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Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Texas AM/Technical Editing (Spring 2021)

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Course name
Technical Editing
Institution
Texas AM
Instructor
Joshua DiCaglio
Wikipedia Expert
Ian (Wiki Ed)
Subject
Editing, Technical Communication
Course dates
2021-01-25 00:00:00 UTC – 2021-04-30 23:59:59 UTC
Approximate number of student editors
25


This is an applied course meant to prepare students to function as an editor in technical and professional venues. We will use Wikipedia to target certain less-tangible skills necessary for advanced editing: the ability to join a community of editors that already have standards in place, learn to read and improve writing within those conventions, and learn to facilitate good writing within this existing community. Rather than simply copyediting existing articles, creating new articles, or adding new content to existing articles, the students will focus on finding articles that have a good base of content but which need editorial intervention to help the larger community of potential editors continue to improve the articles. Students will focus primarily on issues of organization, appropriateness, and Wikipedia style, with the aim of significantly improving the existing content of an article. Students will be expected to work within the Wikipedia infrastructure, including engaging with current interested editors and leaving traces of their work to assist with future editing of the articles they worked on.

Student Assigned Reviewing
Rob.spradling 23 Blast, Indianapolis 500
Vibrants.Sami Defense (legal), Law and literature
Honeylemongreen Brittleness, Collective consciousness
Paulina Elliot Cheap Eats, Flexible glass
Jsalads Mushroom hunting, Infotainment, Commercial butterfly breeding
Frashid01 Finance, Nicholas Tolstoy
Txrharvey Mock language, Violence in art
Brybrydawg Cola wars, Desmond Fennell
Merewhtie The Wolf Man (1941 film), The Hollow Men
Samharrison15 Bulletproofing, Skurfing (sport)
LGUNN22 Theory of impetus, Display resolution
Malfoymanners Legal ethics, Goo Goo Dolls
HappyLittleBonzaii Sharon Springs, New York, Forestry in Russia
Pink target Horticulture, Texas A&M ring
ReaganCSMC 2004 Kumbakonam School fire, Ready, Set, PrEP
S0ulffle Crystallite, AirPods
AggieAb99 Blue Ridge Parkway, Isadora Duncan
Yayaggies Boston Ballet, APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control

Timeline

Week 3

Course meetings
Monday, 8 February 2021   |   Wednesday, 10 February 2021   |   Friday, 12 February 2021
In class - Introduction to the Wikipedia project

Welcome to your Wikipedia project's course timeline. This page will guide you through the Wikipedia project for your course. We will be using a combination of in class and online instruction as we interface with the Wikipedia community. 

Wikipedia offers us the chance to practice editing in an applied context, within an existing culture, and in an online setting. Although anyone can edit Wikipedia, the actual process of becoming a regular contributor requires a little bit of work and, in many ways, mimics the learning curve of editing professionally. Just like any business or organization, Wikipedia editors have developed elaborate protocols for ensuring the quality of edits, standards of articles, and cohesion across entries.  Just like any quality online publication, Wikipedia has its own standards for web-publication and even its own markup language, which is a modified version of HTML. Just like any community-based editing, there are sometimes unusual conventions for feedback, cross-checking, and communication as well as an editng culture that reflects the history and ethos of the project. Thus, while anyone can edit, there is still an environment that echoes some essential aspects of editing in workplace settings.  We can thus use Wikipedia to practice of editing in context. 


This course has also been assigned a Wikipedia Expert. Check your Talk page for notes from them. You can also reach them through the "Get Help" button on this page. 

Milestones

Everyone has signed up for a Wikipedia account and familiarized themselves with Wikipedia's editing culture.

Assignment - Wikipedia Basics

For this first week, we'll need to get you set up on Wikipedia. 

