Wikipedia:Writing Wikipedia Articles course/Round 4/Week 4

	Writing Wikipedia Articles (#WIKISOO)
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WIKISOO Week 4

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This week's links
Emails	Welcome to Week 4 Week 4 followup
Shared notes	Etherpad
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Welcome to WIKISOO! Week of 18/19 March 2014 (Class #4)

Week 4: Wikipedian roundtable

Our fourth live session took place the third week of March 2014 (see video at right).

This class will focus on how a Wikipedia article can evolve and improve over time, and how a good Wikipedia article can impact the world. We will be joined by a special guest, Andrew Lih, author of the 2009 book The Wikipedia Revolution, who will discuss Wikipedia's coverage of emerging news events. We will also review presentations from experienced Wikipedians who have presented to past sessions of the WIKISOO course. Any students who have ideas about how to approach their final project are encouraged to bring them up for class discussion.

We will discuss topics like how to build up a Wikipedia article on a smaller topic, where authoritative sources are hard to come by, and how Wikipedians work together.

We will also discuss the two badges you can earn through this course in more depth. As always, after the first hour we will have time for in-depth questions and discussion. Please add any questions to the etherpad shared notes page during the class!

Class outline

• 0:00 Presentation of the WIKISOO Burba Badge and WIKISOO Signator Badge, and how to claim your article for your final project.
• 0:10 How do Wikipedia articles grow? General overview. Introduce our guest.
• 0:15 Watch a short presentation from a past WIKISOO guest speaker, Stephen LaPorte. Add any questions to the Etherpad.
• 0:20 ACTIVITY: Have you chosen your article for the Final Project? If so, add a sentence or so to the Etherpad explaining to the rest of the class. If not, write a couple sentences about what you are considering for your project. Be sure to include your Wikipedia username so your classmates can find you!
• 0:25 Watch another video from a past presenter, Billy Meincke. Start at 1:43 to skip Pete's boring introduction, Billy did a great job introducing himself :)
• 0:30 ACTIVITY: Take a few minutes to read through your classmates' notes on the Etherpad.
• 0:35 Presentation from Andrew Lih
• 0:45 Questions and answers. Our guest will be with us until the end of the hour, so questions for him are a priority before the break!

Week 4 Homework

• Continue to build the article you've chosen for your final project. Not getting anywhere? Bring up your questions in class or on our talk page!

Week 4 Extra Credit

Choose one or more of the following. Be sure to report back on how it goes on our course discussion page!

• Discuss one or more of Wikipedia's policies with a colleague, student, or friend.
• If you have not yet done so, read about WikiProjects on Wikipedia. Find one that interests you, and join it. Begin to monitor your WikiProject's talk page on at least a weekly basis; start or participate in at least one discussion there. (We especially encourage you to join WikiProject Open -- you are already following its talk page as part of this course!)
• Participate in a decision on Wikipedia (e.g. a peer review discussion, an article deletion or merge debate, etc.)
• Help a newbie figure something out (yes, you are ready!)

