Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of New Haven/English 1114 (Spring 20)

Editing articles on selected short stories.

Week 1
This week you will do the following:


 * 1) Record your impressions of Wikipedia in the Discussion Board before beginning this project.
 * 2) Read and annotate &quot;Wikipedia Is Good For You!?&quot; by James Purdy.
 * 3) Create an account and join our course.
 * 4) Read the introductory materials posted under &quot;Introduction to the Wikipedia assignment&quot; (&quot;Editing Wikipedia&quot; and &quot;Evaluating Wikipedia&quot;).
 * 5) Complete the Week 1 training modules (&quot;Wikipedia policies&quot; and &quot;Sandboxes, talk pages, and watchlists&quot;).
 * 6) Post a message on a classmate's talk page and reply to an existing message. Be sure you're comfortable with signing a post and indenting a reply in order to be ready for next week.

Welcome to your Wikipedia assignment's course timeline. This page guides you through the steps you'll need to complete for your Wikipedia assignment, with links to training modules and your classmates' work spaces.

Your course has been assigned a Wikipedia Expert. You can reach them through the Get Help button at the top of this page.

Resources:


 * Editing Wikipedia, pages 1–5
 * Evaluating Wikipedia

Week 2
This week you will do the following:


 * 1) Complete the &quot;Evaluating articles and sources&quot; and &quot;How to edit&quot; training modules.
 * 2) Complete the &quot;Evaluate an article&quot; exercise.
 * 3) Complete Activity 1.
 * 4) Complete the &quot;Copyedit an article&quot; exercise.
 * 5) Complete Activity 2.
 * 6) Record your thoughts on Wikipedia for your reflection.

Exercise
Evaluate an article


 * 1) Choose an article—or several—on Wikipedia related to our course to read and evaluate. As  you read, consider the questions posted below. (Some of these are the same questions from the &quot;Evaluate an article&quot; exercise.)
 * 2) Use the section in your sandbox called “Article Evaluation” to record your notes on the articles. (You should have created this when you completed the “Evaluate an article” exercise.)
 * 3) Leave your evaluations on the appropriate article's talk page. You should make at least 5 observations. Feel free to split up this assignment on several talk pages.

Note: Your critiques may already be under discussion on the talk pages. This means two things: (1) you need to read the entire talk page to locate the appropriate place to leave your commentary, and (2) you should be comfortable with indenting your posts to indicate you are responding directly to another editor’s comments.

Be sure to sign your feedback (with four tildes).


 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * Are there inaccuracies in the plot summary?
 * Are exact words from the story used without quotation marks?
 * Are quotations not integrated or integrated poorly?
 * Is there too much quoted material used?
 * Is the structure of the page confusing or ineffective?
 * Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Did anything distract you?
 * Is the information neutral and factual? Does the article contain any interpretation?
 * Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claim in question?
 * Is anything missing that could be added? Is there anything that could be removed?

Copyedit an article


 * 1) Choose an article—or several—on Wikipedia related to our course to copyedit.
 * 2) Make at least ten edits. You don't have to correct errors for this activity: you can focus on word choice, sentence structure, use of quotations, and the like.
 * 3) Explain each edit you make in the “summary of edits,” and mark each as a minor edit.

Remember the following:


 * Copyedits are minor edits. There’s no need to announce these on the article’s talk page.
 * Wikipedia has its own manual of style, and some of its rules are different from MLA guidelines. When you work on Wikipedia, follow Wikipedia’s guidelines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Contents.

Week 3
This week you will do the following:


 * 1) Complete the &quot;Adding citations&quot; and &quot;Plagiarism&quot; training modules.
 * 2) Complete the &quot;Add a citation&quot; exercise.
 * 3) Complete Activity 3.
 * 4) Ensure you've completed all training modules, exercises, and activities.
 * 5) Follow up on any responses you've received or changes made to your edits.
 * 6) Write your reflection.

Exercise
Add a citation


 * 1) Identify a place where you can add to an article. If in your critique you pointed out that a particular article could benefit from a section about symbolism, foreshadowing, or some other element, that would be a fine addition, as long as you can find a reliable source to back you up. You can also read some talk pages to get ideas about what to add to a given page or use the ratings Wikipedia has posted on each article to determine where research is necessary.
 * 2) Use Google Scholar to locate a scholarly article about the story, or use a scholarly article from class.
 * 3) Find material from the scholarly article to add to the story's Wikipedia page, and determine where in the article it best fits.
 * 4) Add the material to the Wikipedia article and create a citation for the material.

Note: All new content you contribute should be easy to understand and free of sentence-level errors. The information you add should be supported by a source that is properly cited and should conform to Wikipedia’s principles of “verifiability,” “neutral point of view,” and “copyright.” These changes should be explained first on the Talk page, and individual edits should again be described in the “summary of edits.” These are major edits and should be marked as such.

Here’s what I’ll be focusing on when I review your edits on Wikipedia.


 * 1) When you add to a talk page, read over the whole page first to be sure that you are putting your comments in the appropriate place. If someone is already talking about the same thing, you should reply to them, commenting just underneath their comments and indicating that yours is a response by indenting through the use of a colon. Do not create a new section if that section already exists.
 * 2) You should have at least 5 comments on talk pages.
 * 3) You should have at least 10 copyedits.
 * 4) Identifying an analyzing a symbol is considered original research. Your own interpretation should not be added to a page, per Wikipedia standards. If you can find the interpretation in a scholarly source, you can add it to the page—and cite the source.
 * 5) Your addition to an article should be researched material, with a citation to a scholarly source.
 * 6) Be careful to not introduce new errors when you add material or copyedit.
 * 7) Mark your edits as “major” or “minor” before you publish.
 * 8) Announce any major edits on the talk page first.
 * 9) Wikipedia has its own manual of style. Some of its rules are different from MLA (and APA) guidelines. When you are writing on Wikipedia, please follow Wikipedia’s guidelines.

Once you have completed the above assignments, please write 500- to 750-word reflection about the experience. Use the ideas you recorded each week to help you.

In the introduction, provide some background about your use of and opinion of Wikipedia before completing this project. You might address the following: How often do you use it? What do you use it for? What have you been taught about Wikipedia in your classes? What was your reaction to this assignment when you first heard about it?

In the body of the essay, walk me through your experience in a series of paragraphs, including an explanation of what you did in each of the activities. Tell why you chose the articles you did, what problems you encountered, what surprised you, what you learned, and so on. You may use first-person point of view here and throughout. For each edit you made, please provide a summary of your contribution (for example, “I recommended that a section on adaptations be added the page for ‘Paul’s Case’ on the appropriate Talk page”).

Please be sure to follow up on your edits. If a fellow editor writes to you, please respond, and discuss those interactions here. If someone else removes your edits, please comment on why that happened.

In the conclusion, return to your original opinion of Wikipedia. How has it changed? How might your use of the website change in the future? How did your expectations for the assignment differ from the outcomes? Feel free to answer any of the “Guiding Questions” posted below. Also comment on any insights you’ve gained into public writing, digital literacy, research, or collaboration.

Please use MLA format, as always.

Guiding questions

Everyone should have finished all of the work they'll do on Wikipedia, and be ready for grading.