Working Wikipedia: an interdisciplinary path to taking action

Working Wikipedia #4C16
	Large Houston Landsat Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=169667
When and Where
Time	9am to 5pm
Address	CCCC 2016, GRB, Room 351F, Level Three
City, State	Houston, Texas
Date	April 6, 2016

Contribute to Wikipedia, design assignments that enhance learning.

Participants do not need previous experience with Wikipedia, but they will need to bring a laptop or tablet.

This all-day workshop invites participants to investigate how writing for Wikipedia not only supports key writing goals, but also opens opportunities to explore archives and special collections, to question what makes a topic or a source “notable,” and to challenge Wikipedia’s gaps in representation. We'll address these and related questions by directly working in Wikipedia, providing participants with hands-on experience editing and collaborating in Wikipedia and designing Wikipedia assignments.

Overview

Through its interdisciplinary cohort of presenters, the workshop will also illustrate the potential for collaboration among writing instructors, librarians, and archivists. Participants will explore how writing for Wikipedia can help students identify as authors and knowledge creators, gain comfort with collaboration and revision, better understand principles of source use, and understand how writing can be activism. The workshop will proceed in four sections. The morning begins with an introduction to working in Wikipedia (or “Bootcamp”), followed by a 90-minute round-robin of collaborative, scaffolded activities on individual topics. After lunch, the afternoon will commence with an editing refresher followed by an Editing Salon. The workshop will conclude with a guided assignment design session. This workshop invites participants — and through them, their students — to join in active, deliberate knowledge creation and preservation in Wikipedia, and the kinds of interdisciplinary work that can aid learning and reinforce writing outcomes.

Outcomes

At the end of this workshop, participants will leave with their own Wikipedia account and user page and be able to:

Compose using Wikipedia markup and the visual editor.
Communicate with other editors on Talk pages.
Find Wikipedia guidelines, both general encyclopedic guidelines and those specific to classroom use, appropriate to an assignment or topic area.
Lead students through determining what to contribute by using Wikiprojects, Portals, and other tools.
Craft a Wikipedia writing assignment that meets both participant course goals and Wikipedia values and needs.
Begin working with Special Collections and Archives at participant’s home institution

You can use the links in this "Outcomes" section to navigate the event page; or scroll down for more useful links to help you launch your Wikipedia classroom projects.

FAQ

What should I have?

A laptop and charger
An interest in having your students contribute to Wikipedia!

Wikipedia is a work in progress: perfection is not required

Here is a copy of our workshop "Parking Lot," where we noted questions from participants as they arose, and scratched them off once they were addressed.

We never got to a thorough discussion of how to work with images, so here is a link to the Wiki Ed Foundation's brochure, "Illustrating Wikipedia"

Sign in!

Once you create your user account, go to our Participant List and sign your post with four ~ in a row. That markup will tag the list with your username.

Schedule

This contains a run-down of the day, but it also includes useful notes and links to help you launch your own classroom projects

9:00 am: Introductions, goals, agenda (15 min.)

9:15: Wikipedia Editing Boot Camp

Basic guidelines, communication customs, editing customs (60 min.) The focus here is on developing your "Wikipedia hat," so you can read and evaluate Wikipedia articles based on Wikipedia's standards, not those from your own areas of expertise. Read over the following Wikipedia policy/guideline pages, and then use what you've learned to evaluate one of the articles listed.

Articles to evaluate: pick one, and use your new "Wikipedia hat" to evaluate them. How might they be improved?

10:15: Break (15 min.)

10:30 - 12:00 Topic Tables

Table 1: Critical Thinking in Action: Determining What and How to Contribute

Resources for different ways Wikipedia already wants you to contribute

Table 2: Establishing Notability and Incorporating Archival Resources

Resources for identifying how archives and special collections at your home institution can contribute to Wikipedia

Archives and Wikipedia PDF
Notability and Wikipedia
Primary source according to Wikipedia
Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons
American Indian boarding schools
Frank and Eleanor Freed finding aid, no Wikipedia representation
The Texas Observer Wikipedia article that needs edits, finding aid
Yenwith K. Whitney Tuskegee Airman, article denied because did not meet notability standards
Houston Art League, finding aid, no Wikipedia representation

Table 3: Good Digital Citizenship and Activism in Wikipedia: Working with Underrepresented Groups and Topics

Problem: Wikipedia is a globally distributed network where judgement of quality is not based around contributor expertise, but rather work according to the standards of the project itself -- the most legible unit of work is a good citation. As one of the oldest communities on the Internet, Wikipedia gives students to a chance to practice good digital citizenship: use their critical thinking skills to discover community values, norms and styles of communication, and contribute in a way that will make sense to other community members. However, Wikipedia can, like many other communities, have a bias towards the status quo. Therefore, those working on issues related to underrepresented groups can expect to be accused of activism, bias, an agenda, as if those things do not already exist on Wikipedia.

Digital citizenship is doubly important to those working on issues related to underrepresented groups: one must know how to communicate effectively using community standards to convince the Wikipedian community that changes in the status quo does not automatically equal violating policy, and that you are still partners in the same goal of wanting to improve the encyclopedia.

Challenge: You are going to teach your students how to use rhetorical reading strategies to interact with this new community, so that they will have the tools they need to defend their contributions, according to Wikipedia community standards. In other words, you're going to teach them how to "Lurk like Burke."

Your task: Read talk pages with an eye toward rhetorical/discourse analysis and create guidelines for students.

Resources

Kenneth Burke's Unending Conversation metaphor
Antonin Scalia
Talk:Antonin_Scalia#Wikipedia_should_not_participate_in_a_cover_up
Talk:Chelsea Manning
Talk:Chromatophore

We suggest spending no more than 10 minutes looking at the talk pages, so that you have at least 5 minutes to sketch your tip-sheet. Post a picture of your Tip Sheet HERE!

12:00: LUNCH (90 min.)

1:30: Regroup discussion and editing refresher (15 min.)

1:45: Editing Salon

See Training to Edit Wikipedia Possible topics for editing, and Resources we can draw from (90 min.)

3:15: Break (15 min.)

3:30: One hour of guided assignment creation

4:30: Wrap-up, reflection, next steps and where to continue the conversation, both online and in your area (30 min.)

Participant list

Please add your Wikipedia username below (signatures are created by saving four tildes [~] in a row).

Rtbhive (talk) 02:02, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
WritingTeacherC (talk) 13:53, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
AmandaRR123 (talk) 13:54, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:06, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Gkuriger (talk) 18:52, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Houstonmaker (talk) 19:00, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Eamcope (talk) 19:01, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Facultyj (talk) 19:07, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Gearhead70 (talk) 19:04, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Asrose (talk) 19:05, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Sedimental (talk) 19:08, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Amyc29 (talk) 19:13, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Training to edit Wikipedia

Possible topics for editing

Include #4C16 in your edit summary so we can track our edits on Wikipedia Social Search

Citation Hunt = tool to find "citation needed" in articles
Category:Composition
Wikipedia:WikiProject Education

Master List of WikiProjects might help identify articles for creation or improvement based on topic.
- WikiProject Women scientists and their list of missing articles
- Women's history article list from Simmons 2014 editathon Under "Suggested Topics" there are many articles that need citation and reference work
Translation - learn more about how to translate English articles to other languages.