*Tips and tricks for editing Wikipedia



*Two points to clarify ahead

1. Red and blue links:
In this document we will refer to red links and blue links. On Wikipedia as on most places online, a blue link signifies a working link to another page. Whilst a name or word appearing as a red link on Wikipedia signifies that there is no article under this specific topic. If you click on a red link you will just arrive to an empty editing page where you are invited to create said article. 

This Wikipedia-function is often used in feminist practices as a way to be able to quickly see from a list of names which names already have biographies written about them. You can see this reflected in feminist editing projects such as "Women in Red".

2. The Wikipedia tabs:
On wikipedia every article/page has 5 different tabs, 3 of them signify different parts of the article while the two others are different "modes" or ways to interact.
The three parts of each article are called:

• Article - This is where you will first arrive, and it is the article as it stands today.
• Talk - This is the discussion page about the article, and it shows the behind the scenes workings. This is where you can bring up issues you have with the article at hand and discuss with other people who are writing on the article.
• History / View history - This is an automatic log of every edit that has happened to the article, where you can select previous versions of the article and compare them. As this page is automaticly generated, it can only be read and not be edited, and therefore the two "modes" that follow does not apply to this part of the article. 

The two modes are:

• Read - This is the mode that is selected when you first arrive. It is simply to read the Article or the Talk page.
• Edit / Edit source - This is the button to edit either the Article or the Talk page

Small note: Occasionally some extra specialised tabs will appear, called things like "New Section" or "Visual edit", and these will simply be extra modes/tools, handy to learn but one can also edit without using them. Also in certain parts of Wikipedia the word "Article" might be substituted with other descriptions like "Project" etc.


*Tips for beginners

• After you have created your account, you will see that your own name appears in red. This is because you have not yet written anything in the "about" section of your Wikipedia profile. We recommend that you write something there, anything really, a smiley-face is enough, just so that your name will appear in blue. This is because when you edit your name will be visible on the history page, and a name appearing in red immediately makes you look like a novice, and so other editors will question your actions more easily. It is up to you how much of your identity you want to reveal when you write about yourself, and before writing something we recommend reflecting upon wether you want your gender, country of origin or any political affiliation to be visible or not. You can also always change this later.

• Remember, you can not add any original research on Wikipedia. It is all based on what has been published elsewhere, yet to avoid copyright issues, you will need to rewrite any text into your own words. So what you are aiming for are links to sources and a text summarising the content in these sources relevant to the subject. Additionally, creating links in that text to and from other articles on Wikipedia will make it both stronger and more visible.

• Wikipedia content is created on a basis of "easily added, easily removed", which means that although you can publish things rather easily on the platform, the real test is to see whether it stays there. This can get especially difficult when editing from a feminist point of view, as the majority of the editors do not see the feminist perspective of things, and a large part of them finds anything to do with feminism way to radical to have anything to do with an encyclopedia. This of course brings us to one of the core problems with how the platform is presented today which a lot of people refer to. Namely the fact that one of the pillars on Wikipedia is "Neutrality", meaning that the aim is to edit as close to a "neutral" point of view as possible. In our opinion "neutral history" is an oxymoron, and writing history from a neutral point of view isn't only impossible but all this idea does is to give ammunition to those who are already represented in history, as a way to call out any movement for change as a way to jepoardise neutrality. This means that when you make an edit it needs to be solid. Start with small edits to get to know the platform, use the preview button before you publish. Creating a brand new article will make a big splash and alert a lot of people, which is fine if you feel confident, but if there is any reason for it to be removed might simply result in a lot of your hard work being deleted.

• Example of small edits to make: 
  • Editing the writing style of biographies (see guide on how to write about women or our Fact sheet), like changing the current use of first names to sirnames, making sure personal life is not mixes with professional life, or that male family-relations doesn't have priority over the accomplishments of the person.
  • Creating links from male or neutral pages to relevant pages about female counterparts/colleagues/etc and therefore creating higher visibilty.
  • Adding material from a version of the article which is in another language, for example information from the English to the Dutch Wikipedia article about a subject.

• Extra tips for creating an article you suspect could get deleted
  • Have a lot of references
  • Edit with someone else, so that it doesn't look like a "one person project"
  • Press the "thank" button that appears on the history page behind each others edit
  • If you really need the page to stay, remember that the English Wikipedia is the most competitive. Create the article in a smaller language first, then translate it to English, and write "translated from ..... " on the Talk page.  (remember to link the articles). It will make it seem like it is already verified.

*Resource pages

Just for the Record's Resource Page on Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/justfortherecord/Resources

Specific highlights from the Resource Page:

Wikidata Human Gender Indicators 
-- Live data on the gender-gap on Wikipedia organised by Culture, Country, Date of Birth and Wikipedia Language.
http://whgi.wmflabs.org

Just for the Record's fact sheet
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FACTSHEET-EN.pdf

Guide on how to write about women
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_about_women

Women in Red
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red
+ Women in Red Redlinks index
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/Redlist_index

Wikiproject Feminism (with a hot-article bot :D )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Feminism


*Other links

www.justfortherecord.space