Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Courses/Spring 2011/Public Policy Design and Evaluation (Matt Dull)

Course description
This project aims to improve the quality, consistency, and comprehensiveness of Wikipedia entries regarding political appointees in American government. Political appointees play a storied role in American government. No other industrialized democracy appoints such a large, wide-ranging class of “political executives,” as does the U.S. federal government. And, particularly over the last four decades, their numbers have increased substantially. Reform of the appointees process has been a topic of advocacy for decades. This year reform might actually occur (see the attached article), but – if history is a guide – don’t hold your breath! While “fixing” the system may be easier said than done there are plenty of opportunities to improve the quality of public knowledge.

Assignment overview
This project will take up two distinct domains of appointee politics.
 * President-appointee, Senate-confirmed (PAS) appointees to U.S. federal government agencies.
 * Gubernatorial appointees in Virginia.

The details of how to approach these topics will be up to the groups, but as a starting point, we see a handful of project objectives:
 * Learn about editing Wikipedia entries
 * Develop an entry describing the federal Vacancies Reform Act
 * Learn about Virginia gubernatorial appointees and define the scope of the project
 * Improve the consistency of appointee position entries
 * Improve appointee biographical information
 * Think better ways to represent tenure, turnover, and vacancies

The information on Senate-confirmed agency appointees is fragmented and not always of reliable quality. Building this content area will position Wikipedia as the ‘go-to’ resource for users who seek current and historical information on the U.S. government.

Students
This is a list of the students in your class (or rather their Wikipedia usernames), along with their Wikipedia articles (which students will select at the appropriate time).
 * - Recess appointment, Minister (government)
 * - Recess appointment, Minister (government)
 * - Recess appointment, Minister (government)
 * - United States Senate Armed Services Committee, United States Defense Department
 * - Inspector Generals, Minister (government)
 * - State Corporation Commission, Minister (government)
 * – Politics of Virginia, Governor of Virginia,Secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia
 * – Virginia Workers' Compensation Commission, Minister (government), New Kent County, Virginia
 * - Politics of Virginia, Henrico County, Virginia, Minister (government)

Resources
The Great Wikipedia Debate - This blog post on Public Knowledge Journal has a basic discussion of academic uses of Wikipedia.