Preparation for 12/2: Final Wikipedia Peer Review

Dear All:

Our Wikipedia (sandbox) space is up, and you can access it via Bb in the left-hand toolbar. Follow the link, log in with your Wikipedia credentials, and click the "Edit" tab at the top of the page to see the whole article as well as my introductory note to how we will work in that space.

(Be sure to log in, and be sure to click "edit" at the top of the page; if you don't log in, I cannot trace your work, and if you only "edit" a section, you will be limited in terms of what you can view in your sandbox.)

Section business ...

Section 1, I am asking you to also compose the Lead section to our article, since I think that will allow you to contribute more content. The Wikipedia <"Manual of Style"> has a section on authoring Leads that we looked briefly at earlier in the semester.

Sections 4 and 5, you are now the newly combined section 4. I did my best with copying content over from the Wikipedia team spaces; forgive me in advance if I mis-copied or overlooked something, and feel free to make changes as needed.

All sections, forgive me in advance if I mis-copied or overlooked something when it moved over from our G-Drive drafting space. Change as needed.

To get ready for peer review ...

Now that we have moved this into our shared space, individuals--as well as teams--should feel free to contribute, revise, and edit. We still have a lot of work to do to finish content, recombine the elements in the newly combined section, "clean" all our content, and ensure there are cohesion markers that help all subsections make sense in each section, and each section make sense to the whole article. 

Also, as readers of other teams' work, you as individuals can determine whether some examples and explanations are relevant to a particular section after all. Some may not make sense to you and may need revision, editing, rethinking, or eliminating. We now publicly own this space so it's up to everyone to make this make sense, not just the teams who drafted.

By Tuesday's class, our article needs to be finished so that during class we can start our fine-level proofreading, stylistic editing, and formatting, and I'll actually assign teams to different tasks as a way of dividing up labor. Folks, I won't lie--smoothing is one of the most difficult things to do for a Wikipedia project among a group this large. You're all writers; you all have opinions. For us, this means taking to heart coherence, cohesion, and moves of authorization, as well as being very careful with our claims and very purposeful with our examples. So, please keep in mind three things:

1. item 4. from Exercise 1 of today's workshop (handout in Bb)
2. the "avoidances or cautions" from Exercise 2 of today's workshop (handout in Bb)
3. Wikipedia's <Neutral Point of View> techniques and <Featured Article Criteria>

Have a great break,
-Prof. G