Questions and answers from Etherpad

• +1 I feel like I've fallen behind. What's the best way to catch up? Me too - planning to set aside some catch-up time later this week but welcome any suggestions.
  • Go to the course home page then select any week of class and watch the video
  • Etherpad notes are most recent week first
  • Go to the class talk page
  • "Be bold" and give something a try, according to Wikipedia guideline. In the vast majority of cases, jump in and make changes. Exceptions might be, e.g., high-profile articles. Even so, if your edit is reverted you can learn from it.
• +1 Why are my own photos being deleted - after I upload them myself?
  • Covered in some detail in the lab session; see the video, about an hour and 15 minutes in. -Pete (talk)
• Are there official rules about STYLE or FOOTNOTE/REFERENCE STYLE?
  • Yes, but they are flexible. See recent discussion on WT:OPEN for some insights, also WP:REFERENCE -Pete (talk)
• I have seen it; but what is the "code" that will aggregate all the entries you have worked on -- there's a search engine that can be placed on a page . . .
  • I know what you mean, but will need to investigate -- I don't remember! -Pete (talk)
• If an article has an orange box (e.g. needs citations) but we think we have improved the article enough to remove the box, should we remove the box or do we need feedback from others first?
  • You can just remove it, or you can leave a note on the talk page first. It's up to you; if you didn't create the problem to begin with, you are probably fine to just remove. -Pete (talk)
• +1 If our sources are in a different language than the article we are writing, does that pose any problems for acceptance?
  • Not necessarily, but since this is an English language project, ideally things are comprehensible & useful to an English speaker. There is probably a policy that speaks to it, but I don't know it offhand. -Pete (talk)
• In the OER article's talk page, I asked if the title should be uppercase since it's a proper noun. One response in favor. What next?
  • This is a good start, but probably not enough yet to act on. Two people is not a very strong consensus, and you have not explicitly referred to anything in the Manual of Style. I would look through there for a rule that seems to apply, and note that on the talk page before making the move (as described below). -Pete (talk)
  • (technical answer from Etherpad) Use Move page button to rename. The software will automatically create a redirect to the new name.
• Are there Wiki equivalents to legal precedents in contentious situations?
  • Yes! The most applicable is probably the output of the Arbitration Committee, which is like Wikipedia's "supreme court" or final arbiter of most disputes. Look at that page, to find links to past rulings. -Pete (talk)
• How hard is it to create an infobox? (easy as in getting it accepted)
  • Try it and find out! :) Did you see my video on how to create a template, and the related one on creating an infobox? If what you are creating is in line with others you've seen, you will probably find others are happy to have it added to an article. (There are cases where WikiProjects have staunchly resisted them, though -- I think WP:OPERA is the well known example.) -Pete (talk) 01:12, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Infobox
• The article I want to write is for the spanish Wikipedia, but I can't find the 'sandbox' in the spanish Wikipedia version. Any advice? (By the way, is about an important architect of my city).
  • Great! You can create a sandbox "manually" on any Wikipedia, even if the software doesn't give you an easy link; just type your username into the search box, followed by "/sandbox" (or "/anything you like"!) For instance, User:Peteforsyth/my WIKISOO sandbox. Then create the page! For easy access, put the link on your user page. -Pete (talk)
  • I think that you will only see the Sandbox if you have a profile in that language. I have a "SANDBOX" page in English and "TESTES" page in Portuguese but nothing in Spanish... (I have no profile en español.) Thanks!
• FOR ANDREW LIH: How much does your "clout" or reputation as a seasoned Wikipedian allow you to do what you do, vis-a-vis current events, uploading other people's photos, etc. I feel like if we tried to do that as novices, we would be subjected to a lot more scrutiny
  • Andrew's reply: Seasoned or experienced is important. Used to be easier, e.g., to create articles.
  • Pete: The more you base and explain your edits as based on Wikipedia policy/guidelines, the better.
  • Andrew: Notify the editor, leave a note on the article talk page. Use the {{Ping}} template. Also, go out of your way to hit the "thank" button next to edits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Ping
• +1 Censored? My question about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americentrism in Wikipedia didn't seem to survive very long. Was it just my imagination or was Andrew dismissive of people who complained about this? I think there is a lot of real concern on the part of a lot of people--I can definitely see their point... Perhaps it is the *scale* of the conversation that is exhausting for him--that was the sense that I got from his comment at least. {Wait, though... did someone erase your question!?}YesUggh. That's not cool at all. After all we already have https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
• My question is that I have changed wrong information on Caribbean countries. Changed it and then had more experienced wikipedians change it back to the wrong information. This was a very frustrating experience where experience does not translate into accuracy.
  • Let's look at this one in the lab session (we did) -- we can pull it up in the screen share and look at it together. -Pete (talk)
  • Example: First Nations Seeker search engine was added to List_of_search_engines then tried to create a page for it—in both cases, it was deleted.
    • List articles rely heavily on notability. So is the First Nations Seeker search engine notable enough to have its own article? By Wikipedia standards—e.g., needing at least a couple articles about the topic—it was difficult to demonstrate. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/First Nations Seeker
  • Article on Lucy Stone Lucy Stone now designated a Good Article.

