Edit-a-thon

Edit-a-thon poster

An edit-a-thon is an effort to improve a certain part of the wiki over a specific, often short, period of time. They typically focus on a specific topic, such as expanding or updating on articles (such as Independence Day or Accessibility). Edit-a-thons improve the wiki and can be a great way to help new USApedians learn to edit.

Options

Content categorization

Throughout most of the day, there will be a live stream of an editor participating in the Edit-a-thon. You are welcome to join whenever your schedule permits to learn how to participate or get live editing support.  

In an effort to better organize the content on USApedia, this edit-a-thon will focus on:

• Adding Official categories to pages without categories, especially reviewing

On Portal:Category wikiproject

• Wikipedia stubs needing cleanup
• Stubs article

• Updating/expanding on that list of categories
• Reviewing and merging articles needing merging
• As needed

Suggesting pages be archived
Creating pages

Random page challenge

To participate:

• Go to a random page
• See if you can make one change to improve it
• If so, add it to your list
• Go to another random page and repeat the process

Categories and Accessibility

The Edit-a-thon focused on:

• connecting content and improving search adding categories
• improving Accessibility (Alt text, Section headings, and Color contrast) in honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Categorizes

Category tags help keep related content together. Adding these tags makes links at the bottom of the article which take you to the list of all pages in that category. They are now even more important since USApedia's new search will now allow you to use categories as a basis of a search or refine your search results using categories.

The Edit-a-thon will focus on:

• Adding categories
• Updating Official categories, as needed

Adding categories

Edit at Adding categories

You can add categories with both editors (Visual Editor or Enhanced editor). Using Visual Editor

To edit categories in Visual editor, on the "Page options" menu, click the "Categories" item. Clicking on "Categories" opens a dialog that lists existing categories and allows you to add new ones, and to delete existing categories. Adding categories Category editor Sorting categories You also have the option of setting or changing the general (default) sorting key, which determines where the page appears when listed with other pages in the same category.

Location of Categories under the Hamburger menu

Using Enhanced editor

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Adding categories to a wiki page

To add an article to a category using Enhanced editor, you create an internal link to the category just as you would when linking to any other page. By way of example, to add an article to the Parishes category, you would click the Edit tab for the article and add [[Category:Parishes]] at the end of the edit window. (While categories will work when placed anywhere in an article, USApedia practice is to always place them at the end of articles.)

Accessibility

In support of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we will also work to add:

• Alt text
• Section headings
• Color contrast

Please see USApedia:Accessibility for more ways you can make USApedia accessible to everyone.

Alt text

Edit at USApedia:Accessibility#Images

Section headings

Edit at USApedia:Accessibility#Section headings

Color contrast

Edit at USApedia:Accessibility#Color recommendations

Visual Editor

This edit-a-thon will focus on:

1. using Visual Editor to make changes to the wiki
2. connecting articles (Wikifying, Related link circles, Navboxes, etc.)
3. refreshing the list of pages we want the 2018/2019 class of USApedia Interns to create/improve

Editors are encouraged to:

• Spend five (5) minutes testing out the new editor (see Help:Visual editor for more details)
• Consider Five Minute Pledge - Can you spare 5 minutes, 0.2% of your work week, to make a few edits to USApedia?
• Do one of the quick Gardening tasks
• Complete a task from Gardener's Dashboard

Acronyms

All — A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z

Women's History Month

Every Women's History Month March highlights the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society, as the focus for this month's edit-a-thon. It will

• Add biographies of woman saints
• Adding categories to articles about saints women to keep them together

Creating biography articles

Select "Biography" template from the Boilerplate template. See the page creation options below. Frequently Asked Questions about USApedia

Biography categories

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Adding categories to a wiki page

The categories that will be used are:

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Stub creation

The December 2015 ran from December 28th through December 31st, 2015. It focused on creating starter pages called stubs. A stub is an article that is too short to provide comprehensive coverage of the subject, but long enough to provide some useful information.

How do I create a new page on USApedia?

Main page: Help:Creating a page

Creating a new page is very easy.

There are three main methods that are used for creating a new article in USApedia, as described below:

Method 1

Cargo form

Method 2

1. Type the name of the article you wish to create into the Search box. A list of articles matching your article title will appear. If the article already exists, you can selected it and you will be brought to the article. We are using "NEW ARTICLE TITLE" as a placeholder for your new article title in the instructions.
2. If the article does not exist, hit ↵ Enter and you will be brought to the search page.
3. At the top it will read "Create the page "NEW ARTICLE TITLE" on this wiki!"
4. Click on the Red link NEW ARTICLE TITLE (your new article's title).
5. Create the article's content and click the Save page button to save the article.

Method 3

1. Edit an existing article by clicking the Edit tab at the top of the page.
2. Type the title of your new page in a relevant location on the existing page.
3. Make the title of your new page a link.
   1. When using VisualEditor, see Help:Visual editor#Internal links on how to make your article's title an internal link.
   2. When using Enhanded editor, place two square brackets around the title of your new article and save the page. For example, if your article is titled, "My Article", type [[My Article]].
4. This creates a red link to your new article. If the article exists, the link will be blue. If it does not exist, it will be a red link.
5. If the link is red, click the link to create the page. You will be directed to the article creation page described in Method 3.
6. If the link is blue, click the link to check and make sure that the existing article contains all the information you require for your article. If information is missing, you can edit the article by clicking the Edit tab at the top of the page.
7. Click Save page to save the article.

