Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Tulane University/GESS 2900 - Spring 2020 - Making Wikipedia Better (Spring 2020)
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- Course name
- GESS 2900 - Spring 2020 - Making Wikipedia Better
- Institution
- Tulane University
- Instructor
- Erin Siodmak
- Wikipedia Expert
- Shalor (Wiki Ed)
- Subject
- Gender and Sexuality Studies
- Course dates
- 2020-01-21 00:00:00 UTC – 2020-05-22 23:59:59 UTC
- Approximate number of student editors
- 30
As Gender and Sexuality Studies scholars, you have much to offer Wikipedia, both by filling information gaps and by engaging in debates about what makes something a NPOV. This project gives you experience doing a literature review, collaborative work, and creating new media content.
Timeline
Week 8
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 10 March 2020 | Thursday, 12 March 2020
- Assignment - Introduction to the Wikipedia assignment
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
- Assignment - Get started on Wikipedia
Create an account and join this course page, using the enrollment link your instructor sent you. (Because of Wikipedia's technical restraints, you may receive a message that you cannot create an account. To resolve this, please try again off campus or the next day.)
- Milestones
This week, everyone should have a Wikipedia account.
Week 9
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 17 March 2020 | Thursday, 19 March 2020
- Assignment - Exercise
- Assignment - Exercise
- Assignment - Exercise
Week 10
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 24 March 2020 | Thursday, 26 March 2020
- Guide(s) for writing articles in your topic area
- Assignment - Exercise
Week 11
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 31 March 2020 | Thursday, 2 April 2020
- Assignment - Read
- Uma Narayan, The Project of Feminist Epistemology (1989)
- Assignment - Tu 3/31 class on Zoom
- Assignment - Start drafting your contributions
Reach out to your Wikipedia Expert if you have questions using the Get Help button at the top of this page.
Resource: Editing Wikipedia, pages 7–9
- Assignment - Padlet #4 due
- Assignment - Th 4/2 class on Zoom
- Assignment - Everyone has started writing
Everyone has begun writing their article drafts.
If you are writing a new article, you should have created it and starting outlining it (in your Sandbox or in the article itself); if you are editing an existing article, you should be making more minor edits in the article itself (copyedits, adding citations and other minor changes); if you are adding new sections or changing to order of an existing article (or other larger changes), please work in your Sandbox.
For those working on multiple sections of an article, please keep track of the areas you've been working (this will make it easier for your peer to review the article and know more clearly the work you've done).
Week 12
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 7 April 2020 | Thursday, 9 April 2020
- Some quick how-to info
How to add a 'citation needed' tag
You have to switch from the visual editor to the source editor. In wiki markup (source editor), you can question an uncited claim by inserting a simple {{Citation needed}}tag, or a more comprehensive {{Citation needed|reason=Your explanation here|date=April 2020}}. Alternatively, {{fact}}and {{cn}}will produce the same result. These all display as:
Example: 87% of statistics are made up on the spot.[[[|citation needed]]]
Create a new article
When you want to create a new article, if you are not an experienced editor, you have to go through a few pages of guides. The video linked here (and available on Canvas) will show you some of the steps.
Add 'Predicted Quality' widget
Find instructions here for adding a tool that shows you the predicted quality rating for an article. This is what you'll see if you add the script:
Add summary info under article title
If you would like to see the basic information about an article's status (the actual status assigned by Wikipedia) and edit info, you use the Appearance options in Preferences. This is what you would see:
Under Preferences, go to the Gadgets tab, then scroll down to Appearance:
Select these:
- Assignment - Exercise
- Assignment - Continue writing
There is not a word count, but you should have a couple of paragraphs sketched for a new article, and 10+ minor edits and/or several more substantial contributions in the works for existing articles.
Week 13
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 14 April 2020 | Thursday, 16 April 2020
- Assignment - How to give your peers feedback
Please leave a peer review for your colleague who you were assigned to review. Be sure to contact the person you're reviewing for if you are unsure where they have been doing their editing. Check the article history and/or talk page, and also their sandbox to see what they've been working on.
When you have reviewed your peer's article, you should leave a message on their User Talk page (unless your instructor encourages you to do it some other way). Leaving a message on a User Talk page is different than leaving one on the Talk page of their sandbox (remember that every page on Wikipedia has a Talk page), and will notify them (whereas, leaving a note on their sandbox will not).
To find a user's Talk page, go to their Wikipedia User page — something like "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:HistoryBuff34%22. You'll see the Talk link at the top left of the page. Click "New Section" on the Talk page and enter your message. Remember to sign with four tildes! (Elysia (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:49, 11 May 2020 (UTC))
- Assignment - Read
- Wagner, It's a man's Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality (2015)
Wagner et al, It's a man's Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopeia (2015)
- Read
- 'Ignore all rules: A beginner's guide'
- Assignment - Significant contributions
You should have a good amount of work done on your article: new references, added sections headings, organization improvements, a new paragraph (or several sentences, with references), copy edits, or the start of a new article (if you created one).
