Waterford Wikipedia Needs You!

jmcc

The Waterford Wikipedia pages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterford) are being changed and the colloquialisms section has been deleted. This is not a good thing. Luckily some of it can be recovered and it will be included in a section about the Waterford dialect and accent.

The Waterford section needs to be improved and extended. It needs Waterford people to do the writing and editing. It needs you!

The Sports section needs to be expanded and given Waterford's sporting achievements, there is a lot of material that can be added.

The political section could also be expanded to cover the local government.

A local architecture section would be a good idea as Waterford has some amazing architecture stretching back to the end of the last Ice Age.

The ideas matter. Text can always be edited to make it more readable. Waterford needs the people with ideas to make a difference. Waterford needs you!

Regards...jmcc

Daysha

Wow that sports section really needs a lot of works, theres not even any info, just links. There's tons of stuff about the tradition of soccer and hurling in the city that we could use

I would like to contribute to that section but I've never edited wikipedia so I haven't a clue about the way its formatted or anythiing

jmcc

deise59 wrote: »

Wow that sports section really needs a lot of works, theres not even any info, just links. There's tons of stuff about the tradition of soccer and hurling in the city that we could use

I would like to contribute to that section but I've never edited wikipedia so I haven't a clue about the way its formatted or anythiing

I've crossposted some of this from a reply on UTD.

Editing is easy enough. You can set up an account on Wikipedia and then just click on the 'edit' link to edit a section on a page. The links below provide some guidelines. The important points are the use of ==text== to create titles, subtitles and section heads. The = signs before and after the text set the text as a heading. Internal Wikipedia links to existing pages in Wikipedia are Link name. Links to external webpages and sites are [http://www.examplesitename.tld] though there has to be a very good reason to include the link. Wikipedia is not a web directory and unnecessary links tend to get deleted quickly.

There are people here who know how to edit Wikipedia articles and also how to write. So it might be worth posting stuff on the thread if you feel that the text needs improvement.

---%<snip>%---
With writing a book, the hardest pages to write are the starting page and the end page. It is the same thing with creating an article on Wikipedia. Figure out what you want to write about. Do some research on the topic to see if it can be condensed into a few paragraphs and then bash it around a while to make it more readable. Very few people, even professional writers, get things right first time - that's why the 'edit' function is so useful.

It might also be possible for users to post what their ideas and articles here first for comments and suggestions on how to improve them. People shouldn't be worried about criticism - constructive criticism can be useful. And sometimes other people can see an error that you've missed.

Writing is a skill and it is relatively easy to learn. Short sentences are best. This is factual writing so what has to be written about is the event or the topic. The Five Ws is some of the best advice for factual writing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws

Most of the stuff is straightforward though.

What Wikipedia is about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars

Editing Pages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page

The Help Section
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents

A Tutorial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial

Regards...jmcc

Daysha

Wow, great stuff there jmcc. I'll look into it, when I have the time that is!

mike65

Just put in a short history of Waterford Utd.

Mike.

trishw78

I think you should mention 'red lead' as i've NEVER heard of it till the Blaa thread.

jmcc

trishw78 wrote: »

I think you should mention 'red lead' as i've NEVER heard of it till the Blaa thread.

It is mentioned here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaa

Regards...jmcc

ToxicPaddy

trishw78 wrote: »

I think you should mention 'red lead' as i've NEVER heard of it till the Blaa thread.

Ohhh red lead in a warm flowery blaa with loadsa butter.. nyom nyom

PetraMac

As a Waterford lass I think the recent changes made to the Wikipedia page are great. Sorry to disagree with you jmcc, but the previous Colloquialisms section was not appropriate for Waterford's main Wikipedia entry due to the language used in some of the entries. Let's not forget that this is the main page a lot of people all over the world arrive at when they search for "Waterford" on the internet. (The City and Country Council websites are fine for what they are but they locally-oriented sites - they are not a representation of the city and county on a global level.)
If we want to think global, promote our city, achieve university status etc., we have to present the right image to the outside world. Entertaining though local slang and swearwords might be to Deise residents, they have no place on the page that represents us to the world at large.

JohnC.

It's not a tourism site. It's an encyclopaedia.

PetraMac

You're right that it's not _only_ a tourism site, Kahless. The point I was making is that the Wikipedia page is the main page that represents Waterford on the internet now - be it for potential toursists, people who just want to find out about Waterford, academics, or whatever. Even if you do regard the page as purely an encyclopaedia, the content still has to be appropriate for something that represents Waterford to the the world. That's all I was saying.

jmcc

PetraMac wrote: »

As a Waterford lass I think the recent changes made to the Wikipedia page are great. Sorry to disagree with you jmcc, but the previous Colloquialisms section was not appropriate for Waterford's main Wikipedia entry due to the language used in some of the entries.

It is ok to disagree with me. People do that quite often. A new section on the linguistic peculiarities and history of Waterford (such as the uvular R pronounciation due to the Norman French influence) will be added along with academic citations. Waterford has a far richer history than most other Irish cities and the faint echoes of the accents of those who made Waterford home thoughout history can still be heard.

Regards...jmcc