piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the...

29
Publish or Perish an epic game of skill and creativity Lifting the world from ignorance, one article at a time Game Type: Ultimate Massive Online Superhero Quest Age: 15+ Number of Players: anywhere between one person and seven billion people Introduction When the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity and informed decision-making. People became free to express themselves in new ways, and a powerful collaborative Free Encyclopaedia was developed to fight ignorance in every corner of the world. Information coursed the world’s

Transcript of piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the...

Page 1: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Publish or Perish

an epic game of skill and creativityLifting the world from ignorance, one article at a time

Game Type: Ultimate Massive Online Superhero Quest

Age: 15+

Number of Players: anywhere between one person and seven billion people

Introduction

When the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity and informed decision-making. People became free to express themselves in new ways, and a powerful collaborative Free Encyclopaedia was developed to fight ignorance in every corner of the world. Information coursed the world’s electronic veins like a potent elixir of pure fact. Victory seemed imminent.

But the forces of ignorance mounted a devastating counter-strike. Led by the evil Lord Factoid, they unleashed a torrent of cat pictures and videos of Russians driving tanks across urban traffic. The world was enveloped in a choking cloud of procrastination and national stereotyping, but the Free Encyclopaedia stood firm.

Page 2: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

But the forces of ignorance took the war to our territory. They corrupted the Free Encyclopaedia with factual mistakes, missing citations, ugly gaps and general sloppy thinking.

The fact-based community is reeling from the blow but not all is lost. A band of fighters continues to resist the onslaught of misinformation. With your fine mind and your ability to work hard you have been chosen to join them in defending our turf. Together, we can rid the Free Encyclopaedia of defective articles and creeping factoids!

This is no time for fear or doubt. A day may come when we forsake all academic duty, and allow the world to fester in urban legends and bad statistical intuitions. But it is not this day.

This day, we fight.

Welcome Player One: Your Instructions These instructions are top secret. Keep them safe, and burn them after completing your mission.

Introduction..................................................................................................1

Welcome Player One: Your Instructions.......................................................2

Intro: How to Win Your Game.......................................................................3

Level One. Create Your Character................................................................4

Checklist: Creating Your Character (User Page: Strona Wikipedysty).......6

Level Two: Choose Your Quest.....................................................................7

Checklist: Choosing Your Quest................................................................8

Level Three. Translate beautifully and accurately.......................................9

Checklist: Good Translation......................................................................9

Level Four. Formatting (Markup Code).......................................................10

Level Five. Citing Evidence........................................................................12

Inserting references the John McClane way............................................12P a g e | 2

Page 3: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Inserting references the James Bond way...............................................13

Inserting references the Angus MacGyver way.......................................14

Level Six. Publish (and Win).......................................................................16

Copyright Note: This material was originally developed by Dr. Piotr Szymczak, Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw but it’s Creative Commons Licensed ( Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License).

Feel free to modify it for your own use as long as you acknowledge my authorship.

P a g e | 3

Page 4: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Intro: How to Win Your Game

You have been chosen to complete a mission among a European nation called the Poles. As the name indicates, the Poles are pretty strongly polarized about most things. But they are also known for their unique brand of grumpy bravery and world-class swearwords, which makes them excellent material for resistance fighters.

Your mission is to create a Polish translation of an English-language article and deliver it safely to the Free Encyclopaedia HQ officially known as “Wikipedia”.

Sounds easy? Think again. Wikipedia is defended by an army of Editors who guard its gates night and day to stop Lord Factoid and his minions from corrupting it with bad articles. Fuelled by a combination of strong coffee and nerdy rage, they tend to shoot first and ask questions later. Be careful: don’t let your article be shot down in flames before it reaches its destination!

The Editors will let your article through if it meets certain criteria. Your translation must be factually accurate and beautifully written. The article must be lovingly edited and formatted. The contents must be well-supported by cited evidence.

On the following pages you will find a number of tips and checklists. Please check every item on every list to make sure your mission is complete. This may sound like a tall order but have no fear. Mistakes will be made, but your goal is to learn, not to worry.

Made a mistake? Go back one step.

Don’t know how? Start over. Enjoy the learning winning process.

Okay, let’s do it. That goddam Free Encyclopaedia ain’t gonna save itself!

P a g e | 4

Page 5: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

P a g e | 5

Page 6: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Level One. Create Your Character

You need to create your character in order to play. Go to the Polish Wikipedia website (pl.wikipedia.org) and create an account (you will need to complete a CAPTCHA, i.e. copy a fuzzy word into a box to show Wikipedia that you are not an enemy spambot sent by Lord Factoid).

