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Wikipedia:School and university projects/User:Piotrus/Summer 2008

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This page has information on planning and resources for the Sociology SOC 0005 summer 2008 online writing assignment.

The goal of this assignment is for each group of students to chose an underdeveloped or missing article on Wikipedia, related to sociology, and improve it to Good Article status during the course.

Stages and deadlines

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These seem to me the stages we need to pass through:

  • During June 25 lecture, we will have a segment introducing this assignment.
  • Start. Get familiar with wikipedia. Make some trial edits, however minor. Demystify the process. Leave behind any sense of intimidation. As wikipedia puts it, learn to be bold. Learn basic editing skllls.
  • By June 30 (second week), everyone should have created a Wikipedia account, made at least one constructive edit to Wikipedia (subject doesn't matter) and informed the course instructor (Piotr Konieczny) about your account name and the edit(s) you made. Before you make an edit, you are advised to try Wikipedia:Tutorial and create a Wikipedia:Userpage. If you successfully post a diff of your edit to the instructor's Wikipedia talk page you will earn one extra point.
  • Plan. But minor edits alone won't get us much closer towards Good Article status. We need to have a sense of what more needs to be done, and an overall plan for the article. Look at models and guidelines (e.g. Manual of Style or the Guide for nominating good articles). What sections are required? What will be the article structure? What information is needed? Who in your group will write what?
  • By the third week (July 7), each group should have an article selected and a plan (who will read what, who will work on what aspects of the article) in place. It would be useful to put details on article talk pages.
  • Share. You will need to divide up the tasks that we've identified in the planning stage. Who is going to do what and when?
  • Research. This is vital. A wikipedia article is worth nothing unless it comprises verified research, appropriately referenced. This will entail going to the library, as well as surfing the internet!
  • Assemble and copy-edit. As the referenced research is added to an article, we need to ensure that it does not become baggy and disorganized, though there will be moments when it is obviously in a transitional stage.
  • Informal Review. First, informal reviews among ourselves and consultation with the course instructor (Piotr Konieczny). You can try the Wikipedia peer review to get additional input.
  • Good article nomination. By July 21 (fifth week) at the latest as there's a backlog of articles to be reviewed, and because a nomination can easily be put on hold until the article is improved in line with a reviewer's suggestions. This means your article should be mostly finished by then!
  • Course instructor (Piotr Konieczny) will do the final assessment of your work on July 28 (last week).

NB see also what wikipedia has to say about article development.

Important tips

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Create an account and sign in every time you edit

Whenever you edit, make sure that you are signed in (if in the top right corner of the screen you see "log in" button, you are not signed in!). If you are not signed in, course instructor (Piotr Konieczny) will not be able to verify that you were the person who made the edit and give you points for it.

Talk pages

Whenever editing a talk page, add four tildes ~~~~ to the end of all comments you make on talk pages. This will let people know who is talking. You can also just press the signature button.

Selecting an article

Most articles related to sociology and assessed as a "stub" qualify for this assignment. There are hundreds of sociology stubs listed here. You may also want to create a new article (there are missing (red) articles to chose from at List of sociology topics and Subfields of sociology for example, and there is a list of articles requested in the general area of social sciences here). As soon as possible (the deadline for that is July 7), your group should agree on a topic and get in touch (by email) with the course instructor (Piotr Konieczny) so he can verify it is a good topic. You may want to select one or more subjects and list them in the order of preference, in case your first choice is rejected, to save time.

What kind of an article are we writting?

We are not doing any original research. You will not be collecting data, analyzing it, or writing about your experiences. We will not be witting an essay with personal opinions or judgements. Instead, we will be writing an encyclopedic article, summarizing an existing, verifiable state of knowledge from a sociology related area. See Wikipedia in brief for a short list of what an encyclopedic article we will be writing here is.

Getting the article assessed as a GA

At the top of this page you will find a "how to" for nomination. There is also a dedicated guide for nominating good articles. You should nominate your article by July 21 at the latest (this means your article should be as ready as it would be if you would be submitting it to your course lecturer for a final grading!). If you can nominate it sooner, the better for you - every day gives you more time to read comments by the reviewers and address them. Remember: you may get max score (25%) even if you don't address all the comments of the reviewer in time (particularly if he posts them very late); but addressing them and passing through the GA process guarantees you the max score (25%) for this assignment. The assignment does not with the nomination, you will likely have to fix various issues pointed out by the reviewer. If the reviewer posts useful comments, you should do your best to address them; of course this mean you may disagree with him if you think you know better (reviewers are not perfect).

