This week, the Signpost takes an in-depth look at the tutorials and workshops occurring at Wikimania 2006. Discussions will take place online as well as in the workshop rooms. Registration for Wikimania and for Hacking Days continues online.

There are a number of hands-on workshops planned for Wikimania. A full list is available on the conference site. We previously described the Wiktionary workshop that is planned; descriptions of the other workshops follows.

Semapedia
Semapedia.org is a non-profit, community-driven project that hyperlinks physical places with information. Their goal is to connect the virtual and physical world by bringing knowledge from Wikipedia to the relevant place in physical space and make it accessible via mobile internet. The workshop on Semapedia, led by Alexis Rondeau and Stan Wiechers, will demonstrate how Semapedia works and how you can distribute knowledge using cell-phone readable physical hyperlinks yourself. In addition to the workshop, participants will go for a tagging session afterwards to try out the system in real-life. These tags will remain up during the conference as a demonstration and possible experimentation.

Wikisource workshop: editorial choices

In this workshop, Jennifer Zagurski will explain the ins and outs of Wikisource, one of the newer Wikimedia projects. Wikisource provides the text of out-of-copyright works (or 'source documents'); Zagurski will guide participants in understanding the variety of editorial choices they may need to make when contributing at Wikisource. including how to decide whether a work should be presented as a stand alone article or as sub page of a larger article; how to chose which edition of a work is most appropriate to be added to Wikisource; how should minor differences between editions be noted if at all, and more. Through group discussion participants will be able to formulate some rules of thumb that can be used to help make these decisions.

Copyright basis and Wikipedia: A workshop

In this workshop, Jean-Baptiste Soufron, the chief legal officer for the Foundation, will provide an introduction to copyright rules for publishing on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, and address questions such as how to properly use copyright to input data into wikipedia, and how to properly re-use the content of wikipedia. The workshop will take the form of a 45-minute presentation of copyright basis, followed by a discussion with participants asking questions related to their experiences and work. It is hoped that the content of these discussions will take the form of a wiki webpage with someone dedicated to input the content of the session on the wiki. The objective of the workshop is to provide a simple copyright manual, and a good introduction to copyright, for new and old Wikipedians.

Tips for conducting research and evaluating information

This workshop, led by Jessica Baumgart, will help participants conduct more efficient research and provide an introduction to some of the tricks of library research (both useful for achieving verifiability). Baumgart writes, "Do you ever try to search for that one fact that would finish an entry, but don’t know where to go? Do you yearn to know more about a variety of sources? Do you find conflicting information in various sources and wonder what to believe? If you answered, “Yes!” to any of these questions, then this workshop is for you.

The workshop will discuss some basics about conducting research by sharing tips about using public records, people, business information, libraries, archives, databases, and the Internet to find information. We will even learn about some sources of images. Since knowing how to approach research can be almost as important as knowing what sources to use, we will learn about some strategies for conducting research. The workshop will also provide some guidelines for evaluating information and strive to inspire discussion among the participants about useful sources."

Using Wikipedia’s knowledge in your applications

The semantic web is a hot topic in internet and wiki development. In this workshop, Markus Krötzsch, Denny Vrandecic, and Max Völkel will help you understand and deploy semantic technologies in applications. The workshop, a follow-up to a similar presentation given at Wikimania 2005, will include a short introduction to Semantic Web technologies, presentation of basic technologies to use with the Semantic Mediawiki extension, source code and demonstrations.

Fighting vandalism with Vandalfighter

This workshop, led by Henna, will be useful to any Wikimedian engaged in RC Patrol or vandalfighting. Henna will explain demonstrate the Vandalfighter tool, which she is currently lead developer on, and which developed as a way to more easily view recent changes and spot vandalism. The workshop will also discuss other ways to fight vandals and provide a forum for sharing ideas.

Next week: some local and logistical information. Wikimania is just a few short weeks away...