  •  Create an account and join this course page, using the enrollment link your instructor sent you. (To avoid hitting Wikipedia's account creation limits, this is best done outside of class. Only 6 new accounts may be created per day from the same IP address.) 
  •  It's time to dive into Wikipedia. Above, you'll find the first set of online trainings you'll need to take. New modules will appear on this timeline as you get to new milestones. Be sure to check back and complete them! Incomplete trainings will be reflected in your grade. 
  •  When you finish the trainings, practice by introducing yourself to a classmate on that classmate’s Talk page. 


Assignment - Good Articles vs. Needs Improvement

Wikipedia has a nomination and review process to designate "Good articles". We can use these to get a better feel for what a good article looks like so that we can learn how to recognize an article that needs improvement.

  • Use this link to open 3-4 random Good Articles
  • Looking through these articles consider the following
    • What does a Wikipedia article look like?
    • How are sections used in the articles?
    • How is the article organized?  
    • What is the opening portion of an article for? 
    • What information is prioritized by the article? What seems to be the appropriate level of detail?
    • Read some sentences closely. What style is appropriate for Wikipedia? 
    • How does the article construct an encyclopedic tone and authority? How and where does it use references? 
    • Aside from content, what else is present in a good article? (e.g. links, info boxes, images, categories). What functions do these serve?
    • How do conventions and form differ depending on the kind of article? 
    • Look at the talk page and editing history. What do these tell you about the editing process that achieved this "good article" status?

Likewise, Wikipedia has a process for nominating articles that need for improvement. 

  • Open the list of "Articles for Improvement" here.  (Note: these are only articles that have been nominated for improvement. Many more articles are out there that need improvement so you might not select from this list when you choose you own articles to work on.) 
  • Open 3-4 articles from this list and consider the following:
    • Are there any tags indicating what might be the issue with the article?
    • Look at the talk page to see what issues have arisen. (Not all issues will be discussed there). 
    • Look at the edit history (of the main page, not the talk page) to see what recent editors have worked on. 
    • Scroll through the whole article. How does it look different from the good articles you looked at previously? 
    • Consider what might be the problem with
      • Organization of the article
      • Lead description
      • Appropriateness of content
      • Lack of information (needs expansion)
      • Encyclopedic tone
      • Lack of appropriate citations
      • Missing or incomplete tags, categories, links, infoboxes, etc 
      • Images and tables
      • Needing copyediting 

For two of these articles, write up a bullet-point list summarizing why you think this article was nominated for the "needs improvement" designation.

  • Post these lists on your userpage in a new section (use "=headingtitle=" to start a new section)  along with a link to the article.


Assignment - Choosing Articles to Work on

Use the training module below to get you thinking about how to select an article, but we need to add some more parameters. To accomplish the kind of editing we want for this assignment, we need a particular kind of article. 

  • The point of this assignment is NOT to add new content (although you can if it comes up), so only work with articles that have a good base-level of content.
  • Avoid articles that are excessively elaborate, controversial, specialized, or well-trod.  These might be too much to take on for an initial project. 
  • Look for articles that clearly don't fit the way a Wikipedia article "looks". We're aiming particularly for articles that need work on organization, levels of information, tone, style, and appropriateness in addition to copyediting, tagging, and formatting. 
  • You might start at the Articles for improvement list we used before or also check out the lists generated from tags that designate need for "style editing" or "copyediting" or "rewrite". However, be selective--while we will copyedit the articles, we also want to be on the look out for the larger, bolder edits needed to take middling articles and push them towards great ones.
  • Many articles need help with citations. You're welcome to work with such articles but only if a) you are prepared and able to do some research and find citations yourself and b) that this is not your only focus. 
  • More articles need this kind of work than you would initially think. So you might be better off going to an article about something that interests you and wiki-surfing from there, looking for articles that need improvement. 
  • Before you make your final selections, check the talk page and edit history.  See if there are any recent or significant controversies, edit wars, or recent high traffic on the article. If so, you might want to avoid the article. 

With these in mind, pick 5 articles and post them to your user page in the order you would prefer. We'll ultimately work on 2 but we want to have a third on hand in case one of the first two don't work. 

Once they are approved, I will assign you the articles in the student tab. 

