Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of Washington, Seattle/Multilingual Wikipedia Directed Research Group (Spring 2018)

How many times has Wikipedia articles saved you from failing a homework assignment? Those articles would not have been of so much help if it were not for the contributors. These contributors do not always agree with each other. In this DRG, we will address how the conflict arises in the Wikipedia community.

To further understand this challenge, we will explore how editors behave across the various language editions of Wikipedia. The English language Wikipedia is notable for its enormous database but there are also 288 other active language editions. While collaboration in the English Wikipedia has been researched extensively, these other language editions remain understudied. The goal of this project is to understand editor behavior in the English, French and Spanish language edition of Wikipedia.

As part of this research, we will be exploring the literature around editor conflict and multilingual Wikipedia. Additionally, we will replicate prior methods used to understand this platform to check whether prior assumptions still hold true across different language samples and in present day Wikipedia.

Week 1
Welcome to your Wikipedia project's course timeline. This page will guide you through the Wikipedia project for your course. Be sure to check with your instructor to see if there are other pages you should be following as well.

This page breaks down writing a Wikipedia article into a series of steps, or milestones. These steps include online trainings to help you get started on Wikipedia.

Your course has also been assigned a Wikipedia Expert. Check your Talk page for notes from them. You can also reach them through the &quot;Get Help&quot; button on this page.

To get started, please review the following handouts:


 * Editing Wikipedia pages 1–5
 * Evaluating Wikipedia


 * Create an account and join this course page, using the enrollment link your instructor sent you. (To avoid hitting Wikipedia's account creation limits, this is best done outside of class. Only 6 new accounts may be created per day from the same IP address.)
 * It's time to dive into Wikipedia. Below, you'll find the first set of online trainings you'll need to take. New modules will appear on this timeline as you get to new milestones. Be sure to check back and complete them! These trainings are required for your course.
 * When you finish the trainings, practice by introducing yourself to a classmate on that classmate's Talk page.

Begin a blog about your experiences. This only needs to be a couple of sentences about the editing that you did this week. Some discussion questions that you might think about are:

What did you edit?

Why did you choose to edit that article?

What was that experience like?

Did you interact with any other editors?

Has your changes persisted?

Create at least one blog entry each week during the Wikipedia assignment.

As we discussed in our first meeting, the first couple of weeks of this DRG will be learning more about how to edit on Wikipedia. So in the next meeting we will discuss the following two readings. They both discuss some research conducted around new Wikipedia editors.

1. Bryant, S. L., Forte, A., &amp; Bruckman, A. (2005, November). Becoming Wikipedian: transformation of participation in a collaborative online encyclopedia. In Proceedings of the 2005 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work (pp. 1-10). ACM

https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1099205

2. Nov, O. (2007). What motivates Wikipedians?. Communications of the ACM, 50(11), 60-64. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1297798

This week, everyone should have a Wikipedia account.

Week 2
It's time to think critically about Wikipedia articles. You'll evaluate a Wikipedia article related to the course and leave suggestions for improving it on the article's Talk page.


 * Complete the &quot;Evaluating Articles and Sources&quot; training (linked below)

If you choose to do any translation as part of this assignment, please take the translation training, linked below. Just like writing for Wikipedia is different than writing a research paper, translating Wikipedia articles is its own art.

This only needs to be a couple of sentences about the editing that you did this week. Some discussion questions that you might think about are:

What did you edit?

Why did you choose to edit that article?

What was that experience like?

Did you interact with any other editors?

Has your changes persisted?

Create at least one blog entry each week during the Wikipedia assignment.