Method 4

1. Type a USApedia URL with the article's file name at the end. For Example, "https://saintapedia.org/wiki/Article_name".
   • Note: URLs cannot contain spaces so make sure to use an underscore between words to represent a space.
   • Note: USApedia naming conventions require the first word of a title to be capitalized, and the rest of the words in the title to be in lower case. The exceptions are proper nouns, for example, "IBM".
2. If the page does not exist, USApedia will direct you to a page with the message, "There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, search the related logs, or edit this page." The text, "edit this page" will be hyperlinked.
3. Click the hyperlinked text to edit the article OR click on the Create tab at the top of the page instead of clicking the "edit this page" link.
4. Create your article's content and click the Save page button to save the article.

Adding YouTube videos

What - Adding YouTube videos to USApedia articles

Why - Adding YouTube videos is a quick way to add value to an article

Steps

1. Pick an article and do a video search with the title
2. Look for a video from a good sources
3. See Adding the video below
4. Add Category:Pages with YouTube videos at the bottom of the article
5. Save the page with an Edit summary

Adding the video

Main page: Help:Video

Any publicly available YouTube video can be streamed on USApedia.

Form based method

Simple version

• In VisualEditor use the add a template
• In the search bar, type "YouTube video"
• Add a description of the video in the first field
• Add the video's URL into the 2nd field
• Click the blue "Insert" button on the top right of the popup screen
• Click the blue "Save change" button on the top right of the screen
• Click the blue "Save change" button on the top right of the popup screen

More options and more steps

File:YouTube iframe example.png

iFrame example

File:YouTube form.png

YouTube form

This method will allow you, once you add the template, to modify the video using a form in VisualEditor)

1. Add the YouTube template to your page
   • Option 1 - Use VisualEditor to add a template, add subst:YouTube template in the template search box and click the blue "Insert" button
   • Option 2 - Copy the video template text in the bullet below.
     • {{#ev:YouTube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRphNpnQGNc|400|right|The Pontificate of John Paul II begins}}
   • By default the video will be aligned to the right, 400 pixels in size, show the Pontificate of John Paul II begins
2. Go to the page in which you want to add the video
3. Click on "Edit Source" to open the page using Enhanced editor and paste the template text where you want to video to appear
4. Save the page
5. Using "Edit," open the page using Help:Visual editor, look for the video to become a block that begins with "<iframe," and double click on it to open up the form.
6. Add the YouTube URL in the "id" field and appropriate text in the "description" field, such as the video title (plus any other changes to the dimensions and alignment)
7. Click on the blue "Apply change" in the upper right hand corner of the form
8. Click on the blue "Save change" in the upper right hand corner of the page
9. Add an edit summary in the window and click on the blue "Save change" in the upper right hand corner of the window
10. Add the category "Pages with YouTube videos"

Basic method

1. go to the youtube video you wish to use
2. copy the video's url
3. go to the article topic you wish to add the video
4. edit the page
5. paste the YouTube url
6. Open a new tab and go to USApedia's YouTube page
7. Copy the video text - {{#ev:youtube|kRphNpnQGNc|frame}}
8. Replace the video ID (dMH0bHeiRNg) or the full URL (depending on the version you use)
9. add an edit summary
10. save the page

Usage

The EmbedVideo parser function expects to be called in any of the following ways:

• {{#ev:service|id}}
• {{#ev:service|id|dimensions}}
• {{#ev:service|id|dimensions|alignment}}
• {{#ev:service|id|dimensions|alignment|description}}
• {{#ev:service|id|dimensions|alignment|description|container}}
• {{#ev:service|id|dimensions|alignment|description|container|urlargs}}
• {{#ev:service|id|dimensions|alignment|description|container|urlargs|autoresize}}
• {{#ev:service|id|dimensions|alignment|description|container|urlargs|autoresize|valignment}}

Playlist

A playlist is a collection of videos. Anybody can make playlists, share them, and friends can add videos to your playlist.

Template

The YouTube playlist template allows you to add a playlist easily, however it does not allow you to adjust some of the settings.

Manual

For all the options, below can be copied and pasted into Enhanced editor.

{{#evt:
service=youtube
|id=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_PiYTMbZvM
|alignment=right
|dimensions=400
|description=Regina Coeli and Holy Rosary
|urlargs=list=PLC9tK3J1RlaYPGhmt_dz5cyFBbDoBOEKB
}}

See also - Help:Video#Playlist example

Best practices

• Open discussion forum to help editors with conference line
• Option for chat
• Could also do after hours
• Promote through internal social media

Ideas

Ideas can now be found at USApedia:Edit-a-thons WikiProject

Related

• USApedia:Ambassadors
• USApedia:Edit-a-thons WikiProject
• {{Editing theme}}

External links

• Edit-a-thon
• Wikipedia:How to run an edit-a-thon
• Training - Running Editathons and other Editing Events