FINAL PROJECT IDEAS AND DISCUSSION

• Does it have to be just one? I have a half a dozen on the go :) I guess if I had to designate one, Epistemology of Wikipedia
  • I know this was asked in jest, but I think there's a serious point here -- it can be really easy to overwhelm yourself by taking on too much on Wikipedia! We really do suggest focusing *most* of your effort on one article, to make progress you can really see, and earn the badge. It's great to keep dabbling on other articles at the same time if you want, but don't take on so much that it drives you crazy! -Pete
• TShimp: Public Sphere Pedagogy. Something I am interested in and that is being implemented in more of the colleges/universities in my area.
• Alex: Silk road music - specifically the Rijak instrument. The main issue I am having is finding enough source information/references (the main book I have is out of state and I can't find it at the library). I would like to expand this article: Ghijak. I studied the instrument and have lots of photos to add as well.
  • Let's be sure to talk about how to find sources a bit -- I bet many of our students have ideas about that, and I can make some suggestions. -Pete
• AmandaRR123: Afrofuturism, which I was introduced to through my interest in science fiction. I appreciate it as a reader, so want to contribute to representing the scholarly work on it as well. (AWESOME +1 - @agathafrye)
  • Very cool! Do you have some ideas about what the article needs? Specific sources you will use, sections you want to add...things like that? -Pete
  • I've been double-checking all the references, as a way to get a little more comfortable with things, but would love to expand the sub-sections, maybe change Art --> Visual Arts and add Music and Literature as new sections. I don't know really how to do that as something beyond just a list of artists -- is a list that appropriate for an article?
• Giso: I chose Francisco Prestes Maia, who was an urban planner, professor, "man of industry", and one-time mayor of the city of São Paulo during the mid-20th century. He has a rather extensive page in Portuguese, as you can imagine, and he has a major arterial road named after him in São Paulo, but to date there is not an English language Wikipedia article about him. I'm excited to do some research about him and let the world know what I find out!
  • Very cool -- a project that builds international and..interlinguistic (is that a word??) connections. -Pete
• Minikaramchedu: PRG4 . this is a protein I do my research on and there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about it on the existing page. I would like change that to make it better.
• I would like to know if I could make a cartoon picture of its structure based on the existing ones online. Would that be infringing copyright?
• EternaLearner/Valerie: Still debating - hard to take that first step. Leaning toward focusing on an individual, but perusing the list of articles already out there
• ejade: thinking about capturing some of the debates on meanings of openness for open education article, but also thinking of adding to Creative Commons License article from what I learned through WikiEducator class "Open content licensing"
  • Excellent to see the crossover with other open classes! -Pete
• Maynard.Clark @HarvardVegan user:MaynardClark - Tamara Awerbuch-Friedlander, PhD (MIT), the woman who filed the first lawsuit against Harvard for geneder discrimination: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/tamara-awerbuchfriedlander/ - still an instructor (I like doing biographies; I have a draft now)
• Because I'm working on a Wikipedia Loves LIbraries project that's focused on local history at my library, I chose to write an article about John Tornow, aka "the Wildman of the Wynoochee"... http://www.legendsofamerica.com/wa-johntornow.html. As far as I can tell, there's no article about him yet. @agathafrye
• Chris: Haven't the slightest clue what I'll be doing. // I just clicked around reading until I found some red links. Obviously, start with something that is interesting to you. :) Thank you! :)
• Ryan Guy: I chose to create a new article about "Public Sphere Pedagogy." I've seen a couple small applications of it, but wanted to research it's theoretical backgrounds and national/international applications.
• 9. I am considering to work on the article Tango Argentino, since it seems to need improving and it is a subject I know about.
• Cammie: I’ll be continuing the citation work I started previously on Herbert Kohl, a renowned writer and educator.
• Randolph Hollingsworth: I'm thinking about working on OER policy - this is something that needs to be examined at the local level and I hope to start a conversation among the faculty and staff here at the University of Kentucky - would appreciate having someone to think about this with me!
• My project will be about the architect Refugio Reyes Rivas, who built very important works in the city which I live. I think is very important to create this article because he's a very importante man for the history of Aguascalientes, Mexico. I uploaded two pictures of an sculpture of him, you can check it out on my user page: w:es:Usuario:Luisalvaz