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A Walk through the Wikiverse PDF Free Download

A Walk through the Wikiverse PDF free Download. Think more deeply and widely.

University of Texas at Arlington University of Texas at Arlington

MavMatrix MavMatrix

Librarian & UTA Libraries Staff Publications UTA Libraries

10-25-2017

A Walk through the Wikiverse A Walk through the Wikiverse

Michael Barera

Follow this and additional works at: https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/utalibraries_publications

Recommended Citation Recommended Citation

Barera, Michael, "A Walk through the Wikiverse" (2017).

Librarian & UTA Libraries Staff Publications

. 111.

https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/utalibraries_publications/111

This Presentation is brought to you for free and open access by the UTA Libraries at MavMatrix. It has been

accepted for inclusion in Librarian & UTA Libraries Staff Publications by an authorized administrator of MavMatrix.

For more information, please contact leah.mccurdy@uta.edu, erica.rousseau@uta.edu, vanessa.garrett@uta.edu.

A Walk through

the Wikiverse:

Reflections on my 11 Years

as a Wikipedian

Michael Barera

Archivist, Texas A&M University-Commerce Libraries

Michael.Barera@tamuc.edu

903.886.5433

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Michael_Barera

●All text in this deck of slides and all my photographs are freely licensed

under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license

●Screenshots of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikisource are freely

licensed under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license

●Screenshots of Wikidata are in the public domain (CC0 1.0)

●Screenshots of the GLAMorous and Pageviews tools are not clearly

licensed and are presented under the protections of fair use

●Screenshots of the Bentley Image Bank are also presented under fair use

Brief introduction to Wikipedia

●Wikipedia describes itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”

●Its fundamental principles can be well summed up in its “five pillars”:

1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia

2. Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view

3. Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute

4. Wikipedia’s editors should treat each other with respect and civility

5. Wikipedia has no firm rules

Editing on Wikipedia

●I made my first edit on Wikipedia in April 2006, when I was a 15-year-old

high school student

●Wikipedia editing can be done either through the “traditional” Wiki markup

language editor (which has existed since my introduction to the site over a

decade ago) and through a new, modern WYSIWYG (“what you see is what

you get”) editor called VisualEditor

●I have made over 33,000 edits to Wikipedia over the past 11 and a half

years (over 15,000 edits with my present account, under my real name,

plus over 18,000 edits using a couple earlier pseudonymous accounts)

My first edit

A Wikipedia article as it appears “live”: University of Texas at Arlington

My first edit

Editing on Wikipedia the traditional way: Wiki markup language (the complex code is for the “infobox” on the page)

My first edit

Editing with VisualEditor, a modern WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) editing interface for Wikipedia

My first edit

My first edit, on the page “T34”, in April 2006

My first edit

How the “T34” page appeared in April 2006

My first edit

How the “T34” page appeared in September 2017

Uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons

●Wikimedia Commons is the image host behind Wikipedia and the other

Wikimedia project sites

●I have uploaded over 12,000 of my own photographs to the site

●Many of these photographs are used on Wikipedia articles, in English and

(to a lesser extent) in numerous other languages

●All of my photos are extensively described and categorized, to aid their

browsability and searchability, and geotagged so they can be displayed on

a map

My first edit

Photography example: UNT pedestrian bridge in Denton, my only featured picture on Wikimedia Commons

The “Photographs by Michael Barera” category on Wikimedia Commons, home to my roughly 12,000 uploaded photos

Another of my photographs, UTA’s Santa Fe Freight Depot in Fort Worth

Summary information sample (Santa Fe Freight Depot photograph)

Geolocation sample (Santa Fe Freight Depot photograph): photo was taken from the red and white X at center of map

License sample (Santa Fe Freight Depot photograph)

Extended license sample (Santa Fe Freight Depot photograph)

Categorization sample (Santa Fe Freight Depot photograph)

Raw Wiki markup text sample (Santa Fe Freight Depot photograph)

Another of my photographs, UNT’s Hurley Administration Building in Denton

File usage on other wikis (UNT Hurley Administration Building photograph)

English Wikipedia article on the University of North Texas with my UNT Hurley Administration Building photograph