This is the study that we will be replicating. We will discuss more about what we will be doing next week and discuss this paper:


 * Travis Kriplean, Ivan Beschastnikh, David W. McDonald, and Scott A. Golder. 2007. Community, consensus, coercion, control: cs*w or how policy mediates mass participation. In Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Supporting group work (GROUP '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 167-176. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1316648


 * Howard T. Welser, Dan Cosley, Gueorgi Kossinets, Austin Lin, Fedor Dokshin, Geri Gay, and Marc Smith. 2011. Finding social roles in Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 2011 iConference (iConference '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 122-129. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1940778

Week 3
Familiarize yourself with editing Wikipedia by adding a citation to an article. There are two ways you can do this:


 * Add 1-2 sentences to a course-related article, and cite that statement to a reliable source, as you learned in the online training.


 * Bao, P., Hecht, B., Carton, S., Quaderi, M., Horn, M., &amp; Gergle, D. (2012, May). Omnipedia: bridging the wikipedia language gap. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1075-1084). ACM.   http://omnipedia.northwestern.edu/


 * Yasseri, T., Spoerri, A., Graham, M., &amp; Kertész, J. (2014). The Most Controversial Topics in Wikipedia. Global Wikipedia: International and cross-cultural issues in online collaboration, 25.                                                                                          [https://goo(.)gl/XvzakD https://goo(.)gl/XvzakD

]

This only needs to be a couple of sentences about the editing that you did this week. Some discussion questions that you might think about are:

What did you edit?

Why did you choose to edit that article?

What was that experience like?

Did you interact with any other editors?

Has your changes persisted?

Create at least one blog entry each week during the Wikipedia assignment.

Week 4

 * Blog posts and press releases are considered poor sources of reliable information. Why?
 * What are some reasons you might not want to use a company's website as the main source of information about that company?
 * What is the difference between a copyright violation and plagiarism?
 * What are some good techniques to avoid close paraphrasing and plagiarism?

Review Wikipedia's rules for topics related to medicine, human health, and psychology.


 * Review page 6 of your Editing Wikipedia guidebook.
 * Look up 3-5 potential topics related to the course that you might want to update on Wikipedia. Review the content of the article and check the Talk page to see what other Wikipedians are already contributing. Identify one or two areas from each that you could improve.
 * Choose 2-3 potential articles from that list that you can tackle, and post links to the articles and your notes about what you might improve in your sandbox.
 * Finally, present your choices to your instructor for feedback.

Week 5

 * On the Students tab, assign your chosen topic to yourself.
 * In your sandbox, write a few sentences about what you plan to contribute to the selected article.
 * Think back to when you did an article critique. What can you add? Post some of your ideas to the article's talk page, too.
 * Compile a list of relevant, reliable books, journal articles, or other sources. Post that bibliography to the talk page of the article you'll be working on, and in your sandbox. Make sure to check in on the Talk page to see if anyone has advice on your bibliography.

Biographies

Books

Chemistry

Ecology

Environmental Sciences

Films

Genes and Proteins

History

Linguistics

Medicine

Political Science

Psychology

Sociology

Species

Women's Studies

You've picked a topic and found your sources. Now it's time to start writing.

Creating a new article?


 * Write an outline of that topic in the form of a standard Wikipedia article's &quot;lead section.&quot; Write it in your sandbox.
 * A &quot;lead&quot; section is not a traditional introduction. It should summarize, very briefly, what the rest of the article will say in detail. The first paragraph should include important, broad facts about the subject. A good example is Ada Lovelace. See Editing Wikipedia page 9 for more ideas.

Improving an existing article?


 * Identify what's missing from the current form of the article. Think back to the skills you learned while critiquing an article. Make notes for improvement in your sandbox.

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Keep reading your sources, too, as you prepare to write the body of the article.

Resources: Editing Wikipedia pages 7–9

Everyone has begun writing their article drafts.

Week 6

 * What do you think of Wikipedia's definition of &quot;neutrality&quot;?
 * What are the impacts and limits of Wikipedia as a source of information?
 * On Wikipedia, all material must be attributable to reliable, published sources. What kinds of sources does this exclude? Can you think of any problems that might create?
 * If Wikipedia was written 100 years ago, how might its content (and contributors) be different? What about 100 years from now?


