due 11/20/14 by 2:00 p.m., posted to your own blog
The Situation
This assignment will allow you to familiarize yourself with wikicode and some of the editorial norms of the community. There are two tasks: an editing task that may help you overcome some nervousness about writing or editing directly into the sandbox environment; and an analysis task, which you will compose and post to your blog.
Part One: The Editing Task
1. Take some time to read through the <"Editing" Tutorial tab on the "Tutorial" page> and the <Wikipedia "help" page on editing>. These aren't the only project pages that discuss editing, but they are comprehensive -- they cover the essentials (from broad to particular) and they allow you to navigate to other information links if you need them.
2. There is a 3-minute tutorial linked to this page that may help you feel more confident about the task, and there is a quick link from this page to Wikipedia's Style Manual if you are interested in knowing more at this point. However, for this smaller task, you do not need to know all of Wikipedia's markup style. Just get your feet wet, so to speak.
3. Then, select one of the following articles that Wikipedia has put on its "watchlist" as needing improvement (and that is open to editing):
- anonymous web-browsing (needs copyediting among multiple issues)
- Bulgarians in Albania (needs copyediting among other issues caused by poor translation)
- democracy and leadership (needs copyediting among other issues)
- history of machine translation (needs copyediting among other issues)
- multimedia (needs reliable sources/endnotes)
- genre (needs inline citations and other things)
FYI, there are more articles linked from the community portal which offers useful mini-tutorials on "how to [edit or revise for certain tasks]. Feel free to browse that page before you complete step 3., if you'd like.
4. Following the instructions on the "help" page, click the "Edit" tab of the article you'd like to edit, and begin typing directly into the html text window when it comes up. There is a toolbar that will allow you to do very basic formatting as well as more advanced formatting, through drop-down menus. There is also a toolbar at the bottom of the window that will allow you to insert citations ("references") and your signature, or username. You type, delete, copy or paste as you would in a word-processing program.
5. Make as few or as many improvements as you think you can confidently make that will be accepted or not reversed or undone. However, for each type of improvement, you'll need to write a brief description of what you edited in the "Edit Summary" box below the text window, then "Save page."
6. One more thing: although Wikipedia does not require users to log in before editing, I will need you to log in for this assignment. As well, it is a generally accepted "preferred" practice among Wikipedia editors to log in, so I always recommend that people do.
Part One: The Editing Task
2. There is a 3-minute tutorial linked to this page that may help you feel more confident about the task, and there is a quick link from this page to Wikipedia's Style Manual if you are interested in knowing more at this point. However, for this smaller task, you do not need to know all of Wikipedia's markup style. Just get your feet wet, so to speak.
- anonymous web-browsing (needs copyediting among multiple issues)
- Bulgarians in Albania (needs copyediting among other issues caused by poor translation)
- democracy and leadership (needs copyediting among other issues)
- history of machine translation (needs copyediting among other issues)
- multimedia (needs reliable sources/endnotes)
- genre (needs inline citations and other things)
4. Following the instructions on the "help" page, click the "Edit" tab of the article you'd like to edit, and begin typing directly into the html text window when it comes up. There is a toolbar that will allow you to do very basic formatting as well as more advanced formatting, through drop-down menus. There is also a toolbar at the bottom of the window that will allow you to insert citations ("references") and your signature, or username. You type, delete, copy or paste as you would in a word-processing program.
5. Make as few or as many improvements as you think you can confidently make that will be accepted or not reversed or undone. However, for each type of improvement, you'll need to write a brief description of what you edited in the "Edit Summary" box below the text window, then "Save page."
Part Two: The Editing Analysis
Surprise, surprise! Yes, I'll ask you to write one final analysis. What does the editing task you just completed help you to understand about Wikipedia -- as a "commons," a genre, a medium, a set of guidelines, a whole discourse situation, or a particular kind of practice? "Understand" can also mean "complicate" or "problematize," i.e., it's possible that going through the motions of editing in the sandbox has brought to light some aspects of how the Wikipedia community functions that you hadn't considered before.
Obviously, Wikipedia functions on shared governance, lots of guidelines, and many many (constantly revised) core principles. But by virtue of participating the way you just did, you have joined the community, so this is your opportunity to reflect on it as a relative newcomer, and chances are you came to the task with certain fears or hesitations or expectations that may or may have not been fulfilled. I'm not looking for any particular "right" answer; I am simply looking for a mature realization that is your own, and I'm looking for some specific reflections on the actual task you completed above. And as always--I'm asking you to draw on at least 2 of our critical texts. Any of our critical texts is fair game--whatever helps you make your point.
Obviously, Wikipedia functions on shared governance, lots of guidelines, and many many (constantly revised) core principles. But by virtue of participating the way you just did, you have joined the community, so this is your opportunity to reflect on it as a relative newcomer, and chances are you came to the task with certain fears or hesitations or expectations that may or may have not been fulfilled. I'm not looking for any particular "right" answer; I am simply looking for a mature realization that is your own, and I'm looking for some specific reflections on the actual task you completed above. And as always--I'm asking you to draw on at least 2 of our critical texts. Any of our critical texts is fair game--whatever helps you make your point.
Evaluation Criteria
You may organize your analysis however you like, but please keep in mind the following criteria:- Content/Argument – Your analysis of the Wikipedia tasks usefully brings your observations into conversation with at least 2 critical texts from our course (beyond merely using some of their key terms).
- Coherence – Your analysis is guided by a thesis statement that demonstrates what you have discovered and acts as a “thread” for your claims.
- Depth – You write enough to demonstrate or synthesize well.
- Evidence and Justification – Your analysis provides specific examples from your analysis to illustrate the points you make.
- Clarity – Your paragraphs are well focused, your sentences grammatically sound.
- Blogging Guidelines – Your analysis not only follows these, but uses them to your advantage (please take some time to review them; it's likely you won't need to review all of them, but perhaps as a writer, you know you're weaker in one of them more than the others).
(With thanks to the late <Adrianne Wadewitz> for ideas underlying this assignment.)