Week 4

Course meetings
Monday, 15 February 2021   |   Wednesday, 17 February 2021   |   Friday, 19 February 2021
In class - Wikipedia's Editing Culture

Our task is to think critically about Wikipedia articles so that we can learn to improve the existing content and facilitate future editing. To do so, the first task will be to learn to identify what Wikipedia articles look like and what makes a good one. Then we'll work on finding our own to help improve and make into better ones. 

Guidelines and Policies - We want to get a feel for Wikipedia as a living community that nonetheless has developed elaborate rules for itself. These standards are articulated through information pages and supplementary essays as well as brochures produced by the Wikimedia foundation. Below are some useful articles on the basic philosophy and structure of Wikipedia. Using these as a starting point (but following links as needed (you'll quickly see through repetition what Wikipedia editors value and emphasize), spend a few hours getting familiar with the editorial priorities and process used by Wikipedia. 

Be prepared to discuss in class. 

Assignment - Practice Edits

As you were looking through the articles that need improvement, you probably found a few small problems that can be easily fixed. To practice editing, go ahead and make at least two changes to these (or any other) articles.  A few things to note as you do:

  • Remember, you can use the "edit" tab at the top of the page or the "edit" links at the section headings.
  • We will be using the Wikimarkup language to practice getting familiar with working with mark-up languages. Spend a few minutes looking through the article as it appears in the editing tab so that you can get yourself oriented.
  • Once you make your change, make sure to include a note in the "edit summary." Keep these as short and descriptive as possible. Look at others in the edit history tab to see what these usually look like.  


In class - Getting to a Better Article

Our goal is to help our articles on their way to "Good article" status. Even if we don't fully accomplish this task, our intervention should lay the groundwork for future editors, especially those knowledgeable about the content, to bring the article to this level.  There are a few pages in place to help us see how to do so:

Familiarize yourself with the above articles, paying particular attention to the guidelines provides for elements you noticed when we were examining articles earlier this week. At this point you should be getting a much better sense of the task that is ahead of you. Return to these articles as needed throughout the rest of the assignment. 

Milestones

Everyone has been assigned articles

Assignment - Comprehensive Assessment of your Articles

Now that you have your articles assigned and a basic sense of the Wikipedia guidelines, let's dig deeper into your articles. Do the following for each article:

1) Audience, Purpose, Expertise -- For each article, think carefully about the following:

  • Who would be interested in this article? What are they going to this page for? What information are they looking for? How much are they likely to already know about the topic?
  • Does the article satisfy these expectations?  
  • What kind of users are likely to be interested and knowledgeable enough to contribute to this article's content? 
  • How has the availability of expertise shaped the article? Is more expert attention needed? (If so you might reconsider working on the article)  

2) Examine the history of your article: Go to the history page and scroll through the edits. Take note of:

  • major edits (look at the + and - counts). For major edits, do a comparison to see what was changed. 
    • *** Try to find when the current form was created. Did it evolve slowly or did one single editor set the stage for the whole article?  What seemed to be the rationale for their edits?
  • major editors (editors who make large edits or who return to edit frequently).
    • *** Take note of major editors -- they are likely to be the ones you might interact with since they may be following the article. Check out their profile and take note of their experience and expertise.   You might be able to reach out to them directly if it seems appropriate. 

3) Your article in context -- all articles are connected into larger projects and communities and will have at least some history of interaction. The following will help you immensely in getting a feel for your article:

  • On the main page, note if the article has been tagged with any particular issues. When was the tag placed? Is this something you can solve? 
  • Go to the talk page. First, read through what is posted there. Note that there might be some archived talk pages (you'll see a yellow box on the right with the archive). Read these as well. What issues arose? Were there controversies? Are there things that might address? 
  • At the top of the talk page you will find a yellow box that places the article in context of larger wikiprojects and rates its importance. Choose one or two of these and go to the project page. These project pages differ in structure and form, but take note of a few common helpful features:
    • *** Templates relevant to the project
      • Guidelines particular to that topic
      • Assessment guidelines for that topic
      • Most importantly, a table or list of articles by quality
  • Use the table to find Good articles (GA) or Featured Articles (FA) in the same category. Open a few of these and look through them. Do an initial comparison between these articles and yours. Do they differ substantially in organization, tone, style, number of citations, amount of content, and so on? Keep several of these articles on hand for future reference and comparison.

