Wikipedia:School and university projects/UCI LPS
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hello LPS/Philosophers and welcome to Wikipedia. If you're unfamiliar with Wikipedia, it a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. There is no official confirmation process so any change anyone makes is immeadiately visible. Of course, this makes wikipedia subject to vandalism, but it is usually caught quickly and reverted.
Almost every page on wikipedia can be edited, including this one. To edit a page click on the "edit this page" tab at the top of the screen. Before editing a page, you may want to read the tutorial. If you want to experiment, there is a special page called the sandbox for experimenting. If you want to, you can create an account. You can tell if you're logged in by looking at the top right of the page.
[edit] Finding an article
Wikipedia has a categorization system, which might help you to find pages. Relevant categories might be:
You can also read pages on Philosophy of science, Epistemology, Formal epistemology, Probability, and Philosophy of physics. You might be able to find relevant pages. Incomplete or short articles that pertain to philosophy are listed in Category:Philosophy stubs. These pages are in need of attention, but beware there are a lot of them!
[edit] Good things to do
Wikipedia was recently the subject of a scandal where libelous information was introduced into an article, persisted for 6 months, and was later discovered by the subject of the article. Since the subject was an editor of USA Today, it made a big splash. As a result, people are on the lookout for fake information. You should probably include citations where you can. (See the link for different formats used by wikipedia.) Also, for obvious reasons wikipedia wants to avoid original research and non-neutral articles as much as possible.
If you write a new article, you might think about linking a few other articles to it. You can add a sentence or two to other articles linking in to your new article. You could also put your article into one or more categories if you like. Because of the scandal, anonymous users (users without an account) cannot create new pages. In order to create a new page you will either need to create and account or ask me to create it for you. You can still edit without an account, just not start new articles. If you want a new article created but don't want to make an account, just ask me and I'll start it for you. You will then be able to edit it.
Finally, don't freak out too much about working here. There are a lot of people who do copy-editing and fix-ups, so small mistakes will probably be fixed. If your really worried about doing something wrong, you can read these pages: How to write a great article and Manual of Style.
[edit] Warnings
Wikipedia is a community made up of many different users. Although there are strong injunctions against article ownership, a small minority of users are territorial. Some users can also be less than polite. Wikipedia tries very hard to be a polite community especially to newcommers, but rudeness sometimes happens. If you run into any problems, please contact me, either by email or here on wikipedia. Often making changes bit by bit rather than all at once will soften the blow to egos. Also, if you like, you can discuss pages on the "talk page" prior to editing. The talk page can be accessed by clicking on the "discussion" tab at the top. I actually don't think you'll have any trouble. I have warned the philosopher folks here that you will be coming, and most people are very nice.