Fun fact: CAPTCHA is short for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.” I didn’t know that!

Incidentally, you’re going to need to choose a login – many Wiki fighters have wonderfully flamboyant aliases (logins) – have fun choosing yours!

You will be invited to create a user page (“strona Wikipedysty”) by selecting one of four profiles. Choose the third profile (Translator) in the bottom left-hand corner.

P a g e | 6

Page 7: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Click it. What you’ll see is a box (window) filled with text that’s appeared out of nowhere. Some of that text will make sense, and some will just look weird (multiple apostrophes, equation signs, etc.) This is your first experience of Wikipedia’s markup code – the formatting commands you will soon be using to communicate with the Free Encyclopaedia.

Before long you will be reading code like that Neo guy in Matrix, but right now all you have to do is scroll down and click the save button (“Zapisz”). After negotiating one more captcha you will see the same page again but this time as normal text, without any strange characters. This is Wikipedia as you normally view it: only the text is visible, and the code shows up as nice formatting.

What you are looking at right now is your User page. Your User page is your safe place. Stretch your arms and yawn like the cool Wiki Fighter that you are: this is your new home. Just like any other Wiki page, it can be edited by anyone, but nobody except you knows where it is, so you shouldn’t be bothered by anyone.

Important Exception: You will get bothered in pretty short order if you use your User page for any non-kosher stuff like blogging or posting inappropriate/offensive content. Remedy: Don’t.

---

You will be using your User page (“Strona Wikipedysty”) to complete your secret mission. Your User page is where you’ll keep your article (your P a g e | 7

Page 8: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Polish translation followed by the original English). But right now all you can see is a welcome page with links to all kind of useful information. You are advised to read this information.

A word of explanation. Any Wikipedia article, including your User page (“strona Wikipedysty”), can be viewed in one of two ways: as regular text – the way you usually read your Wikipedia – or as text + markup code, which is how you write and format entries. You switch between those two modes using two tabs, Read (“Czytaj”) and Edit (“Edytuj”).

Okay, now that you have your own User page which you will use for drafting your translation, you can also start experimenting with markup code a little bit. Click the Edit (“Edytuj”) tab, then delete the generic page that Wikipedia made for you (read it first, obviously!). Write something in the box – if you don’t know what to put there, just copy the text from the box below. This will show you how the basic markup codes work: just click Save (“Zapisz”) and see what’s happened.

P a g e | 8

Page 9: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

==My draft article==

Please don’t delete any of this. I’m translating a Wikipedia article into Polish as an Academic assignment and this User Space contains my draft work.

Okay, let’s see how the Wiki markup codes work. The double equation signs in the first line have just turned the words “My article” into a headline.

When I use double apostrophes, the text between them gets ''italicized''. When I use three apostrophes, the text between them gets '''bold'''. If I use two square brackets, I create a link to an existing article, like this [[T%C5%82umacz]].

This is all for now. Complete the checklist below to move on the the next Level.

Checklist: Creating Your Character (User Page: Strona Wikipedysty)

⎕ Go to http://pl.wikipedia.org

⎕ Create an account. Remember to keep your account login and password safe so you can always go back

⎕ Choose your user profile (Translator – “Tłumacz”)

⎕ Click Save (“Zapisz”) to save your automatically generated User Page

⎕ Bookmark your User page on your web browser – you will be using it a lot

⎕ Also bookmark your User page on the English Wikipedia (log on to en.wikipedia.org and click on your login)

⎕ Email both URLs (web addresses) of your User pages to me at [email protected] – we’ll be using your User pages to exchange suggestions and feedback

⎕ Read the advice Wikipedia has automatically posted on your Polish User page

⎕ Now delete it: click the Edit tab and delete the contents of your user page (click anywhere within the text box, then Ctrl + A followed by Delete)

P a g e | 9

Page 10: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

⎕ Copy the text from the box above into your User page and click Save (“Zapisz”)

Level Two: Choose Your Quest

So, you have your character, complete with a nice login and a User page (“Strona Wikipedysty”). More good news: your fine mind and your range of interests have been noted by the Free Information HQ. You’ve been allowed to choose your own mission! It will be entirely up to you which article you pick to translate and publish. This shows great trust on their part, and a lot of potential on yours. Choose your mission wisely, and please bear in mind that Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia: look for articles which are relevant outside of their English-speaking context and well-supported by references or your entry may be disqualified for not being “encyclopaedic” enough.

