Lara Nicosia is the liaison librarian for African and African American Studies, History, and Religion & Classics and she is always happy to help!
Lara Nicosia is the liaison librarian for African and African American Studies, History, and Religion & Classics and she is always happy to help!
Wikipedia sandboxes are a great way to work on editing an article without making direct edits to a live entry. While your sandbox is considered your own personal space on Wikipedia's website, anyone that knows your username can access your sandbox's contents so you should avoid including personal information or any other information that you wouldn't want to be made public for all time (information on Wikipedia is not easily removed...it remains in an entry's version history).
While all users are given a default sandbox to work in, you can also create sandboxes for specific projects. Creating a project-specific sandbox is an effective way to retain a record of your contributions to an entry and manage multiple editing projects at the same time.
Follow the directions below to learn how to access your sandbox and create a project-specific sandbox for your class.
Step 1: Log into your Wikipedia account: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin
Step 2: Click the "Sandbox" link at the top-right of the screen – this is your default sandbox for all projects.
Step 3: Click the "Edit Source" tab to begin editing your sandbox
Step 1: Log into your Wikipedia account: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin
Step 2: Click the "Account" icon at the top-right of the screen, then click "Sandbox" this is your default sandbox for all projects.
Step 3: Go to the URL for your sandbox, remove everything after "sandbox", then append/your_course_number (e.g. chm275) to the end of the URL and hit enter this will be the URL for your project-specific sandbox (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:STEMlibrarian/sandbox/chem275)
Note: Wikipedia URLs are case sensitive be sure to write your course number in all lowercase letters.
Step 4: Click "Start the User:YOUR_USERNAME/sandbox/chem275 page" to create your sandbox.
Note: Custom project sandboxes are not automatically tracked on Wikipedia so make sure you bookmark the page in your browser to easily return to the content...if you don't have a record of the link, you won't be able to return to the page.
Being comfortable editing Wikipedia takes time and practice – mistakes can be fixed and nothing is "gone" forever...so be bold!
One way to get more comfortable with Wikipedia's editing language is to create a "fake" entry in your sandbox. This will allow you to focus on the markup/style of Wikipedia, rather than the content.
Use the templates linked below to create a fictional biography for a person or character of your choosing – remember, don't include personal information in your entry!
There are two types of links on Wikipedia internal links and external links.
Internal links, also known as wikilinks, point to other Wikipedia entries or content. When you are looking at an article and you see a word displayed in blue, that's a wikilink. The purpose of wikilinks is to help users quickly connect with related articles and provide context around the terms used in an entry. If you see a link displayed in red, that means that a Wikipedia entry matching that term does not exist.
External links point to websites outside of Wikipedia. These links are also displayed in blue, but are followed by a symbol to let you know that the link points to a non-Wikipedia source. Wikipedia encourages you to limit the use of external links except when a site contains "meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article". Additional guidelines on using external links can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links.
Wikilinks are the easiest links to include in an entry. Simply enclose the word to which you would like to link in square brackets:
[[University of Rochester]]
Wikipedia tries to match your linked word to the URL of an existing Wikipedia entry. When you preview your edits, any link that has a corresponding entry will appear in blue; if Wikipedia couldn't find a corresponding entry, your link will appear red. For example, University of Rochester would work as a link because it corresponds to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Rochester. If the wikilink had been formatted as [[U of R]], Wikipedia would not be able to find a corresponding match and the link would have appeared in red.
Sometimes you may want to include a wikilink that does not match an entry's URL (usually for the sake of readability). You can do this by including a properly formatted wikilink followed by a vertical bar ("|") and the phrase or term you would like to actually appear in the entry.
[[Rochester, New York|Rochester]]
The wikilink above would link to the Rochester, New York article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochester,_New_York), but would show as Rochester (no New York) in the article itself depending on the context, this could improve readability.
External links are added in a similar way to internal links except that you use a single set of square brackets:
[//library.rochester.edu]
For readability's sake, you may want the link to appear as a phrase or term rather than a URL in the entry's text. You can do this by including a properly formatted link followed by a space and the phrase or term you would like to actually appear in the entry.
[//library.rochester.edu River Campus Libraries]
The link above would link to the library's homepage (https://library.rochester.edu), but would show as River Campus Libraries in the article itself depending on the context, this could improve readability.
Note: While not required, Wikipedia recommends that you drop the "https" at the start of a link instead, start the link with "//" as shown above.
Wikipedia requires that you use images that are part of the Wikimedia Commons. You can search the Wikimedia Commons for images uploaded by other users or upload an image of your own. To incorporate an image into your Wikipedia entry choose one of the following options:
Step 1: Search the Wikimedia Commons for an image you can incorporate into your Wikipedia entry
Step 2: Click on an image you want to use and then click "Use this file"
Sample Code for Inline Image
[[File:Sarin Structural Formulae V.1.svg|Sarin Structural Formulae V.1]]
Sample Code for Thumbnail Image
[[File:Sarin Structural Formulae V.1.svg|thumb|Sarin Structural Formulae V.1]]
Step 1: Use the Wikimedia Upload Wizard to upload a file to Wikimedia Commons follow the step-by-step directions in the Upload Wizard
Step 2: You will be asked to provide a description and categories for your image. To find appropriate categories, check out the categories assigned to related images. For chemical compounds the category is typically the name of the compound (e.g. Sarin).
Step 3: At the end of the Upload Wizard you will see a code snippet for embedded images and thumbnail images. Copy the appropriate line of code and paste it into your Wikipedia entry.
Wikipedia has a built-in citation feature that makes it relatively easy to add citations to your entry. If you are creating a new entry, or editing an existing entry without a references list, you will also need to add a reference list directions for both of these processes are below:
Wikipedia has a built-in citation feature which makes it easy to add references for books, articles, and websites. For a complete list of citation templates, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_templates.
Step 1: Place your cursor where you would like the in-text citation to appear. From the "Source Editing" window, click "Cite" to choose a citation template. Built-in templates are available for books, news stories, journal articles, and websites.
Step 2: Fill out as many citation fields as you can. If you know the PubMed ID or DOI for an article, you can put that number in the corresponding box and click the magnifying glass icon this will autommatically fill-in many of the fields for you.
Step 3: Assign your citation a name using the "Ref Name" field. This will allow you to quickly insert the same citation later in the entry if needed. A good format for a citation name is often the first author's last name followed by the year of publication (e.g. smith2019). Click "Insert" to insert your completed citation into your entry.
Step 3: To use the same citation again, click the "Named References" button and choose your named citation from the list. This will insert an abbreviated form of your original citation.
If you are working with an existing Wikipedia entry, it will likely already have a reference list in place. If not (or if you are creating a new entry, you need to add a references section at the bottom of the entry.
Step 1: Go to the last section of your entry and click "Edit Section" to get started. At the bottom of the section add the following heading and shortcut token to automatically generate your refernces list:
==References==
{{Reflist}}