held to be the result of her principles, there was never any question of the horror she testified for them." Her disciples at Versailles were pious people of exemplary life.

   The phrase should be verifiable, reading "A, B, and C say X, while D and E say Y," with citations for each claim.

   What about those saying Z ? Aren't they being sidelined unfairly?

   Does the whole comment represent the entire debate fairly, including the main reasons for controversy?

   Compliance with Wikipedia's inclusion standards, particularly NPOV and NOR

   References included throughout the text (indicating that individual facts have been checked against or derived from external sources)

   Factual accuracy, as verified by the external sources

   A list of pertinent reliable external links and sources on the subject

   Writing that conforms to a high standard of written English

   Appropriate images or diagrams and formatting that conforms to Wikipedia style guidelines, including logical sections and appropriate internal links

   A complete and clear explanation of the topic, with a logical flow to the article

   Determine the question you're trying to answer. The question may regard specific facts in an article that you want to cite or may be more general (for instance, "What year did this scientist receive a Nobel Prize?" or "What basic topics did this scientist work on, and did he or she receive recognition for this work?"). With existing articles, if you need a place to begin asking questions, take a second and skeptical look at the factual content. Which salient facts are most likely to be in doubt?

   Figure out what kind of sources are likely to have the information you're looking for and where you can find those sources.

   Use the appropriate type of source. This is a critical (and often overlooked) part of good research: Not all sources are right for all topics. For information on a recent natural disaster, review newspaper or news agency accounts and governmental bulletins; these news stories can be found either through searching web indexes such as Google News, which is free online, or news indexes such as LexisNexis, which many libraries subscribe to. On the other hand, if you're researching a 19th-century writer, accounts of his or her life may be found in literary encyclopedias, biographical dictionaries, introductions that appear in his or her work, or (if they were quite famous) dedicated biographies, which may be found in library catalogs. Often specific questions are easiest to answer: For the scientist example, a list of Nobel Prize winners may be found easily on the Nobel Prize committee website. For more in-depth information, however, you will need to turn to biographies.

   Search for appropriate sources. This requires turning your search question into keywords that can be used in a web search engine, library catalog, article database, or similar system. If you can't find anything using one term, try another similar term or name variation. It is at this stage and the previous one that asking for help from people knowledgeable about the topic and librarians can be very helpful.

   Read and evaluate potential sources. This is the time-consuming part of doing research. Do the sources answer your questions? Where did they get their information? Do they seem trustworthy? What trustworthy means can vary depending on what you're looking for; although a scholarly biography published by an academic publisher is usually a reliable source for investigating a scientist's life, an essay about that scientist that was written by a student and posted online on a personal website probably isn't. The Reliable Sources guideline, discussed starting on Section 3.3, “Reliable Sources”, talks a good deal about what a reliable source is for most topics on Wikipedia. The point is, however, that statements of fact should be based on the best information available.

   Document your sources. Once you've found a good, reliable source that answers your question, cite it, either with the inline style described in "Referencing Styles" on Section 3.4, “Referencing Styles” (for specific facts) or in a separate References section (for more general sources).

   Given Wikipedia's global availability as a research tool and the possibility that collaborating researchers will have access only to publicly available sources, try to use sources that are freely available to everyone online (usually in addition to printed or subscription-based sources). Beware, however, that many resources accessible through universities or libraries, such as online magazines, are paid for by subscription and not available to the general public.

   Up-to-date sources are preferable, though deeper coverage of a topic may depend on older scholarly sources. New sources can always be added in as they are published.

   Use a mixture of sources whenever possible: A combination of external links to websites, references to standard textbooks, and specific references to academic books and journals is ideal.

   Don't rely on blogs or any other sources that are led more by opinion than factual reporting; editorials may be good sources for discussing viewpoints about a controversial subject, but they are generally not the best sources for factual information. When researching a very controversial subject, be extremely careful to double-check the origins of sources and present both sides of the story.

