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I am studying Information and Library Studies at the University of Strathclyde. For a course on Information Sources, Organisations and Services we had an assignment to write a wikipedia article. The initial challenge was to identify a gap or to find a stub to expand on. Next we were to write an article, track its edits and possibly battle deletion. Here is the story of my journey.
As soon as DR suggested that we write an article for wikipedia for our assignment I began to look for a topic to cover or expand on. My first attempt was to identify an SF author who hadn't yet had a great deal published or a lot of recognition, but everyone I could think of already had a page. Next someone in class said I should do my home town. I lived in a little town called Crieff when I was growing up, but that also already had a page. However I noticed that there was no link to the local distillery. I hunted all round the encyclopedia for any reference to it and discovered that most of the other distilleries had pages, but not Glenturret.
I checked my university's library to see if there were sufficient secondary sources to use for reference. Quite quickly I found an old guide book, several references in general whisky books, some references from whisky websites and a few newspaper articles from Nexis Uk. While I was conducting the research I also checked deletionpedia to see why articles were rejected. After having a right laugh at some articles about ordinary people and their bands, I figured that my distillery was probably sufficiently notable to survive deletion. Armed with lots of secondary sources I started the article.
At this point we also had to meet some midway deadlines. There were issues at this point as DR wanted us to put a half completed article up on the site. No one thought this was a good idea as someone might edit something before it was even complete. But DR relented and said sandbox or user page screen shots would be fine at this stage. There was quite a steep learning curve on mark-up and references and styles. I got round most of this by copying the content of another distillery's page and slotting in my text. My references required revisiting a couple of times to get right. I also had some help from one of my classmates who had been helped by her boyfriend.
At this point I had a stroke of luck as I thought I would have to get permission from the distillery to use a photograph as I didn't have any of my own, but Garrit already had an image in the commons and it was easy to include it. My next obstacle was finding enough subject matter to satisfy the word count for the assignment. It was back to the library for more research.
The article was finally made live at 1900 on Saturday April 4th 2009. Within a couple of hours someone had added a cleanup tag to it as I had floating full stops. I had put them after the references so they kind of hung in mid air. So I corrected all of those. Then the same user also corrected a few other aesthetic issues, such as putting the references in two columns, making the title text bold in the lead text and adding Scotland into the location. Also another user had marked the article as patrolled. I wasn't sure what this meant, but a number of users have taken it upon themselves to check out any new articles and if necessary mark them for speedy deletion or cleanup or whatever. Mine currently has no templates on it at the moment, but I imagine it's under surveillance.
I am now monitoring the article to see what other edits are made to it. I will include these in my report when I submit it in three weeks. Then I'll have to think about what to do next......
The article and report has just been marked and I received 80% for it.
Update Feb-2010
I am currently unemployed and am looking for projects. I decided to start contributing to wikipedia again. This week I have created the Greenloaning, Kinbuck and Ashfield, Stirling pages.
| Ashfield | |
|---|---|
  Ashfield Location within Scotland | |
| Population | 139 [1] |
| OS grid reference | NN784037 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Dunblane |
| Dialling code | 01786 |
| Police | Scotland |
| Fire | Scottish |
| Ambulance | Scottish |
Ashfield is a village in Stirlingshire, Scotland. It lies between the Allan Water and the Stirling-Perth Railway line. It is two miles north of Dunblane[2] and was designated a conservation village in 1976. It was originally built to house workers at a nearby silk dyeing mill. [3] [4] There are various annual activities based in the village hall such as a Blues festival, a Food festival and a Music festival.
External links
editReferences
edit- ^ The Gazetteer for Scotland, Ashfield, http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/scotgaz/towns/towndetails504.html
- ^ The Gazetteer for Scotland, Ashfield, http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/scotgaz/towns/townfirst504.html
- ^ Alexander B Barty, (1944), The History of Dunblane, P248
- ^ Canmore, Ashfield Print Works:Worker's Housing, http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/167284/details/ashfield+print+works+workers+housing/