4) Summarize what you've found. Post the following to your userpage:

  • Write up a paragraph on the audience and purpose. Thinking about the history of the article and those involved, give your sense of where/how this article fits this purpose, where it is at in working towards being a great article, and who might be of interest in the editorial process. How does it compare to similar articles?
  • Now reread your articles carefully and write up a summary of what you think you need to work on. What challenges or points of concern do you need to be aware of as you proceed?  [Remember: we're looking for substantial developmental editing. You have to think carefully about what you might do not only in terms of altering the article but helping it move forward in a community of editors].

5) Interface with Wikipedia community. Your article may or may not be currently watched by editors who have worked on it previously. We want to make sure that we engage with the existing community and leave enough space for interaction.  Remember, interaction is what makes Wikipedia thrive!  You do not get to claim the article and cannot put it on hold while you work on it--others  might work on it as well and your edits might even be undone or altered.  But there are a few things we can do to let other editors know that you're working on it. Do the following as necessary and fitting for your articles (you decide--gauge what and who is there and don't be afraid to make mistakes!)

  • If you chose an article on the Articles for Improvement list, they ask that you notify that the article has been selected (you can do so through the talk page of the article).
  • As fitting, intervene or contribute to any recent questions or concerns on the talk page
  • If it feels appropriate, you can add a section to the talk page and let the community know that you'll be working on the article for the next few weeks. As concretely and briefly as possible, explain what you plan on doing. Feel free to throw out any questions that you might have. Previous editors who contributed might very well chime in (but they also might not). 
  • Consider making a "to-do list" available on the talk page.  

 

Week 5

Course meetings
Monday, 22 February 2021   |   Wednesday, 24 February 2021   |   Friday, 26 February 2021
In class - Get to Work

Now your ready to begin working! As you work, feel free to post edits as you go or to work on sections in your sandbox. Wikipedia records all edits so I'll be able to trace your progress as you go and see how much and what you changed. Remember, we're aiming for significant improvement but this won't happen all at once. In fact, to ensure proper integration into the Wikipedia community, you shouldn't post all changes at once but post as you go. 

 


In class - Major Issue #1
Organization and Leads

While many articles are initially put together by a single author, many are patched together often over years of edits by many different writers. Often, structural decisions made years ago will be left in place and thereby frame future edits. Meanwhile, content may be added into random places or just tacked on the end. Thus, the first place to start with any article is thinking about organization. 

Guideline pages to consult:

Assess your articles

  • Does your article follow the basic layout structure of a Wikipedia article? Compare your article with other articles of its type or category in order to identify additional conventions related to this particular article.
  • What is the organizational flow of the article? Does it need a major restructuring?
  • Is there information out of place? Is everything in a sensible order? Is everything given proper emphasis?
  • Are there any sections that are too long or too short? Is there a way to rework it to avoid this? (Keep in mind that you might want to keep a short section if the division is appropriate but the content has not yet been provided). 
  • Does the lead section provide the appropriate level of information? Should some information be moved down or brought up from the main content?
  • Examine the internal structure of each section. Is the information in the most logical order? Do likewise with each paragraph.

Note that if you are making major changes to the organization, you might want to let the Wikipedia community know first and give a clear rationale for it in the talk page. These are often the most bold edits since they can rearrange a whole article. Don't be afraid to do it but make sure that you're clear about why and be open to push-back. 

Assignment - Major Issue #2
Content-focus Problems

Many problems that arise in Wikipedia come from how the article is focused--what information is focused on and how might it be skewed towards one perspective?  Because those who are invested in a topic are likely to be the ones who contribute significant content, some work usually has to be done to adjust the article to ensure that it is balanced and focused properly. 