Be sure to copy and paste what you're working on into your Sandbox (if you're working in the live article and not your Sandbox) so it's clear to your reviewer what section(s) you're adding to. You should include everything in the portion you're working on for context (for example, if I'm adding some sentences and doing copy edits in a paragraph, I would copy the whole paragraph (and possibly the rest of the section), not just the sentences I added).
The reviewer will give feedback on the section as a whole so you have more ideas for how to improve it. The point of the review is to get some input re: how to further improve the article as well as feedback on the parts you've contributed.
There is not a word count, but you should:
- for a new article, have a couple of paragraphs sketched out, an organization schema, the info box and at least 5 references.
- have 15+ edits (grammar, copyedits, syntax improvement, clarity edits, additional references and citations) if you are copyediting an existing article
- be done with several substantial contributions to an existing article (a new section or paragraph, reorder the content/sections for clarity and consistency across articles of the same type, add more references and citations)
This is something you should be spending 1-2 hours/week doing.
Submit the URL for the page where you have done your edits (live article and/or Sandbox). If you are editing in the live page, please indicate what sections you have been working on and a list of what you have contributed (this is so I can more easily see the work and give feedback), or copy and paste into your Sandbox (as explained above).
- Assignment - Peer review ONE article
- Assignment - Response #3 - Giovanni's Room
Baldwin's book is about many things and can be read through multiple lenses (personal, aesthetic or academic). Identify what themes, through your experience reading the novel, are most pressing and why (give specific examples and make reference to page numbers). In relation to the themes you identified, that spoke to you, what do you make of Giovanni's room (as title, as actual space, and possibly as metaphor)? And what is the role of nation/American-ness in the novel? How are David's fears and desires addressed and reconciled (if they are) in the novel? And what, for you, is the most important and impactful takeaway?
350-450 words. Submit on Canvas.
- Assignment - Respond to your peer review
You probably have some feedback from other students and possibly other Wikipedians. Consider their suggestions, decide whether it makes your work more accurate and complete, and edit your draft to make those changes. Respond to your peer review in the Sandbox - explain the edits and revisions you will make based on the feedback/input you received.
Resources:
- Editing Wikipedia, pages 12 and 14
- Reach out to your Wikipedia Expert if you have any questions.
Week 14
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 21 April 2020 | Thursday, 23 April 2020
- Important! Re
- psychology, medical and health related topics
Please read the following (from Helaine at Wiki Edu). This applies to several of the articles being worked on, so please complete this training if relevant for you (and I encourage all to do it anyway, in case it ends up applying to you).
Any student who seeks to add any biomedical content anywhere to Wikipedia needs to do that training. The rules for sourcing medical facts apply to any article where a medical fact might be found, not just articles where the subject is medical. Wikipedia defines biomedical content to include:
- Attributes of a treatment or drug (for your students, that could include anywhere they refer to medication abortions)
Medical decisions (decision to terminate a pregnancy; surgical vs. medical abortion, etc) - Population data and epidemiology (abortion statistics, maternal mortality rates, etc)
- Biomedical research (anything about fetal pain, fetal development, abortion reversal controversy, use of fetal stem cell)
I'm just including in parentheses potential areas where this could apply to the articles your students are working on, this is not meant to be exhaustive. You can read more about what constitutes biomedical content here. Considering that several of your students have assigned themselves "Abortion in X" articles, I can see how the medical content training would be relevant to them.
- Milestones
Every student has finished reviewing their assigned articles, making sure that every article has been reviewed.
- Assignment - Continue improving your article
Exercise
Now's the time to revisit your text and refine your work. You may do more research and find missing information; rewrite the lead section to represent all major points; reorganize the text to communicate the information better; or add images and other media. You can continue working in your Sandbox to create any additional content, or you can work live.
Consider media you can create or seek out that could improve your articles (or any others you were interested in).
- Assignment - Keep moving your work to Wikipedia
Now that you've improved your draft based on others' feedback, it's time to move your work live - to the "mainspace."
Resource: Editing Wikipedia, page 13
Week 15
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 28 April 2020 | Thursday, 30 April 2020
- Assignment - Polish your work
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!
- Assignment - New media contributions
Add your images, tables, etc to Wikipedia. All images and media that are added to Wikipedia must be under a Creative Commons license (complete the training for more information). Find images using Wikimedia or by doing a Creative Commons search. You can also upload your own original images (photos, maps, charts, tables and other visualizations) after first adding them to Wikimedia and assigning them a Creative Commons license.
Week 16
- Course meetings
-
- Thursday, 7 May 2020
- Assignment - Final article
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!
- Milestones
Everyone should have finished all of the work they'll do on Wikipedia, and be ready for grading.