We don't own the articles

Wikipedia is a project with millions of editors, who collaborate on all articles. We don't own the articles we work on. Don't be surprised if you receive comments from editors who are not part of the course, or if they do edit your article. All editors are here to help; don't hesitate to get extra help - Wikipedia has ton of places you can do so.

Expect to interact (politely) with others

It is likely that over the course of the project, you will receive messages from editors outside our course, and that they will make edits to your article. Be polite in replying, and don't hesitate to ask them to explain something.

Getting extra help

You can always ask the course instructor for help. You should not hesitate to ask your fellow students from other groups for help, for example if you see they have mastered some editing trick you have yet to learn. We are here to collaborate, not compete. If you can lobby and get help/assistance/advice from other editors to improve your work (for example by using Wikipedia:Peer review, Wikipedia:Help desk or Wikipedia:Reference desk), I am perfectly fine with it. Be bold and show initiative, it usually helps.

Grading

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Getting an article assessed as a good article by the Wikipedia good article reviewer guarantees you max (25%) score from this assignment. If you have submitted your article for GA assessment by July 21 but your article didn't finished going through the assessment process in time (by July 28), due to the failure of the external Wikipedia reviewer to react promptly, if the course instructor (Piotr Konieczny) is happy with it, you will still get a high score.

Here is a description of quality classes for an article. What we are aiming is is the GA-class (or above, but the GA-class will guarantee you max points). Read carefully what the lower classes (B, C, start, stub) lack and make sure your article is better!

Style guides

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To get past the stumbling blocks of GA, articles will have to conform to the Wikipedia style guides. The three largest barriers are:

Secondary style guide are specific to different projects. Articles must conform to these also. Conflict between any of these is inevitable and troublesome; editors simply have to work out conflicts through consensus.

The simplest way to understand the various style guides is to examine articles that have passed GA or FA. You can see Wikipedia Good Articles from the section "Social science and society" here. Good sociology related ones include Social class in the United States, Anti-nuclear movement in Australia, African American culture, On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Other good examples include Featured articles from the section "Culture and society", for example: Society of the Song Dynasty, Max Weber, Fairy tale.

Resources

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Editors in SOC0005

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Course instructor: User:Piotrus (Piotr Konieczny)

Max 5 students per group, 4 recommended. Students (you DON'T have to give your real name, just email your instructor with your name and account so I know whose account is whose):

Group 1

  1. Andrew Conn (Jungledrew64 (talk · contribs))
  2. Andrea Sobo (Vucko84 (talk · contribs))
  3. Jeremy Gillespie (jgilles (talk · contribs))
  4. Abby Koch (NurseAbby (talk · contribs))
  5. Max Quinlin (MaxQuinlin (talk · contribs))

Group 2

  1. Jen Hefley (jch37@pitt.edu jch37 (talk · contribs))
  2. Jen Kritch (jkritch4@gmail.com Jkritch4 (talk · contribs))
  3. John Mercer (jcm50@pitt.edu Jmercer937 (talk · contribs))
  4. Jamie Straight (jamie.straight@gmail.com jamie.straight (talk · contribs))

Group 3

  1. Jennifer Edwards (jee19 (talk · contribs))
  2. Amanda (alf68 (talk · contribs)
  3. David (dam59 (talk · contribs))
  4. John (John2120 (talk · contribs))
  5. JoAnn Snow (jas146@pitt.edu JoAnnSnow (talk · contribs))

Group 4

  1. Caraline Cody (ccody (talk · contribs))
  2. Zeshan Raja (Zbonez (talk · contribs))
  3. Ryan McClain (rhmcclain75 (talk · contribs))
  4. Kaitlyn Shaw (kes67 (talk · contribs))

Group 5

  1. Miguel (mrm62 (talk · contribs))
  2. Zach (zlj2755 (talk · contribs))
  3. Megan (mheenan (talk · contribs))
  4. Sarah (Sem73 (talk · contribs))
  5. Bobby (bjy2@pitt.edu Beewirks (talk · contribs))

Articles edited

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Group projects

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List here the article your group is editing:

Group 1: stages of growth model from stub to C-class: before, after, diffs

Group 2: sexual script from no article to C-class: after

Group 3: military sociology from no article to C-class: after

Group 4: macrosociology from stub to C-class: before, after, diffs

Group 5: technophobia from stub to C-class: before, after, diffs

Individual extra credit edits

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Extra credit edits (the students have the opportunity to earn extra credit with sociology-related wikipedia editing). Some highlights:

Questions?

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Post them at the discussion page of this article and/or email your course instructor!

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