I've just been looking at Wikimedia Commons Pictures of the Year. I'm in absolute awe of the talent of those photographers. It just goes to show, one post on a forum and it can open the door to education of some sort. In this case a vast amount of information from many people around the world.
I was reflecting that, by some measures, Wikimedia (image commons, Wikipedia, Wiktionary etc) probably represents the biggest single volunteer community project there has ever been.
Of all the classes of Wikipedia articles, science and medicine probably scores best on conintuous rigor. There seems to be most articles on arts /culture and then sport. It has not developed evenly. Lesser known British poets was in a parlous state 14 years ago, for example, which is why I took that area on to try and overhaul.
When you open the link on a computer, you should see various tabs at the top of the page. (Some of these options are not available on phones as there isn't space to navigate it all). Pretty much all WP pages will come with a Talk page and a History page. The talk page is for anyone and everyone to discuss the construction of the article - questions, citations, accuracy, missing aspects, odd language, potential conflicts of interest of editors and everything else. The talk pages are there for everyone to work on improving the article, not to discuss the subject generally. So you might think the article has too much specific and unneeded detail on wills and legacies and you could explain why on the talk page with other interested editors. In this example, we would not discuss our personal opinions of Keats or his poetry as those are not relevant to improving the article.
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Most article talk pages will have a content box detailling recent discussions
If there has been a lot of discussion, older topics will be linked in the archive
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At the top of the talk page there is a set of ratings given. Reviewers come through periodically and assess how far the article has got.
The rating system works on the basis of a C class (starting out), a B class (pretty good), a Good Article (lots of work has been done to make it high quality) and lastly a Featured Article (of the highest level WP can offer).
The Good Article is marked with a little round, green disc
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A featured article is marked by a gold star.
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The History tab opens to a page that shows you all the changes to the article that were made since the article was created. You can select a version of the article from a few hours/days/years ago, and compare it to another version. So, below, I have selected to compare a version of the Keats article from 22 Nov at 22.18 with a the current version. You can then easily see how changes were made, when and by whom. You can revert changes and leave an edit reference explaining why your changes. If it's a potentially controversial edit, you can leave your reasoning on the talk page for discussion.
This system makes vandalism fairly easy to spot and reverse.
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I hope that gives a bit of a sense of how to go on to explore, if you fancy delving into WP a bit further, or even contribute yourself. 😱
I'm always happy to help out anyone wanting to know about exploring or editing WP.
Well, @Fire, you have really opened my eyes! Thank you for your comprehensive explanation. I am repeatedly amazed by the useful information I can pick up on this site, not just gardening!
If anyone needs incentivising to join the Wikipedia crew: regular editors and article writers now get free access to over a hundred paywalled journal archives and digital archives, including is ''Nature'', Jstor, ''The British Medical Journal'', Oxford University Press, MIT Press, Cambridge Uni Press, Newspapers.com, Ancestry.com (limits), The Royal Society and the Gale database. It's quite a resource to support public education.
Posts
It's just my take on it. Other people will have other perspectives.
It just goes to show, one post on a forum and it can open the door to education of some sort. In this case a vast amount of information from many people around the world.