Every new Wiki Fighter soon realizes that the Polish Wikipedia is a big place, and finding an English article with no Polish version can be tricky. Don’t give up easily! Keep looking until you’ve found something interesting and useful. You can either translate an article that doesn’t have a Polish version at all or you can expand an existing article (your translated article may replace an existing Polish article as long as the existing Polish article is very short and uninformative).

Do not translate articles which already have a good Polish version. They can’t be published, so you can’t win that way.

Some tips:

P a g e | 10

Page 11: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Choose an article between 350 and 750 words. Please note that this is actually quite a lot of words.

Consider your personal expertise - what kind of knowledge can you bring to the table to make your translation more reliable? Can you tap any expert knowledge from other people, like friends or family, when you run into difficulty?

Consider your interests - is there perhaps an obscure musician or a foreign culture that you love? An aspect of the gaming industry? A place in the UK you know really well? An excellent book in English that you’ve read a million times? Check out those Wikipedia articles and see if they need a good Polish version.

You may want to try and find a problem article (one which discusses ideas or processes), and avoid factual articles (such as biographies). Having said that, factual articles are perfectly okay and may be very useful to many people. The only problem is that they tend to use dry language and you may find such language unexciting. But if that doesn’t bother you, choose a factual article.

Make sure that your article is well-supported by references (i.e. contains footnotes). Translating articles without good references is not recommended. The Editors will pull your article down after publication if it’s just assertions unsupported by external evidence.

Don’t give up. There is nothing wrong with you, everyone finds it difficult to find an article to translate. Keep looking until you get lucky: this is part of your mission.

Copy and paste the original article into your User space (“Strona Wikipedysty”), TWICE (one stays as original text, one will serve as translation).

To save yourself some work, you can choose to copy and paste an already formatted article to work on – instead of copying the clean “Read” version, you can click the “Edit” tab on the original article first and copy both the text and the markup code from the original English article. Now, the code you have copied is English-language code, so sometimes you will need to turn it into Polish code but that’s easier than having to design all the code from scratch. CAUTION: If your article uses English references, it may disappear from your User space on Polish Wikipedia (pl.wikipedia.org) and move automatically to your User space on English Wikipedia

P a g e | 11

Page 12: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

(en.wikipedia.org). If that happens, don’t panic. You can just log on to the English Wikipedia website and you’ll find your stuff there. Translate it, change the references to Polish-style references (I’ll show you how later), and the project will pop back up on Polish Wikipedia.

Complete the checklist below. That way you won’t forget anything.

Checklist: Choosing Your Quest

⎕ Make a shortlist of possible articles or areas of interest

⎕ Explore each of them to find articles with no Polish version

⎕ Choose the one you find the most attractive (useful, interesting)

⎕ Make sure it’s between 350 and 750 words long

⎕ Make sure it’s well-supported by evidence (contains footnotes)

⎕ View the original article, click Edit and copy the original text along with its markup code (click anywhere within the text box, press Ctrl + A, which means Select All, followed by Ctrl + C, which means Copy)

⎕ Go to your User space (“Strona Wikipedysty”) and click Edit (“Edytuj”). Now paste in the original text and code – TWICE (click within the box, press Ctrl + A, Del, Ctrl + V, Ctrl + V). Then click the Save tab (“Zapisuj”). This way both the original article and your translation will be sitting in one place one above the other - it’s more handy than having to navigate Wikipedia to reach the original article.

⎕ If you can’t find your stuff, it’s probably been moved to your User space on en.wikipedia.org - find it there and keep working on it.

Level Three. Translate beautifully and accurately

P a g e | 12

Page 13: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Your translation must be factually correct and accurate. Before you translate something, please make very sure that you understand everything about the original. When in doubt, keep asking friends and googling stuff until you’re satisfied that you are completely on top of the situation.

Be accurate (say exactly what it says in the original), but also be stylistically accomplished. Remember to write the way we communicate in correct, idiomatic written Polish. If something about your translation sounds weird, that’s probably because you need to rephrase it. Imagine a nice, intelligent Polish person you would like to be friends with - now write that tricky phrase or sentence the way your new friend would say it.

Remember that people’s perspectives differ. The source article you are translating was written with English-speaking people in mind. Will your Polish readers understand everything just as well? Picture an average Wikipedia user and keep asking yourself: if I spoke no English and knew nothing about British/American culture, would this translation still make perfect sense to me?

