Playing In Your Sandbox

Photo: Wikimedia Foundation CC BY-SA 4.0

You are welcome to Lesson 2 of Wikipedia 101e – Playing In Your Sandbox.

Requirements: You are going to need a laptop, internet and a browser, and 3 tabs opened.

This lesson combines screenshots and text instructions as the teaching materials. Email your instructor Sandister Tei (community@wmgh.org) if you have any issues.

The sandbox for us Wikipedians is simply a place to practice, before one edits live Wikipedia pages.

To access your Sandbox, you can go to www.wikipedia.org and select the English Wikipedia. You can also visit any Wikipedia page.

Steps to accessing and testing your sandbox

Step 1. Log in. A group of links become available on the top right side of every Wikipedia page once you log in.

Among them you will see the ‘Sandbox’ link. Click the ‘Sandbox’ link to open you sandbox page. Refer to Screenshot one.

Step 2. Now, on the Sandbox page, on the right, you will see ‘Read’, ‘Edit’, ‘Edit source’, ‘View history’ links. Click the ‘Edit’ link.

You will notice that a toolbar now appears at the top of the page. You have now entered editing mode. Refer to Screenshot two.

Step 2a. If you don’t have the Edit link, go to ‘Preferences’, and on the page, go to the ‘Editor’ section, and select ‘Show me both editor tabs’. Save your settings. Click ‘Sandbox’ link at the top right again to return to the exercise. The ‘Edit’ link should appear by now.

Step 3. Check the tool bar out. You will notice it has two arrows which are for undo and redo. It has a ‘Paragraph’ tab. Click it to check it out.

Also, there is the formatting tab which gives you the option to make your text bold, italic, among others. There is ‘Cite’, bullet points, ‘Insert’ and so on.

These remind you of the classic tool bars or panels used in Microsoft Word, Pages or Office Writer for Linux. They function in a similar way.

Step 4. Click on any empty space within the empty editor space. Type: ‘I am learning to edit Wikipedia.’ Refer to Screenshot two.

Step 5. Now look at the top right, you will see a button with ‘Publish changes’ (It turns blue when you type).  Click it to save your text. 

A box will pop up asking you to describe the changes you made. For now, ignore the box and proceed to click ‘Publish changes’ again.

That’s it. Done! You have made an edit.

Now I will visit your sandboxes from today to see if you indeed carried out the exercise. 

If you have any concerns with the program, email me and my team via community@wmgh.org. Your third lesson is on the way.