Wikipedia:Writing Wikipedia Articles course/Final project/Ideas

Here are a few suggestions for planning out your final project. (Some of these can be small and incremental projects; so we also suggest that you try out one or two, in addition to whatever you choose for your final project.) This will give you good exposure to a variety of approaches to editing Wikipedia. Be sure to put the articles you edit on your watchlist, and check back to see whether others build on your edits, have questions for you, etc.

Create a new article
Many students want to create a new Wikipedia article. This is an excellent project, but should be approached with some care! As we have discussed in class, every Wikipedia article must be considered "notable" by Wikipedia’s definition. If your chosen article is in a grey area -- that is, if some people might not be persuaded that it’s notable -- it will make a very challenging task for a new contributor, and you may wind up spending more of your energy arguing for the article’s existence, than actually writing the article! So we suggest, for your first project, that you choose an article that clearly meets Wikipedia's notability guideline. One article you might try starting is: OER Africa OER Africa is a well established organization. It has been around for several years, and its efforts have been covered in a variety of publications; there is no question that it is notable. (If you have another topic in mind that meets these criteria, the suggestions below will apply to that as well.) When you create a new article, you have two choices. Either is fine, but we recommend the first -- you will have more likelihood of others joining you to help build up the article!


 * Create a stub in the main article namespace, and then gradually build it up during the next few weeks, with input from classmates and instructors; or


 * Create a page in your sandbox, where it will be visible and open to edits from others, but is basically “your” article to work on -- and then publish it to the Wikipedia namespace once it is somewhat developed.

How to find sources on which to base your article
This 5 minute video discusses how to find source material for an article, using OER Africa as an example:
 * Finding sources to start a Wikipedia article

Finding ideas to build on
If you're interested in a topic, look at that article's talk page to see if people have brought things up for discussion. Or, look at the various talk pages associated with OER:
 * Our class talk page: WT:WIKISOO
 * The Communicate OER talk page: WT:COMMOER
 * Other talk pages within that project, such as: WT:Communicate OER Content

Working on an existing article

 * Does it cover everything it needs to?


 * Are the things it does cover well sourced, and neutrally phrased?


 * Does it make sense?

MOOC
Here are a few ideas for things that could be done to improve the MOOC article:

xMOOC vs. cMOOC: a good exercise for somebody who new to the topic
Making the text clearer: MOOC discusses the difference between cMOOC and xMOOC. Two issues:


 * 1) It is heavily based in the technical term “connectivist” -- is there a way it can be rephrased so that a reader without a background in educational theory can better understand the difference, in the first sentence or two?

In addressing either of the issues above, as always, be sure to refer as much as possible to high quality, independent sources! Either the ones already linked, or seek out new ones.
 * 1) After drawing the distinction, it focuses mostly on cMOOC. Can a bit be added about xMOOCs, to draw out the contrast?

Merge discussion: is it worthwhile to have a separate article?
There is a banner at the top of MOOC inviting discussion on whether or not MOOCs in Europe should be a separate article. What do you think? Jump into that discussion -- there have only been a couple people involved so far!

Bottom-heavy: lots of content, but very short lead section
This article is very long, with a lot of sections and sub-sections. It has lots of details. But the lead section is very short! Can you find ways to summarize the contents of the article, and make it easier for a new reader to absorb?