User:TDang/Class editing

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Once you've checked out my getting started suggestions, created an account, and have a basic familiarity with WIkibooks, here's things to keep in mind as you edit.

  1. Keep learning as you go. You will likely pick up the basics of wiki editing quickly, but there will be a lot of finer points which you don't need right away, but will become helpful later.
  2. Feel free to work beyond the bounds of the class project. But don't let such extra work suck up too much of your time.
  3. Communicate lots. Use the discussion pages to communicate with anyone working on the same material as yourself, or even those working on other material.
  4. Contribute. Be bold in your editing. If you make a mistake, it can be fixed later.
  5. Behave. Your behavior on Wikibooks is visible to the the entire Internet. Please keep your behavior in mind whether working within or outside the class project. Here are specifics to keep in mind:
    1. Be civil and don't engage in personal attacks.
    2. Don't vandalize any pages.
    3. Keep copyright in mind. More about this below in Plagiarism
    4. Everything you do is being tracked and can be reviewed later, not just by me, but by anyone. For instance, you can see all the Wikibook edits I've done (including this one) by going to Special:Contributions/TDang.
    5. If you don't keep these behavior guidelines in mind, there is a chance you can be blocked from editing, temporarily or permanently. That would seriously impact your ability to contribute to the class project.

Plagiarism[edit | edit source]

The rules for contributing to a Wikibook here will be somewhat different than those for a typical school paper. Plagiarism must still be kept in mind, but the application is different.

  1. The most important thing to keep in mind is respecting copyrights. Don't copy verbatim (or copy with simple re-wording) copyrighted material from most sources, except for small amounts of material.
  2. When you do copy small amounts of material, provide a reference to the source. (References to facts and ideas drawn from other works are also very helpful.)

There are however, exceptions which are particularly relevant here. The above rules would hold if you were considering including material from out textbook. However, if you were to draw information from a Wikipedia article (such as behavioral economics), you are allowed, if you like, to copy large amounts of material, provided you do so in the right way. If you felt that that page was particularly valuable, you could copy the whole thing into a chapter of the book as a starting point. This wouldn't be violating the copyright because the page is available under a copyleft license (specifically the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license), which gives you the right to do so.

The material from Wikipedia is still copyrighted as well as copylefted, so there's a special way to put it into a wikibook. Instead of just copying the text, you request the page to be imported. This gets a little complicated. If you decide you want to do this, communicate with me and we'll figure it out together.

Regardless of the source of your material, this is a class project, and for the sake of academic honesty, I will want it to be clear when you include external material. If you think it's helpful to creating the book, by all means, copy material which you can legitimately copy. I ask that you make a note of when you do so, however. You can do that by putting a comment in the article's talk page noting where the material originated. Alternatively, you can link to the original source in the edit summary.