   For any source, ask about the expertise of the author writing. The idea of who an expert is will clearly vary in context; an expert in current popular musical culture might be a music journalist, not an academic professor. Regardless, be clear on where information is originating from.

   Don't randomly cut well-referenced information or reasonable sources. If you find a better source than the one listed, by all means add it, but in most cases, don't remove the old source. If the sources disagree, note this in the article or on the talk page.

   Material from self-published books, zines, websites, and blogs should never be used as a source about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article.

   Editors should avoid repeating gossip. Ask yourself whether the source is reliable; whether the material is being presented as true; and whether, even if true, it is relevant to an encyclopedia article about the subject. When less-than-reliable publications print material they suspect is untrue, they often include weasel phrases. Look out for these. If the original publication doesn't believe its own story, why should we?

   Remain consistent. If one referencing method or style is already used in the article, stick to that style.

   Inverting names is not necessary. Although many academic styles call for putting the last name of an author first in a reference listing, this style is unhelpful for readers who may be searching the site for a specific author.

   Wikilinks can be used judiciously; many famous authors and well-known sources have their own articles, and in these cases, names within the citation can be linked for the curious reader.

   Include a URL if you can, but make sure the URL is stable and accessible to everyone (not just subscribers to a magazine, for instance). Include the date that you accessed the URL.

   Spell it out. Cryptic abbreviations often used in scholarly journals are unhelpful for a reader who may be new to a field of study. Give as much information about the source as you can (the full name of the author, journal name, or ISBN for a book, for instance). Readers from all over the world may ultimately try to find the source.

   Deleting the work of others

   Calling attention to talk page threads when a long, detailed explanation is required

   Revamping an article in a major way, saving each block of changes with a separate description

   Informing others when not everyone will have the background and knowledge about a topic you have, even if the change seems minor

   Tagging and untagging and site maintenance

   Splitting content out to form a new page, where edit summaries are required in two places to provide an audit trail, so anyone can see where the "new" content came from and where the "old" content went (under the GFDL license requirements, the original authorship should be accessible from the new page's history)

   Nominating a page to be deleted

#REDIRECT [[title of page to redirect to]]
#REDIRECT [[goldfish]]
#REDIRECT [[Ice cream#vanilla]]
{{main|Title}}
[[Category:categoryname]]
[[:Category:Instruction]]
A poisoned apple is an apple that has been poisoned.
[[Category:Apples]]
[[Category:Fairytale objects]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, John}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gaulle, Charles de}}
[[Category:1900 births|Smith, John]]
[[Category:Presidents of France|Bonaparte, Louis-Napoleon]]
[[Category:Presidents of France|*]]
 I just wanted to say that becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*. I think perhaps I'll go through semi-willy-nilly and make a bunch of people who have been around for a while sysops. I want to dispel the aura of "authority" around the position. It's merely a technical matter that the powers given to sysops are not given out to everyone. I don't like that there's the apparent feeling here that being granted sysop status is a really special thing.

   Soft Security is like water. It bends under attack, only to rush in from all directions to fill the gaps. It's strong over time yet adaptable to any shape. It seeks to influence and encourage, not control and enforce. […]

   Soft Security follows from the principles of

   Assume Good Faith People are almost always trying to be helpful; so, we apply the Principle of First Trust, confident that occasional bad will be overwhelmed by the good.

   Peer Review Your peers can ensure that you don't damage the system.

   Forgive and Forget Even well-intentioned people make mistakes. They don't need to be permanent.

   Limit Damage When unpreventable mistakes are made, keep the damage within tolerable limits.

   Fair Process Kim and Mauborgne's theory that being transparent and giving everyone a voice are essential management skills.

   Non-Violence Do no violence lest violence seek you.