For instance, should you convert any imperial units (miles, feet, degrees Fahrenheit, etc.) to metrical units (kilometres, degrees Celcius) - or perhaps not? Does your article mention any specifically British or American things which might need explaining, like “Westminster”, “chavs” or “The National Heritage Fund”? Will your translation be understood by somebody without a college education? A Polish speaker raised in Lithuania or Belarus? A teenage user?

Checklist: Good Translation

⎕ Ask yourself: do I understand everything? If anything sounds weird or seems to make no sense, could it be an idiom? A false friend? A misunderstanding on my part?

⎕ Ask yourself: does my translation sound like the work of a nice, intelligent person I would like to be friends with?

⎕ Ask yourself: should I convert any units to metrical?

⎕ Ask yourself: should I explain anything that’s culture-specific to people with no knowledge of that culture?

P a g e | 13

Page 14: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

⎕ Ask yourself: will an average user understand me easily?

⎕ Ask yourself: is my translation friendly to teenagers, uneducated people, people with Polish as their second language?

P a g e | 14

Page 15: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Level Four. Formatting (Markup Code)

In addition to their language skills and their curious minds, Wiki fighters need one extra superpower: the ability to use markup code. What is that? I’m glad you asked.

Look at the text in this box. This is a paragraph which has not been formatted. It makes perfect sense, it’s grammatical, the punctuation is correct, etc. And yet it’s about as transparent as a brick wall. Unformatted writing can be quite difficult to read and understand. Important or unimportant, every word looks exactly the same. The lines are cramped and messy. They just lack a certain je ne sais quoi. No matter how elegant and logical, an unformatted paragraph will look about as structured as your laundry at the end of the spinning cycle.

Now look at this.

Love it or hate it, this paragraph stands out. Why? Because it knows how to talk to your brain using

visual stimuli. This is a cool, self-confident paragraph. It’s neat and easy to read. You just feel that it

rides a bike to work, trims its nostril hair, and never wears socks with sandals. It knows how to use

bold type and a line break in the headline to grab your attention, and italics to emphasize a point. Hell,

it even hyperlinks to stuff on the internet just because it can.

Your job as a Wiki fighter is to be able to produce such paragraphs. Luckily, this is much easier than it seems. Wikipedia uses special symbols (markup code) to format text. You can see those symbols in Edit mode; when you click Save they disappear, and all you can see is a well-formatted paragraph.

I asked you to copy and paste your original article into your User space along with its markup code. If you did that, you now have a fully marked-up text to work on, so that should help. Just make sure that you only translate the regular text and leave any weird symbols alone.

A word of explanation: You need to leave the code alone because code must always be just so. No deviations, no synonyms, no monkey business of no kind. Computers are not that very good at improivsing. For instance, I’ve just written that last word as improivsing instead of improvising, but you understood it anyway. With computers, it’s not that easy. If you need a piece of code that looks like this: </ref> but you put in something like this: <\ref>, your computer will just treat this as One of Life’s Deep Mysteries and ignore it completely.

P a g e | 15

Page 16: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

In case anything goes wrong, here’s a very short primer on Wikipedia’s markup code so you can repair any damage you’ve caused.

Pssssst! Oy, Wiki Fighter! Wanna act really cool about this and earn some haxor cred? Repairing mistakes in code is called debugging – if your friends ask you why you’re not going out with them, just say in your best nonchalant voice that you’ve got some code to debug first.

Code is usually placed before and after the formatted string of text. This formatting stuff is pretty straightforward, and you will get it after a bit of experimentation. For instance, you may find the following simple codes useful:

==headline== makes pretty Wikipedia headlines (use three equation marks for sub-headings)

‘’bold’’ makes type bold

‘’’italics’’’ makes type italic

[[ARTICLE]] makes a hyperlink to an existing Wikipedia article within the same language version of the encyclopaedia. Replace “ARTICLE” with the string of characters that follows Wikipedia’s url for that article. For instance, the Polish article for “Giro d’Italia” appears under http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro_d%27Italia

So, the text that follows http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/ is your address of the Polish article on Giro d’Italia, in this case Giro_d%27Italia

So, your link to the article would be [[Giro_d%27Italia]]

[[en: ARTICLE]] put this at the end of your article to link your article to the English language version; the “ARTICLE” is the string of characters that follows Wikipedia’s url for that article. For instance, the English article for “Giro d’Italia” appears under http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro_d%27Italia

P a g e | 16

Page 17: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

The text that follows http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ is your address of the English article, in this case Giro_d%27Italia

This means that you can create a link to the English version of the article on Giro d’Italia by using the code [[en: Giro_d%27Italia]]

Some more complicated commands exist, but for our purposes there is really just one more thing you need to learn, which is citing references. The kind of code used to create references is a bit different, and it comes in several varieties, ranging from simple but clumsy to complex but elegant.