 * Keep working on transforming your article into a complete first draft. Get draft ready for peer-review.
 * If you'd like a Wikipedia Expert to review your draft, now is the time! Click the &quot;Get Help&quot; button in your sandbox to request notes.


 * First, take the &quot;Peer Review&quot; online training.
 * Select two classmates’ articles that you will peer review and copyedit. On the Articles tab, find the articles that you want to review. Then in the &quot;My Articles&quot; section of the Home tab, assign them to yourself to review.
 * Peer review your classmates' drafts. Leave suggestions on the Talk page of the article, or sandbox, that your fellow student is working on. Other editors may be reviewing your work, so look for their comments! Be sure to acknowledge feedback from other Wikipedians.
 * As you review, make spelling, grammar, and other adjustments. Pay attention to the tone of the article. Is it encyclopedic?

Every student has finished reviewing their assigned articles, making sure that every article has been reviewed.

You probably have some feedback from other students and possibly other Wikipedians. It's time to work with that feedback to improve your article!


 * Read Editing Wikipedia pages 12 and 14.
 * Return to your draft or article and think about the suggestions. Decide which ones to start implementing. Reach out to your instructor or your Wikipedia Expert if you have any questions.

Week 7
Once you've made improvements to your article based on peer review feedback, it's time to move your work to Wikipedia proper - the &quot;mainspace.&quot;

Editing an existing article?


 * NEVER copy and paste your draft of an article over the entire article. Instead, edit small sections at a time.
 * Copy your edits into the article. Make many small edits, saving each time, and leaving an edit summary. Never replace more than one to two sentences without saving!
 * Be sure to copy text from your sandbox while the sandbox page is in 'Edit' mode. This ensures that the formatting is transferred correctly.

Creating a new article?


 * Read Editing Wikipedia page 13, and follow those steps to move your article from your Sandbox to Mainspace.
 * You can also review the Sandboxes and Mainspace online training.


 * Optional: For new articles or qualifying expansions of stubs, compose a one-sentence “hook,” nominate it for “Did you know,” (see the DYK instructions handout) and monitor the nomination for any issues identified by other editors. Wiki Education staff can provide support for this process.

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Handout:

Week 8
Do additional research and writing to make further improvements to your article, based on suggestions and your own critique.


 * Read Editing Wikipedia page 12 to see how to create links from your article to others, and from other articles to your own. Try to link to 3–5 articles, and link to your article from 2–3 other articles.
 * Consider adding an image to your article. Wikipedia has strict rules about what media can be added, so make sure to take Contributing Images and Media Files training before you upload an image.

Continue to expand and improve your work, and format your article to match Wikipedia's tone and standards. Remember to contact your Wikipedia Expert at any time if you need further help!

Week 9
It's the final week to develop your article.


 * Read Editing Wikipedia page 15 to review a final check-list before completing your assignment.
 * Don't forget that you can ask for help from your Wikipedia Expert at any time!

Write a reflective essay (2–5 pages) on your Wikipedia contributions.

Consider the following questions as you reflect on your Wikipedia assignment:


 * Critiquing articles: What did you learn about Wikipedia during the article evaluation? How did you approach critiquing the article you selected for this assignment? How did you decide what to add to your chosen article?
 * Summarizing your contributions: include a summary of your edits and why you felt they were a valuable addition to the article. How does your article compare to earlier versions?
 * Peer Review: If your class did peer review, include information about the peer review process. What did you contribute in your review of your peers article? What did your peers recommend you change on your article?
 * Feedback: Did you receive feedback from other Wikipedia editors, and if so, how did you respond to and handle that feedback?
 * Wikipedia generally: What did you learn from contributing to Wikipedia? How does a Wikipedia assignment compare to other assignments you've done in the past? How can Wikipedia be used to improve public understanding of our field/your topic? Why is this important?

Week 10
Everyone should have finished all of the work they'll do on Wikipedia, and be ready for grading.