English Wikipedia article on the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex with my UNT Hurley Administration Building photograph

German Wikipedia article on the University of North Texas with my UNT Hurley Administration Building photograph

Spanish Wikipedia article on the University of North Texas with my UNT Hurley Administration Building photograph

Japanese Wikipedia article on the University of North Texas with my UNT Hurley Administration Building photograph

Chinese Wikipedia article on the University of North Texas with my UNT Hurley Administration Building photograph

Persian Wikipedia article on the University of North Texas with my UNT Hurley Administration Building photograph

Wikisource

●Wikisource is a library that is a sibling project to Wikipedia and Wikimedia

Commons

●It allows users to upload scans of books, magazines, and other

documents, then transcribe these scans into Wikitext, and thus create

searchable, HTML-like documents that can be easily read online or

downloaded as EPUB or PDF files

●I personally enjoy transcribing as a hobby, but it is also a great way for

university (or other) libraries to become involved in contributing to the

Wikimedia sites

My first edit

Transcribing example: Little Women II (“before” with Wiki markup; note the OCR text)

My first edit

Transcribing example: Little Women II (“after” with Wiki markup)

My first edit

Transcribing example: Little Women II (“after” with finalized view)

My first edit

Index page example (in progress): Little Women II, by Louisa May Alcott

My first edit

Index page example (completed): A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce

My first edit

Title page example: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

My first edit

Chapter 1 example: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

My first edit

Page 1 example, with source image: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Wikidata

●Wikidata is a central repository for data on Wikimedia sites

●It is more of a “behind the scenes” project than Wikipedia, Wikimedia

Commons, or Wikisource, but it is very useful for coordinating between

sites

●It allows attributes (such as birthdates, nationalities, and photographs) to

be assigned to unique identifiers corresponding to individual Wikipedia

article subjects in a language-neutral way

UT Arlington page on Wikidata (note the 12 Wikipedia articles on UTA in various languages on the right side of the page)

Greenville, Texas page on Wikidata (note the image included as a “statement”)

Good Articles (GAs)

●Good Articles (GAs) represent a peer review process, and the second

highest level of content on Wikipedia, behind only Featured Articles (FAs)

●I have created and improved three articles to GA status:

○Budd-Michelin rubber-tired rail cars

○GE steam turbine locomotives

○History of East Texas Normal College

●I have two more articles that are currently waiting to be reviewed for GA

status:

○Chrysler Turbine Car

○History of East Texas State Normal College

My first edit

Good Article example: Budd-Michelin rubber-tired rail cars

My first edit

Good Article example: GE steam turbine locomotives

My first edit

Good Article example: History of East Texas Normal College

My first edit

Good Article references: History of East Texas Normal College

Prospective Good Article references: History of East Texas State Normal College

My first edit

Prospective Good Article references: Chrysler Turbine Car

Did You Know (DYK)

●Did You Know (DYK) is a process for incentivizing new and recently

improved content on Wikipedia by rewarding such articles by running them

on the main page on a particular day

●The requirements are much less exacting than for GAs, but still ensure a

fundamental level of quality

●I have successfully nominated and passed 61 DYKs in my career as a

Wikipedian

My first edit

DYK example: Arkansas Air & Military Museum

My first edit

DYK example: J. Mason Brewer

My first edit

DYK example: Babe Didrikson Zaharias Museum & Visitor Center

My first edit

DYK example: Hopkins County Courthouse

My first edit

DYK example: Ezekiel Airship

My first edit

DYK running on the Wikipedia main page: Ezekiel Airship

Tracking contributions and development

●There are some great tools for tracking contributions, especially

GLAMorous, which allows me to keep track of where and how all of my

photographs are used across the Wikimedia sites, including on all

language Wikipedias

●The Pageviews tool is also a great way to keep track of the number of

views individual articles I have created or improved garner over a particular

period of time; I especially like the Massviews subtool, which allows for the

easy comparison of the pageviews of multiple articles in the same

A Walk through the Wikiverse PDF Free Download

A Walk through the Wikiverse PDF free Download. Think more deeply and widely.

Uploaded by _lauren_lopez_ on 5/9/2026

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