Wikipedia:CARL Medical Editing Initiative/Fall 2021/Course Overview/Assignment 1

ASSIGNMENT # 1: Wikipedia Article Structured Critique (ungraded, mandatory assignment)

  • Read your article and together with your group answer the following questions (1-7). Point form is acceptable. One group hands in a single assignment.
  • This is due on Oct 25th, 11:30pm 2021.


How to hand in Assignment # 1:
One member from each group
a) uploads a single group document (1 page) to Gradebook AND
b) emails the group assignment word document directly to your faculty tutor. The faculty tutor will provide formative feedback to the group by Nov 1st. You will be using feedback from this assignment to guide your discussion about the article and where your edits should focus when you meet your tutors on Nov 1st.

Your group assignment should include:

  • Student names (all students in group who contributed to Assignment 1):
  • Student Wikipedia usernames (all students in your group need individual Wikipedia usernames)
  • Name of assigned Wikipedia article


Questions to answer in this assignment:

  1. Is everything in the article relevant to the topic? Did anything distract you or seem out of place?
  2. Is the article neutral? Are there any claims which appear biased towards or against a particular position? Are there any sections where the language was hard to understand or non-patient friendly?
  3. Are there viewpoints or elements that seem to be missing?
  4. Check a few key citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?
  5. Are the citations out of date (more than 5 years old)? Are they appropriate for the topic and for Wikipedia? Check the project resources page for guidance on medical sources for Wikipedia (WP:MEDRS)
  6. Check out the talk page of the article. What kind of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
  7. What are the areas of this article that you think should be improved/updated? Highlight the most important areas.


  • (Note: you are not expected to make huge, sweeping changes to your article. Look for small areas where content could be added, citations which need updating or aren’t appropriate, areas that have been flagged as problematic in the talk page, etc. If each of you in your group plan to change 1-2 sentences, each with references, that will make a substantial difference to the article)