Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Poverty Justice and Human Capabilities (Anne Chao)/Review an existing wikipedia page

Assignment: Page Review

Poverty, Justice, Human Capabilities Program

Wikipedia Assignment

Due: In hard copy either in class Thursday Jan. 31 or to HUMA Room 106 by 4PM Friday Feb. 1

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge- Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia

The typical Wikipedia editor has been described as “a college degree [educated], 30-years-old [male], [who] is computer savvy but not necessarily a programmer…and lives in the US or Europe.”[1] As a consequence, certain topics (Star Trek, for example) are much more thoroughly represented on Wikipedia than others. In particular, topics related to gender, race, class, development, poverty and sociology are grossly underrepresented on the site. Through the Wikipedia assignment, you will actively contribute to improving the representation of these topics on a publically accessible and widely used source that more than 400 million people reference per month. With this assignment, you will learn and practice how to evaluate existing Wikipedia articles.

1.    Read the following items from the Wikipedia resources handed out in class:


 * a.    “Life of an Article” (p. 10) and “What Makes a Quality Article?” (pp. 12-13) from the Blue introductory booklet ~ also available online at: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Welcome_to_Wikipedia_brochure_EN.pdf


 * b.    Evaluating Article Quality (green cover) booklet ~ also available online at: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Evaluating_Wikipedia_article_quality_2010-11-26_(web).pdf

c.    “Contributing to Wikipedia:  Overall Guidelines and Evaluation Criteria” attached handout (contains links to more information and guidelines)

2.    Choose two existing pages on Wikipedia—one related to a course topic, the other related to a STEM/Popular Culture/Video Gaming topic.

3.    Carefully read each page, taking note of citations, writing style, thoroughness, layout, and other factors of interest. Consider how the representation of these topics on these pages may affect the public knowledge or understanding of these topics when read by a typical reader.

4.    Fill out the attached evaluation form, which is based on the evaluative form Wikipedia editors use and is similar to the grading scheme that will be used to evaluate your final contribution. Return this form in hard copy.

Review of an existing wikipedia document by Diana Strassmann is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.