Wikidata:How to create Wikidata Tours/Design

How to create Wikidata tours

• 
  Introduction
• 
  Design
• 
  Write
• 
  Tour item
• 
  JavaScript
• 
  Test
• 
  Publish
• 
  Translate
• 
  Troubleshoot

Designing a tour

Designing a tour is a very important step. Planning what people will learn from the tour and what order the information should be presented in will help make the tour as good as possible. This step guides you through the process of designing and saving an outline of your tour, which can be used for discussion and gaining feedback if required. This only needs to be an overall plan for the tour, as all of the actual content and detail will be added in the next step. You can look at other tours at Wikidata:Tours for ideas and inspiration. If the new tour is closely based on an existing tour, you may skip the Design and go directly to the Write step.

After reading the guidance below, create an outline of the tour in your own 'user space'. To create the new page, navigate to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:NAME/tours/TOUR NAME (replacing NAME with your own wiki username, and TOUR NAME with your chosen tour name), then click the "create" button to start adding content.

Decide on the primary goal

Choose a primary goal for the tour, what do you want users to learn by taking the tour? Each tour should only have one primary goal, although of course be there will always some supplementary things to learn while running through the steps.

Design for your audience

Who are you writing the tour for and what knowledge could they already have? If you are writing a Tour on a basic feature of Wikidata like adding a statement or a sitelink the user may be completely new to Wikidata and you should not assume any prior knowledge. If you are introducing a more complex feature of Wikidata like statement rank or date precision you can assume that the user understands the basics of Wikidata.

It is very important to not assume knowledge, to help users learn please link to other Tours or the Wikidata:Glossary when you mention a concept or function. To help people learn use common terms e.g Wikidata uses the term located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) for describing a place, but its very unlikely someone will be looking for this phrase so make sure to use common terms in the tour name and content. It is best to ask people in the target audience to make sure that any assumptions you have made are correct.

Plan the steps of the tour

Plan out the steps of the tour, focusing on the one action or piece of information for each step. It is much better to show something than describe it e.g if you want users to edit as one step, point directly to the edit button.

Wherever possible, tours should use a similar structure, style and language and include links to other Tours so that they feel like part of the same collection. A basic proforma for a tour with all the formatting is available here, please copy this page but do not make any edits on the page. If you would like to copy a section from another tour, you can find all available tour Wiki pages in the "Write" column on the Introduction page progress table.

Note: If you would like to propose any changes to the way existing live tours are structured, the best place to start the discussion is the Wikidata tours talk page.

Information on designing instructions

Here are some more resources on writing instructions which you may find helpful:

• wikiHow: How to Write Clear Instructions
• wikiHow: How to Write Instructions
• Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction
• Technical Writing Essentials: Writing Instructions
• Microsoft: Writing step-by-step instructions