Wikipedia:Writing Wikipedia Articles course/Round 4/Week 5
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Welcome to WIKISOO! Week of 25/26 March 2014 (Class #5)
Week 5: A deeper dive into Open Educational Resources
This week we were honored to have two guests join us, reflecting on Wikipedia articles, and how they can be improved, and exploring some of their related work:
- Maximilian Klein, a longtime Wikipedian who recently concluded a term as "Wikipedian in Residence" at OCLC Reserach. Max will discuss an article related to OER, and also some of his work helping OCLC Research work alongside Wikipedia toward common goals.
- Dan Cook is a journalist and communications specialist for nonprofits. With more than a decade's experience as a newsroom manager, he has built and maintained an editorial staff and helped craft editorial missions for various types of newspapers and online publications.
Our guests took questions at the end of the first hour.
Notes from Max Klein presentation
Class notes gathered from the Etherpad:
- Max Klein and OCLC Worldcat: http://www.oclc.org/worldcat.en.html (just concluded Wikipedian in Residence at OCLC)
- use of authority control, to deal with disambiguation (see Authority_control)
- see the bottom of many articles (very famous people or topics) for "Authority control" navigation box (for instance, Mary Shelley -- look at the bottom of the article, just above "Categories")
- Disambiguation in Wikipedia context: when two or more subjects have the same title/name. A disambiguation page, for example, might provide links to multiple people who share the same name.
- example: John Adams
- looked at OER article for different citation templates {{cite}}
- to simplify, you can use {{cite doi}} template, adding only the DOI number after a vertical pipe (|). A bot will come along and fill in the bibliographic information! (see Other info below)
- Some commentary on the open educational resources article: quite "large" section that least fits is Initiatives, because it's comparatively lengthy. suggest splitting it into another page, e.g., a list article.
- Max is working on creating a "badge" to indicate when a citation is to an open-access journal
- Click Edit links at the bottom of languages (left column) on an article, to be able to correct erroneous links to articles in the various language editions (e.g., Tango)
Closing
- we know editorship has been in decline since ~2007
- benefits of visual editor haven't been fully realized. but highly recommend clicking visual editor and other beta features in user preferences
Notes from Dan Cook's presentation
Dan is a journalist and communications specialist
- growing acceptance level of Wikipedia as a valid, reliable source of information
- first worked on issue of notability (since small tech company)
- Pete helped with Pixetell
- impression of OER article: a little dense, particularly the lead section, for general consumption; thoroughly researched and sourced
Bonus videos!
(note where to start watching)
- @Elitre: begins to introduce Visual Editor at 1:24 here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PK3mIsdQcg
- previous session's speaker, Adrianne Wadewitz, talks about taking an article from STUB to the next level from 2:07 here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OHOkevW_As
Week 5 Homework
Do:
- This is the last week to work on the final project for this course, as outlined in Week 3. Having either selected an existing Wikipedia article to improve at least one level on the quality scale, OR started a new Wikipedia article (which you will aim to bring to at least "Start" class in quality), you should by now have this well underway. Not so much? No worries. Work on it this week, joining us in the lab if you're stuck. Also bring any questions, concerns, or ideas up on our course talk page! We will be reviewing selected articles in the last class.
- How many edits (changes) have you accumulated on Wikipedia? Check out your user contributions page to find out. By now it should be nearing 200. If not, don't worry -- you're getting there, and you're welcome to apply for the badge after the course's conclusion if you need extra time!
- Enjoy what you're learning? Write a blog post about your experiences working on Wikipedia (or similar: a YouTube video, a series of tweets or Facebook posts, a Storify or Tumblr page…) Use the hashtag #wikisoo (and, if appropriate, #CommOER). Post about it on the course talk page!
Week 5 Extra Credit
Choose from one or more of the following, if you haven't done so already:
Do:
- Seek an assessment of your article. This could be from a WikiProject, through a formal peer review process (WP:GA, WP:FA, WP:PR). It's also a good idea to seek input from classmates, but we do not suggest that class participants assign article quality ranks on one another's articles.
- Participate in a decision on Wikipedia (e.g. a peer review discussion, an article deletion or merge debate, etc.)
- Discuss one or more of Wikipedia's policies with a colleague, student, or friend.
- Help a newbie figure something out (yes, you are ready!)
- Improve the lead section of an article (in addition to your main assignment).
- Perform a Good Article review for another Wikipedian.
- Leave a WikiLove message or a Barn Star for a fellow Wikipedian.
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Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond (WIKISOO) |
Past courses: March • May • August 2013 February 2014 • February 2017 |