   Article talk pages for discussing article content

   User talk pages for leaving another contributor personal messages

   Project page and policy page talk pages, where individual policies or processes are discussed

   Project-wide forums for discussing Wikipedia, asking questions, or offering general proposals

   Noticeboards for raising alerts to problems or items of interest about a particular topic

   Process pages for getting feedback or taking polls on a particular kind of issue (such as deletion debates)

   Having everybody vote on everything is cluelessocracy. (User:Eclecticology, April 10, 2007, wiki-en mailing list)

   Strong Keep - what has changed since the six previous Afds? Well, take a good look and you will find that the references are now vastly improved, and the content has been significantly expanded upon and improved since the last afd. The content references what is now a considerable body of academic and human rights literature consisting of either references to descriptions of U.S. state terrorism or in-depth examinations supporting the hypothesis. See the references section which includes contributions from professors from Yale, Princeton, MIT, Columbia and Hong Kong University, among others. If you require more evidence that this is a serious scholarly concern, constituting a significant alternative discourse, albeit not representative of the mainstream, then I would be happy to provide a long long long list of academic references. BernardL (talk) 00:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

   #wikipedia, the general Wikipedia discussion channel, is notoriously nearly always off-topic. This is a decent place to socialize but not for the faint of heart.

   #wikipedia-en has fewer people and is more focused on the English-language Wikipedia.

   #wikipedia-en-help is a help channel.

   #wikimedia discusses issues related to the Wikimedia Foundation as a whole.

   Wikipedia—also known as Unemployed Ph.D. Deathmatch (User:Finlay McWalter)

   Use software that promotes good discussions.

   Don't impose a length limitation on postings.

   Front-load your system with talkative, diverse people.

   Let the users resolve their own disputes.

   Provide institutional memory.

   Promote continuity.

   Be host to a particular interest group.

   Provide places for children.

   Most Important: Confront the users with a crisis.

   Much of Wikipedia's content and all of the day-to-day functions are overseen by a small core of the most dedicated contributors.

   Content brings visitors—this is as true for wikis as it is for networks, as dictated by Metcalfe's law. Of those visitors, a certain number will stay and become contributors. Of those contributors, a certain number will stay long enough to become dedicated users.

   You cannot motivate people on a large scale to write about something they don't want to write about.

   Over time, contentious articles will grow from edit-war inspiring to eventually reach a compromise that is agreed upon by all the editors who have not departed in exasperation. This equilibrium will inevitably be disturbed by new users who accuse the article of being absurdly one sided and who attempt to rewrite the entire article.

   Wikipedia's steadily increasing popularity means that within the next year or two, we will begin to see organized corporate astroturfing campaigns. [29]

   As time goes on, the rules and informal policies on Wikipedia tend to become less and less plastic and harder and harder to change.

   The worth of open information that is outside copyright barriers (and, therefore, probably support for free software too)

   A commitment to sharing knowledge worldwide

   Multiculturalism, diversity, and multilingualism

   Fairness in representing diverse points of view

   Will the English-language Wikipedia have to evolve different social processes in the long term?

   Will every language version of Wikipedia go through the same stages of developing content and community?

   Will time bring the English-language Wikipedia's community into a stable demographic composed of people with a broad-based interest in encyclopedic knowledge? How can more people, including experts, be involved in editing?

   Can quality be sustained in an open encyclopedia with millions of articles?

Thank you for your suggestion. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes.

   There are only a few key policies that might be regarded as "official"—that is, considered by the founders and the vast majority of contributors as being particularly important to the running of Wikipedia. […] They have either withstood the test of time or have been adopted by consensus or acclamation.

   Very often, there is no "bright line" distinction between proposed policy, guidelines, and "actual" policy. Policy at Wikipedia is a matter of consensus, tradition, and practice. While the principles of the policies in this category are mostly well established, the details are often still evolving, so not everything in these pages represent hard and fast rules.

