Wikipedia

Electroclass

Joined 9 May 2006

Overview

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This is the user page for Music E-145, a history and aesthetics of electronic music, at Harvard Extension School taught by Wayne Marshall (aka wayneandwax). This page saw its first incarnation in Spring 2006, and it will serve as a center of class activity again in Fall 2007.

Each week, and in a more ambitious manner for our final projects, we will marshal our individual and collective efforts to help expand and refine the public body of knowledge on electronic music while reflecting critically on the enterprise on our blog.

Weekly edits should, ideally, expand or revise an article or set of articles not only by adding (or worse, simply subtracting) information but by linking the information to outside sources. Our course readings (both books/articles and websites) offer an obvious place to find useful information and quotations.

ElectroClass 2007

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ElectroClass of 2006

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RE: Final Projects

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Our final projects will consist of two parts:

1) A substantial article, or series of edits, to Wikipedia on some aspect(s) of electronic music. This can be broadly interpreted. Any one of us could write, for instance, about a genre/style, a subgenre/substyle, an artist/collective, a producer/engineer, a record label, an important event, a place or festival, an instrument or technology (including software), a particularly important or seminal song or album, a relevant concept or theory, etc. - or a combination of things, using hyperlinks to thread a discussion across relevant entries.

Note: There is a pre-existing project to work on and clean up Wikipedia's body of knowledge on electronic music. There are also pre-existing lists of electronic music articles in need of expansion and revision, including genres and albums.

2) A critical commentary on our entries/edits at our blog, linking to the Wikipedia entry (as well as including some such critique/justification in the "discussion" section of the articles in question). We will take this as an opportunity to reflect on the nature of Wikipedia, to explain our motivations for editing the articles the way we have, and to discuss what seem like inherent limitations or distortions of this medium.

A "substantial" contribution can take many forms, of course, but the strongest Wikipedia articles - in our estimation - tend to include the following parts:

  • Overview
  • History and Context (could have subsections, could be periodized)
  • Breakdown into Subcategories (subgenres/substyles, parts/uses/applications/functions, etc.)
  • Lists (important related figures/groups, record labels, manufacturers, places/spaces, etc.)
  • References (i.e., a works cited section, offering a few crucial references, especially any employed or quoted in the article)
  • External Links (relevant websites)

It goes without saying that good Wikipedia articles will also provide, throughout the text itself, a number of "internal links" to other, relevant Wiki articles. Conversely, since it is useful to link back to our articles from other relevant articles on Wikipedia, we will attempt to make minor edits on other pages in order to better "network" the public knowledge on electronic music.

Finally, in cases where we are not expanding or substantially revising a single article, we should strive for cohesion among a few sizable edits to multiple, related articles.

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