Activity One - Mucking about with Wikitext
Editing a wiki is amazingly simple. After using Wikipedia's tutorial sandbox to experiment I found linking between Wikipedia articles very simple. You don't even have to know the URL. Both the links I created pointed at existing wikis.
My experimental Wikitext:
{{Please leave this line alone (tutorial sandbox heading)}}
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== Heading 1 ==
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[[Typography]] is an important part of [[web design]].
The result:
Typography links to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography and web design to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_design. I found if you enter a non-existent document as a URL on Wikipedia you are asked if you would like to create it.
Readings
I have often heard that Wikipedia is a untrustworthy source of information, but I don't think that is entirely true. As this article says there are many 'Zealots' and 'Good Samaritans' who quickly find errors and graffiti on a page. Of course you can't fully rely on Wikipedia as there is going to be mistakes here and there, but it is a good place to start and I often use the references it provides as a guide to where to look.