Now, references are a crucial element of reliable information, so they are the most important aspect of Wikipedia’s markup code. In fact, they are so important that they deserve a Level of their very own.

P a g e | 17

Page 18: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Level Five. Citing Evidence

In other to be reliable, a claim must be supported by sources. Your original article will contain evidence in the form of references to information contained in books, journals and various online resources. It is imperative that your translation should retain that evidence. This way other users can check if your article is reliable or not, and they will know where to look for more information. Don’t bother to translate articles with no references. Would you want to scratch a drug dealer’s brand new car? No, you wouldn’t. In exactly the same way you wouldn’t want to face the Editors after publishing an article containing no references.

Like I said, there are various ways to format a reference in a Wikipedia article. Should you go for an ugly kind of reference that gets the job done but has no style? Or should you come up with a thing of grace and beauty you’ll be admiring for hours? To decide, you can check out Wikipedia’s help pages on References, or just ask yourself: what would my favourite action movie hero do? Here are your options:

Inserting references the John McClane way(“I didn't say ‘Park Drive’. I said, ‘Through

the park.’”)

You are Detective John McClane and you’re the archetypal Cool Guy Who Doesn’t Look at Explosions. In your world, brute force beats elegance – you just blow things up and walk away. For you, references need not be pretty. If the code works, that’s plenty good enough. Use this referencing style and never look back.

Two things:

At the end of your article, add this short bit of code:

== Przypisy ==

<references/>

P a g e | 18

Page 19: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Now, every time you need to insert a reference, all you have to do is take the original reference, translate it and put it in between two short strings of code, <ref> and </ref>, in the body of the article, like this:

<ref>treść przypisu</ref>

For instance, you might write something like:

Pisze o tym Bruce Ross-Larson<ref>Bruce Ross-Larson, Edit Yourself, WW Norton & Company, Londyn, New York: 1982, s. 45.</ref> w swojej książce na temat prac redakcyjnych.

That’s it. The text in between the <ref> and </ref> codes will now appear as an endnote at the end of your article. You’re all done and you can walk off to your other Cool Guy errands. Oh, and don’t look back to watch the explosion: the more you ignore it, the cooler you look.

Inserting references the James Bond way

(“You see, we have all the time in the world.”)

You are Commander James Bond, C.M.G., R.N. At the Ocean Club you wear a short-sleeve open-neck shirt made of extra-long staple cotton. At Casino Royale you wear white silk moiré braces with black tie. On Wikipedia, you use the classic referencing style. Yes, it means you’ll have to consult Q once or twice, but it’s classic. Her Majesty would approve.

When you have a reference to insert, use this short code in the body of your article: <ref name="p1"/> for Reference 1, <ref name="p2"/> for Reference 2, <ref name="p3"/> for Reference 3, etc. This is what it will look like in your article:

Piosenka „The Russians” jest echem zimnowojennych obaw przed użyciem broni atomowej przeciw ludności cywilnej<ref name="p1"/>, a „We Work The Black Seam” jest protestem przeciwko polityce rządu Margaret Thatcher wobec brytyjskiego przemysłu górniczego<ref name="p2"/>.

P a g e | 19

Page 20: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

These codes will just tell Wikipedia where to put the little footnote numbers for the references. Then, at the end of your article, you will need to add the following code to explain to Wikipedia what those references (p1, p2, etc.) are actually supposed to mean:

== Przypisy ==

<references>

<ref name="p1">Tu wstawiasz informacje o pierwszym źródle</ref>

<ref name="p2"> Tu wstawiasz informacje o drugim źródle </ref>

</references>

Thank you Bond. It’s a shame the world will never know the details of your mission.

P a g e | 20

Page 21: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Inserting references the Angus MacGyver way(“A paperclip can be a wondrous thing.

More times than I can remember, one of these has gotten me out of a tight spot.”)

You are Angus MacGyver. You can walk into a room wearing nothing but a pair of underpants, and walk out five minutes later wearing a full suit of armour. To you, referencing code is a signature, and you like to sign with a flourish. When you insert a reference, you use a proper reference template – obviously.

To insert a citation in the text, use a simple piece of code like this:

Jak pokazuje praca Ferreiry,{{R|Ferreira-2004}} fotosynteza zachodzi także w warunkach zredukowanej umpalumpatyczności. Szereg zarzutów wobec tej obserwacji wysunął Iwata{{R|Iwata-2004}}.

