Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Courses/Spring 2011/Public Policy Design and Evaluation (Matt Dull)

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Course description[edit]

This project aims to improve the quality, consistency, and comprehensiveness of Wikipedia entries regarding political appointees in American government. Political appointees play a storied role in American government. No other industrialized democracy appoints such a large, wide-ranging class of “political executives,” as does the U.S. federal government. And, particularly over the last four decades, their numbers have increased substantially. Reform of the appointees process has been a topic of advocacy for decades. This year reform might actually occur (see the attached article), but – if history is a guide – don’t hold your breath! While “fixing” the system may be easier said than done there are plenty of opportunities to improve the quality of public knowledge.

Assignment overview[edit]

This project will take up two distinct domains of appointee politics.

The details of how to approach these topics will be up to the groups, but as a starting point, we see a handful of project objectives:

  • Learn about editing Wikipedia entries
  • Develop an entry describing the federal Vacancies Reform Act
  • Learn about Virginia gubernatorial appointees and define the scope of the project
  • Improve the consistency of appointee position entries
  • Improve appointee biographical information
  • Think better ways to represent tenure, turnover, and vacancies

The information on Senate-confirmed agency appointees is fragmented and not always of reliable quality. Building this content area will position Wikipedia as the ‘go-to’ resource for users who seek current and historical information on the U.S. government.

Students[edit]

This is a list of the students in your class (or rather their Wikipedia usernames), along with their Wikipedia articles (which students will select at the appropriate time).

Resources[edit]

The Great Wikipedia Debate - This blog post on Public Knowledge Journal has a basic discussion of academic uses of Wikipedia.

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