As you know, Wikipedia is the largest, most influential online reference resource in the world. Contributors collaborate to add knowledge to the site’s range of information using Wikipedia’s five pillars as a standard.
Once you’ve registered for a Wikipedia account, you will be able to edit existing articles and create new ones. Some edits might be as simple as adding visuals, offering new details with citations, publishing translations from one language to another, or something more complicated like adding a text box. You will also be able to create new articles.
Here’s a quick tutorial:
Here are some resources that will help:
- Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia
- These beginner training videos from Art + Feminism are really helpful.
- Wikimedia Commons contains images you can use in your edits and articles. You can also add your images for public use.
- Visual Editor User Guide.
- A tutorial on how to create an article from Wikipedia.
- Participate in formal edit-a-thons such as the Wikipedia World AIDS Day Edit-a-thon at The Center or Asian Month Edit-a-thon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
One of the most important resources for making edits and for creating new articles is references. You will need reliable sources that will serve as citations to the facts you present. Scholarly articles, books, digital archives, and mainstream newspapers are excellent sources. Blogs do not meet the standard for reliable source material. Here are some of our library databases that can help you find references for your citations:
- OneSearch
- Oxford ArtOnline
- Oxford MusicOnline
- ProQuest
- American History and Life
- American Periodicals
- America Fact Finder
- Art Museum Image Gallery
- Bibliography of the History of Art
- Black Thought and Culture
Here are some resources for our new article on Tom Smith:
An article from Vice
and from The Unlimited magazine, an interview in ArtNet, and this article on the exhibition “making Strange” at Spring Break, and one on a show called “Delusions” at Rox Gallery.
And for those of you who will use this Wikepedia Project to translate a page, here are the guidelines from Wikipedia.
And, if anyone would like to participate in edit-a-thons around the City, here’s a list of meet ups, including Wikipedia’s Asian Month at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 19.
