User:ChandlerH/wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It's also quickly becoming one of the most popular research tools that our students will use. To help them properly use Wikipedia, we need to understand it ourselves. Our goal today is to get an understanding of how Wikipedia works, both as a reader and as an editor.

Introduction to Wikipedia
Wikipedia is the most famous example of what is called a wiki. The term comes from a Hawaiian word that means "quickly". Today, it is most often used to mean a collaborative website that can be edited quickly.

History of Wikipedia The who, what, when and why of Wikipedia.

Wikipedians Who uses Wikipedia?

Wikipedia's Reliability
Because it's very easy to add content to Wikipedia, there's a very real problem with keeping vandalism, POV edit warring, and misinformation off the site. Misinformation is a basic harmless mistake that can be easily corrected with proper facts. POV edit wars happen when people want an article to reflect their point of view, and only their point of view. (Wikipedia is meant to use a neutral point of view, or NPOV, in their articles.) Vandalism ranges from the easy to correct, like totally blanking a page, to more difficult to keep up with.

John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy Vandalism that seemed personally motivated, and which went months without corrections.

Talk:Elephant/Colbert Vandalism that sprang from a joke on a popular television show.

Nature comparison of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica In a December, 2005 study, Nature magazine found that articles on Wikipedia were almost comparable to Britannica articles in terms of accuracy.

Looking at Wikipedia
We're going to take a few minutes to navigate around Wikipedia. First, we'll look at the main page. Then, we'll look at an article that has almost everything you might ever find on a Wikipedia article.

Main Page

Doctor Who

Things to Look For
Wikipedians use templates like signposts, to point out things that readers and editors might want to keep in mind. Most of the templates are self-explanatory. For example, a template that tags an article as controversial means that there has been significant controversy between editors on how to present the subject in the article. Other templates require a little more knowledge about how Wikipedia works in order to understand them.

Template:Pp-dispute When there is a major dispute on how to edit an article, or a lot of vandalism, an article may be protected. When an article is protected, nobody can edit the article.

Template:Pp-semi-vandalism When an article gets a lot of vandalism, it may be semi-protected. A semi-protected article can't be edited by anonymous users or those with new accounts, but established users (that is, people who are less likely to vandalize the article) can still make edits and improve the article.

Template:POV Wikipedia tries to keep a neutral point of view (NPOV) in its articles. This means that all significant sides of an argument are fairly (but not necessarily evenly) presented. Keeping a neutral point of view can be tricky on very controversial subjects, and they'll often be tagged with this template while those issues can be worked out.

Wikipedia has several ways of indicating articles with exceptional quality. Featured Articles, which can be seen on the main page, are meant to be the very best possible work of Wikipedia. Featured Articles typically result from months of intensive editing from many editors, and are carefully scrutinized by editors who don't normally work on that article. (See WP:FAC)Articles that are not quite as good as featured articles, but still represent good work, may qualify as a Good Article. (See WP:GOOD) Wikipedia articles can also be peer reviewed. On Wikipedia, that means that the article has been examined by experienced editors. This tends to be a step in the process to get an article featured. (See WP:PR)

Because there are so many articles on Wikipedia, a search may not always bring up the result you expect. The natural and expected title of one article may apply equally to several other articles. To help readers sort out articles with similar titles, editors may set up disambiguation pages. We'll look at three different ways that Wikipedia creates disambiguation pages.

Alexander the Great Because most Wikipedia readers who search for Alexander the Great are looking for the historical figure, that search goes directly to his article. Since there's only one other article that has that title, the Alexander the Great article mentions and directly links to the other article at the top of the page.

Joker Because Wikipedia readers are more likely than not to be looking for the medieval court jester when they search for a Joker article, the search goes directly to that article. However, there are a lot of articles on Wikipedia that also use Joker as the title. At the top of the main Joker article, you'll see a link to a disambiguation page, which lists all other articles on Wikipedia that use Joker as the title.

Mercury Because it's impossible to tell exactly what most Wikipedia readers will be looking for when they search for Mercury, the search goes directly to the disambiguation page.

Rules of Wikipedia
Wikipedia does have rules that users need to follow. Some of the more important documents covering the rules and guidelines of Wikipedia are located below.

Five Pillars

Simplified Ruleset

List of policies

What Wikipedia is Not

Editing
Editing Wikipedia is easy, and can be done even if you don't have an account. But if you want to keep track of your (or your students'!) edits, you need to have an account. In the top right corner of the screen, click "Create an account" to make your own. Let's use this space to practice. When you're ready to edit, click on "edit this page" at the top of the screen. For practice, enter your name and school below:

Robertson County Librarians
Diane Gallivan-Krisle Elementary School

Jennifer Goins- Springfield Middle School

Catherine Clark Teacher Center

Dinah Maupin-White House Heritage

Rhonda Beshear-Cheatham Park Elementary

Elizabeth Dean - Coopertown Middle School

Marilyn Byrum Greenbrier High School

Karen Pinson-Greenbrier Elementary School

Linda Brigance-Bransford Elementary

Stacey McVay - Coopertown Elementary School

Heather Chandler Springfield High School

Debra Evetts - Greenbrier Middle School

Jo Ann Davidson - Jo Byrns High School

Doris Beesley-Westside Elementary School

Robin Choate-Smith-Watauga Elem.

Once you've entered your name here, go to the discussion page and mention that you've added yourself.

Using Wikipedia in the Classroom
Most of the time, students will be using Wikipedia as a source. However, Wikipedia can also be used as an active learning tool. Students can be given projects that involve editing Wikipedia. These projects encourage students to develop skills like researching, writing, and collaboration. Current and former Wikipedia school projects, and ideas for creating your own project, can be found at WP:SUP.

A project that revolves around editing Wikipedia is really limited only by your imagination and the subject matter. They can be tied to the curriculum, such as having students edit the entries related to Nathaniel Hawthorne after reading The Scarlet Letter. They can be used simply as practice, by allowing students to edit whatever articles they want, or by assigning fun articles about movies or video games. They can also be designed to build school spirit. Many public schools have extensive Wikipedia pages, resulting from work done mostly by students.

You can keep track of exactly what a student is doing on Wikipedia by looking at their user page. We'll practice using mine, User:ChandlerH.

You can also create Wikipedia projects that don't involve active editing. In a project like this, students would access a Wikipedia article and check all of the facts. This can be a great way to teach students to critically evaluate the sources they come in contact with. After researching the facts in the article, they could potentially use their findings to improve the article.