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These self-guided training modules are available to help users learn the basics of contributing to Wikipedia or learn about particular topics.

  • Training for students: a four-part training intended for students doing Wikipedia assignments for class, with more detailed introductions to core Wikipedia policies, editing basics, and more specific editing advice for students.
  • Training for educators: a four-part training for professors and other educators who want to run Wikipedia assignments for class, with introductions to core Wikipedia policies, editing basics, and an overview of best practices for designing and implementing Wikipedia assignments.
  • Training for Wikipedia Ambassadors: a four-part training for Wikipedia Campus and Online Ambassadors, with introductions to core policies and editing basics for those new editing, and an overview of best practices for Wikipedia assignments. For the English Wikipedia, the ambassadors program was discontinued in 2018, and these trainings are a historical resource only. See en:Wikipedia:Education program/Ambassadors.
Documentation


These trainings are built with a page structure and templates that make it relatively easy to use the same content in multiple trainings, add new content, and rearrange existing content.

The basic elements of a training topic are:

  • The index (e.g., Project:Training/For students/Editing index): a list of pages that make up a topic, such as the "Editing" topic within Project:Training/For students. The title of the index should be a subpage at the same level as the individual content pages, and takes the form "Project:Training/<something>/<topic> index". The contents of the index are used by Module:TrainingPages to determine how many pages are in the topic, what the page number of a given page is, and what the previous and next pages are. Thus, pages can be added, removed, or reordered within a topic simply by changing the index.
  • The header / footer templates on each page (e.g, Project:Training/For students/Citing sources): each training page uses {{Project:Training/header}} at the beginning and {{Project:Training/footer}} at the end. The basic parameters are topic (used in both header and footer, indicates which index to use), title (used in header, shows up above the main content), and pagestyle (used in header, determines how wide the main content is, main options are 400-width, 600-width, 800-width). By default, the color scheme is determined using the name of the topic, via {{Project:Training/colors}}; the default color for a new topic can be added by editing that. Alternatively, the color parameter can be used with any valid CSS color.
  • Page content (e.g, Project:Training/core/Citing sources): the content of each page can either be added directly between the header and footer, or transcluded (e.g., from a Project:Training/core page). Depending on the pagestyle set by the header, this will get squeezed into the training page format with a maximum width of 800px or less.

How to port trainings to another wiki

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To port trainings to another wiki, start by transferring over all the templates used in the trainings, as well as a Lua module. (An administrator on the other wiki can import them using Special:Import.)

Main templates
Additional templates that may be useful

Once you have the main templates transferred over (and translated, if necessary), you can either transfer the training content en masse from Category:Wikipedia training and the content pages, which start with "Meta:Training/core/", or you can start building a training from scratch (beginning with the steps above) and port individual pages as needed. You may contact User:AKoval (WMF) for technical assistance.

Using Special:Import

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An administrator can import all the pages at once using Special:Import, if the receiving wiki is configured for interwiki import from Meta.

  1. Check whether import from Meta is enabled for Special:Import. If it is not, contact User:Sage Ross (WMF) about enabling it (or file a bug and let Sage know).
  2. Import the page Module:TrainingPages. (You do not need the history.)
  3. Import the page Meta:Training/Meta with the option to import all included templates.
    You do not need to import the history.
    To avoid overwriting any of the conventional templates included on Meta:Training/Meta, you should select Wikipedia: or the equivalent Project: name as the target namespace. This will create misnamed duplicates of the few templates in the Template: namespace used in the trainings, namely: Template:!, Template:-, Template:Clickable button 2, Template:Documentation, Template:Documentation subpage, Template:Documentation, Template:TOC right, Template:Tl. You can then move any that are not already present into the Template namespace.
    The import will probably produce a timeout error after about 30 seconds. This is okay; the importation will continue.
  4. You should now have a functional copy of the trainings, which you can begin to translate and modify however you wish. If there are problems with this import procedure, report them at m:Meta talk:Training).

How to create a new training

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  1. Make an outline of what the training will cover.
  2. Pick a name, and create a menu such as Project:Training/Example. (Use the inputbox below to use {{Project:Training/menu}} as a starting point.) The training pages will be subpages of this.

  3. Based on your outline, create an index listing the page titles for all the pages that will be part of the training as a subpage of the menu. The index subpage should take the form /<topic> index, such as Project:Training/Example/Welcome index. The pages listed should also be subpages of the menu, with descriptive subpage names. (If your training will be broken up into several topics, create a separate index for each topic.)
  4. Create the first page listed on the index, such as Project:Training/Example/Welcome, using the header and footer templates. It should look something like this:
    {{ Project:Training/header | topic = Welcome | title = Welcome to the Example training }}
    This is the content of the first page.
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
    {{ Project:Training/footer | topic = Welcome }}
  5. If everything is in order, that first page should draw from the index to automatically link to the next page. Create each page until you've done all the pages in the index.
  6. You can reorganize the training by editing the index (and creating any additional pages as needed).
  7. To connect one topic to another, you can use the next and previous parameters in the footer to specify the appropriate page to link to.
  8. Specify the color for each topic by adding the topic and CSS color code to Project:Training/colors.

Additional features

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optional template parameters
  • next / previous – In the {{Project:Training/footer}} template, the next and previous parameters ( "next = Project:Training/Example/foo" ) specify the page linked respectively with the forward and back arrows. If these parameters are absent, the footer template will the topic index to calculate the next and previous page. Using them with no value ("next = ") will make the respective arrow disappear.
  • page – In {{Project:Training/header}}, using the page parameter ("page = 7(b)") will replace the page number calculated by the index. It can be used for pages that aren't part of the index but are still within the topic.
  • link – In {{Project:Training/header}}, using the link parameter ("link = [[Project:Foo|Foo]]") will insert the link specified into the top right of the training page. For example, see Project:Training/For educators/Improve research skills 2.
  • quote / source – In {{Project:Training/header}}, using the quote and source parameters ("quote = I love Wikipedia. | source = Jimmy Wales") will present the quote with nice formatting, using the topic color for the quotation marks. For example, Project:Training/For students/valuable contribution.
  • week – In {{Project:Training/header}}, using the week parameter ("week = 2") will insert {{Project:Training/syllabus links}} into the footer. This is probably only useful if you are porting over the example 12-week syllabus as part of the training. For example, see Project:Training/For educators/Week 2.
other features
The above documentation is transcluded from Meta:Training/doc. (edit | history)
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