Here are the three primary guidelines about content:

Assess your articles:

  • Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
  • Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
  • Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
  • Does any of the information read as original research?
  • Think about the citations. Do the sources support the claims in the article? Are there places where more sources are needed?
  • Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted? 
  • Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

Make changes as you find them. 

Milestones

Every student has listed their tasks to be completed and begun work on organization and content-focus problems. 


Week 6

Course meetings
Monday, 1 March 2021   |   Wednesday, 3 March 2021   |   Friday, 5 March 2021
Assignment - Major Issue #3
Style, Tone, and Clarity

Wikipedia is supposed to sound like an encyclopedia. This ideal of a clear, informative, and neutral tone can be hard to achieve, but a good editor can usually spot when the style is NOT these things.  Now that you have examined the content and organization closely, it is time to look carefully at the sentences and make improvements. 

A warning: one can endlessly re-craft sentences and so Wikipedia editors tend to discourage excessive or minor fiddling with sentences. Focus primarily on substantial and needed improvements. When you make a change, try to indicate why the edit was needed citing the relevant policy page if possible (e.g. "Rephrase to conform to WP:NPOV")

Guidelines for tone and clarity

Read carefully through your article, keeping a close eye out for:

  • Any lingering NPOV issues that might exist on the sentence-level. 
  • Over editorializing or other problems with conciseness
  • Unnecessarily complex or convoluted sentences
  • Ambiguous sentences 
  • Order of information within a sentence, particularly in relation to citation. 

Make changes as you find them. 


Assignment - Polishing your articles
Final steps

Before we finish, three final steps are necessary to ensure that your article is in good shape both now and for future editing. Remember, the goal here is not necessarily a polished and finished article--although if you end up with one, great! Rather there are things we can do even with an article that still needs work to help future editors get the article there.

1) Copyedit - Take one final pass through the article looking carefully for grammar, usage, and formatting issues. Where necessary consult the Wikipedia Manual of Style.  (Please note that when two uses are equally acceptable, you don't change it. For example, if there is a British spelling don't change it to the American spelling.  A more complete list of such problems can be found here.)

2) Polishing and formatting infoboxes, links, categories, references, and images - Review the standards provided at the following locations:

3) Template messages and community notification: your article is not going to be perfect by the end of this project. Perhaps the article needs more content, perhaps it needs better sources, perhaps the article might need a more significant change such as merging, splitting, significant rewriting that is beyond your current capacity, or even deleting. In any of these cases, this is not a problem. Instead, you can do the following to engage current a future editors in the continuing process of developing the article.

  • Update or add to the talk page indicating the current status of the article and any open questions or major issues still in play
  • Update, remove, or add improvement template messages. Be sure to follow the guidelines at this link before placing or removing templates. Remember, these can be placed on the whole article or within individual sections. 
  • Add or update reference requests as needed. 
  • If further arbitration is needed, you can work with our Wikipedia editors and possibly submit the more significant changes through the necessary venues. 


Read Editing Wikipedia page 15 to review a final check-list before completing your assignment.

Milestones

Significant improvements have been made to the articles.

Week 7

Course meetings
Monday, 8 March 2021   |   Wednesday, 10 March 2021   |   Friday, 12 March 2021
Assignment - Summary and Reflection

To assist with evaluation, please send me an email (this email will also signal to me that you are finished and your edits ready to be examined) containing a written summary of your time working with Wikipedia as well as a reflection on the process. Please include information about:

 

  • Summarizing your contributions: include a summary of your edits and why you felt they were a valuable addition to the article. How does your article compare to earlier versions? 
  • Feedback: Did you receive feedback from other Wikipedia editors, and if so, how did you respond to and handle that feedback? 
  • Working with Wikipedia: What did you find challenging about working with Wikipedia? What did you learn about the editorial process? 
  • Thoughts on the Assignment: What did you like most about the assignment. Is there anything you would recommend to be changed for next time? 
Milestones

Everyone should have finished all of the work they'll do on Wikipedia, and be ready for grading.

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