What you’ve done here is this:

- by using the funny brackets {{ }} you told Wikipedia that it’s code you’re writing, not regular text;

- by using the R followed by the pipe character (|) you told Wikipedia to use a template to create the list of references;

- by using each of the names which follow the pipe character (Ferreira-2004, Iwata-2004) you told Wikipedia which particular reference it should use for this footnote.

Too simple for your taste? Wait. You’ve only asked Wikipedia to insert references to two published sources, and to format them using its template for References. The problem is, Wikipedia has no idea what you mean by “Ferreira-2004” or even what kind of template to use (journal? book?), so now you’re going to need to explain it all to Wikipedia.

P a g e | 21

Page 22: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

This is where the McGuyver stuff starts. You define references by adding more code at the end of your article. This code too starts and ends with funny brackets {{ }}, and it will provide Wikipedia with the information it needs.

In the example below, the stuff in grey type is the information you provide to Wikipedia, and the stuff in black type is the code Wikipedia asks you to use so it can understand you. The particular template used here has been designed for citing from journals, so it has fields like journal name, article title, issue and volume numbers, etc.

P a g e | 22

Page 23: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

{{Przypisy|przypisy=< ref name="Ferreira-2004">{{Cytuj pismo | autor=Ferreira KN., Iverson TM., Maghlaoui K., Barber J., Iwata S | tytuł=Architecture of the photosynthetic oxygen-evolving center. | rok=2004 | czasopismo=Science (New York, N.Y.) | doi=10.1126/science.1093087 | wydanie=303 | wolumin=5665 | miesiąc=marzec | pmid= 14764885 | strony=1831–8}}</ref>

< ref name="Iwata-2004">{{Cytuj pismo | autor=Iwata S., Barber J | tytuł=Structure of photosystem II and molecular architecture of the oxygen-evolving centre. | rok=2004 | czasopismo=Current opinion in structural biology | doi=10.1016/j.sbi.2004.07.002 | wydanie=14 | wolumin=4 | miesiąc=sierpień | pmid= 15313239 | strony=447–53</ref>

}}

But obviously there are also other templates for citing other types of sources, like books or websites. In that case, replace the bit starting with {{cytuj... with the following code:

for books:

{{cytuj książkę | autor = | tytuł = | wydawca = | miejsce = | rok = | strony = | isbn = }}

for websites:

{{cytuj stronę | url = | tytuł = | data dostępu = | autor = | nazwisko = | imię = | autor link = | data = | rok = | miesiąc = | format = | praca = | opublikowany = | oznaczenie = | strony = | język = | id = | cytat = }}

You can find the templates on Wikipedia’s help pages, but who am I kidding - if you’re the McGyver type, you not only know that, but you’ve actually found a way to improve the template, and suggested it to the developers.

P a g e | 23

Page 24: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Level Six. Publish (and Win)

When your translation is complete, references and all, email a link to your User page to me first so I can take a look at your job and offer feedback (use my email address at [email protected]) - wait for a green light from me.

---

Done? Okay, the final chapter in your mission begins now. This is where the bad guys gloat and die, the string section plays an epic adagio and you drop an ironic one-liner and ride off into the sunset. However, first you have drop off your article safely at Wikipedia. If you don’t, it’s all been in vain.

---

If your article already exists as a stub (a tiny, incomplete article), your job is easy. Just go to that article, click Edit, and then copy and paste all of your text and code into the window. There is another box below where you explain your edit: use it. Write something like:

Zamieszczam tłumaczenie wersji angielskojęzycznej artykułu.

---

If your article does not exist at all, your job is not exactly hard, but different: you’re going to need to create that article first. It’s not that hard - just google this:

Wikipedia: tworzenie haseł

then navigate to the section Tworzenie nowego hasła and follow the instructions you find there. Important: before you click Save to publish your translation, complete the step described below.

---

Okay, do you remember that Facebook group, I Wish Music Played During Epic Moments of My Life? Well, today it will.

P a g e | 24

Page 25: piotrszymczak.infopiotrszymczak.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipe… · Web viewWhen the Internet was created, it seemed like humanity was about to enter an Eden of interconnectivity

Open YouTube in another tab and find “Also sprach Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss.

Click Play. Go back to your article in the other tab. Wait 60 seconds. Click Save. Smile. You’ve done your bit to save the world.

THE END

P a g e | 25