   A set index article describes a single set of concepts. For example, Dodge Charger describes a set of cars, List of peaks named Signal Mountain describes a set of mountain peaks, or USS Enterprise describes a set of ships. A set index article is both for information and for navigation: just like a normal list article, it can have metadata and extra information about each entry. A set index article can be entertaining and informative by itself, can help editors find redlinks to create articles on notable entries, and finally can also help readers navigate between articles that have similar names. (From http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Disambiguation&diff=130088375&oldid=129966757)

   Spoilers on the Internet are sometimes preceded by a spoiler warning. In Wikipedia, however, it is generally expected that the subjects of our articles will be covered in detail. Therefore, Wikipedia carries no spoiler warnings except for the Content disclaimer.

   New works that use GFDL-licensed content have to be licensed, in turn, under the GFDL: The license cannot be changed. (Because of this clause, the GFDL is often referred to as a viral license.)

   You must include a full copy of the GFDL license text with any GFDL-licensed work, to be reproduced in all copies of that work (for websites, this copy of the license should be locally hosted). The license can be found at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.

   You must acknowledge the authorship of the article(s) you reuse; this can mean including either a prominent link to the original article history on Wikipedia or a list of all the authors from the article's history along with crediting text such as, "This page uses material from the Wikipedia article <name of article>."

   You must provide access to the transparent copy (in other words, a machine-readable copy) of the article you're using. (The transparent copy for a Wikipedia article can be any of a number of formats available from Wikipedia, including the wiki text, the HTML web pages, the XML feed, and so on.)

how Wikipedia Works/Printable version

Acknowledgements edit

Introduction edit

Chapter 1 edit

Chapter 1. What's in Wikipedia? edit

What Is an Article? edit

Audience and Level edit

Types of Articles edit

Further Reading edit

Article and Content Inclusion Policies edit

Core Policies: V, NOR, and NPOV edit

Understanding the Policies edit

Other Guidelines edit

Notability edit

Copyrighted Material edit

Non-encyclopedic Content edit

What Wikipedia Is Not edit

Non-article Content edit

3.1. Types of Non-article Pages edit

Namespaces edit

List of Namespaces edit

Summary and What to Read Next edit

Supplementary Figures edit

Chapter 2 edit

Wikipedia's Mission edit

Wikipedia's Roots edit

Ancient Greece to Today: Encyclopedias edit

Late 17th Century: The Modern Encyclopedia edit

Wikipedia as an Encyclopedia edit

The 1960s and 1970s: Unix, Networks, and Personal Computers edit

The 1980s: The Free Software Movement edit

Wikipedia and the Free Perspective edit

1995: Ward's Wiki edit

1997: Open Source Communities edit

2000: Online Community Dynamics edit

Wikipedia as a Wiki Community edit

2001: Wikipedia Goes Live edit

Wikipedia Today edit

Unfinished Business edit

The Wikipedia Model Debated edit

Misinformation: The Seigenthaler Scandal edit

Amateur Contributors, Authority, and Academia edit

Wikipedia and Academic Authority edit

Wikipedia and Experts edit

Case Studies in Academic Authority edit

Pseudonyms and Claimed Expertise edit

The Crowd of Amateurs edit

Notes edit

Summary edit

Chapter 3 edit

Searching Wikipedia edit

Basic Searching edit

Varying the Search edit

Search Operators edit

Searching Other Namespaces edit

Some Special Searches edit

Search Problems and Some Alternatives edit

External Search Engines edit

When to Use External Search Engines edit

When Not to Use External Search Engines edit

Ways into Wikipedia edit

Welcome to the Main Page edit

Navigating the Main Page edit

Portals into the Encyclopedia edit

Daily Content edit

Constructing the Main Page edit

Disclaimers, License, and Privacy edit

The Omnipresent Sidebar edit

Navigation edit

Interaction edit

Recent Changes edit

The Search Box edit

Toolbox edit

Languages edit

Joys of Hypertext edit

A Hypertext Primer edit

Three Types of Links edit

Browsing by Topic edit

Lists of Articles edit

Traditional Classification Schemes edit