User:AP EN 4005

Introduction for Students
Welcome to the AP/EN 4005 User Page on Wikipedia, a project for the students of Dr. Lee Frew's Literature & Animals seminar at York University. This page serves as the Wikipedia assignment handout for the course, and as a space for discussions about the assignment--in the User Talk page that's accessible by clicking the tab above. You are advised to add this page to your Watchlist, by clicking on the star above right, and to change your settings to ensure email notifications when this page updates.

For those of you (like me) who are new to contributing to and editing Wikipedia, there's a pretty steep learning curve involved, at least initially. Fortunately for us, however, this curve is a short one since our project is relatively straightforward and won't require us to become hardcore Wikipedians. Just be advised that Wikipedia has a lot of rules that you'll need to follow.

Before we start things off, please keep in mind that we are guests here and should all behave accordingly. I encourage you to visit Etiquette to review the basic expectations I have of your activities here. Remember that you are responsible for both your own image and that of our class, so, uh, keep it classy.

As well, be ever-mindful of copyright and plagiarism. Your contributions to Wikipedia must be free content: your own original writing supplemented with accurately quoted and cited material. Please review Copyrights and York's Academic Integrity Tutorial.

User Accounts
You will need to have an account for this assignment, so the first step is to create your own user account. Here's a link to a video tutorial on how to do this: Help:Logging_in. When selecting your username, avoid making it specific to this course since if we all have some variation on "EN 4005," we risk getting blocked as spam. Also try to choose a name that won't put the credibility of your work into question (my apologies to Homer Simpson for his email username, "chunkylover53").

How-To
Tutorial is the best place to start learning how to create your page. Please also familiarize yourself with School and university projects - instructions for students. If you have any questions, check the Help:Contents and FAQ/Editing. If you still cannot find what you are looking for, please post on this user group's Talk page--and feel free to answer your classmates' questions there. As well, there's always the friendly people at Help desk to ask, and you can always email me.

While figuring out how to make a userspace, use your sandbox, and learn basic Wikipedia markup language may all present a challenge at first, Wikipedia doesn't really take long to pick up. I made this entire page, for instance, in only a few hours without any prior knowledge of, like, anything involving computers beyond the basics of email, Angry Birds, and Word. If you are struggling, though, do let me know and we'll figure things out together.

Description
Your task for this assignment is to offer Wikipedia users reliable information on a topic of your choosing that broadly relates to the issues, concepts, figures and/or texts under scrutiny in this course. Contributing a minimum of approximately 750 words of content, you may either add a new article to Wikipedia, or develop an existing stub so that it may receive article status.

Process
Step 1: Select a topic
 * your topic can directly relate to your final paper or to anything else in the course
 * Wikipedia stubs can be found on this list
 * missing Wikipedia articles are sometimes requested by other users
 * you can create your own missing article even if it hasn't been requested by other users
 * with the exception of a plot summary, you can add any section(s) to an existing Wikipedia article

Step 2: Post your topic beside your name in the Student Selections section below.
 * you do this by hitting the Edit tab above, scrolling down to the appropriate section, and typing in your topic after the colon that follows your name
 * you can turn your topic into a link by placing double brackets around it

Step 3: Research your topic and draft your article
 * you can create a sandbox in your userspace to draft your work
 * a helpful video on creating a sandbox in your userpage is available here
 * there is a helpful Article Wizard to help you create your page
 * your article must incorporate a minimum of three scholarly sources
 * remember that your article is not an essay or other form of original research, but rather a clear, verifiable, and neutral presentation of information. For more details see SYN.

Step 5: Post your completed article to Wikipedia - due 1 March 2013

Step 6: Access and engage with your classmates' articles
 * You should expect that the course lecturer, other students, your friends, and even (or especially) other Wikipedia editors (not affiliated with our course) will leave you various messages on your talk pages. It is customary to leave new messages at the bottom of the talk/discussion pages, and to reply to somebody's messages on their talk pages. If you want to leave somebody a message, make sure you are editing their talk page, not their user page. Remember to sign your talk and discussion messages. You may want to watch this tutorial on using talk pages: Wikipedia:Tutorial/Talk_pages
 * This is important: Both users and articles have talk pages. Be sure to limit article talk page postings to editorial comments to improve the article. More scholarly comments, questions, and discussions must be posted to your classmates' user talk pages.
 * Don't panic if/when your page begins to be altered, expanded, or improved. You should welcome it!

Bonuses
If you demonstrate productive engagement with your classmates' pages (offering edits, participating in Talk page discussions, asking helpful questions, etc.), I will take this as a good sign and consider it qualitatively in your assignment's overall grade.

If you would like to invite heavier public traffic to your page, you can have it nominated to be featured on the Wikipedia Main Page under the "Did You Know..." section. Be aware that the DYK section has a number of requirements for eligibility, including that your page must be a minimum of 1500 words of content. Details about the DYK rules and process can be found here. If your page is successfully nominated as a DYK article on or before 8 April 2013, you will receive a bonus of one full letter grade.

Important Dates

 * 1 March 2013: Your article to be posted to Wikipedia by midnight (note this deadline has been extended from 25 Feb.)
 * 1 April 2013: Your comments and peer-reviewing to be completed
 * 8 April 2013: Bonus deadline for DYK nomination

Other Resources
Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * Your first article
 * Starting_an_article
 * Writing better articles
 * Article development
 * The Wikipedia Article Wizard
 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Manual of Style

Clarifications and Updates
Coming soon?