Instructions for reviews for BIOL4501

Review Assignments

If you have not already done so, please read the criteria for a good article on Wikipedia since this would be the ultimate goal of a Wikipedia author/editor. Each student in the class will be assigned to review one article thoroughly. This will give each article in the class four primary reviewers. In addition, each student will be assigned as a secondary reviewer for two articles from class. The criteria for primary versus secondary reviews will be different as detailed below. In addition, the responsibility of the authors to respond to the reviews will be different as well.

Instructions to authors

Please leave a note on the talk page for your article to explain any challenges you faced with finding material on your subject.

Reviewer instructions

Prior to reviewing an article please check the talk page for any comments from the authors on the scope of the improvement (see instructions to authors above).

Secondary reviews

Start with your secondary reviews so you get an idea of the scope of the articles written by the class. For secondary reviews you are required to read through the article and make a minimum of one comment to the authors. This can not be as simple as "good job". You must say something more specific. If you have something you think can be improved, let the authors know. On the other hand, if you don't have specific suggestions for improvements you can tell them an aspect you particularly liked or something new that you learned from the article.

Primary reviews

For this review you should use the guidelines for a good article on Wikipedia with some modifications due to the limited scope of what we can do within a single assignment. Make sure that the article begins with a lead paragraph and follows the six points under "What is a good article" on the good article criteria page. This list should be self explanatory for most items. Some notes are included below for each item.

Well written - no explanation needed and with 3-4 authors, this should be well executed.
Verifiable with no original research - these instructions were given to you at the beginning of the semester and after writing your own article you should be able to identify any discrepancies.
Broad in coverage - this aspect must be evaluated in light of the message left on the talk page by the authors about the goal of their contribution.
Neutral - self explanatory.
Stable - you do not need to evaluate this criterion.
Illustrated - using the Wikipedia guidelines. If the authors have not included images and you can see a good place for them, suggest it.

In addition to the Wikipedia guidelines, I would like you to pick one source that is used in the article to verify. Be sure that the source qualifies as a secondary source in medicine as defined by Wikipedia. Please read the source carefully and determine whether the authors correctly cited it in their article. Did the source say what the authors said it did? Were there other points in the source that might have contributed to the article that the article authors did not include? In doing this, please check the talk page to see if another primary reviewer has verified that particular source. If it is covered, choose another source within the article.

Once you have fully reviewed the article please post your review on the talk page for the authors to read. Be sure to be logged in when you do this and sign your review in order to receive credit.

Authors' response

For primary reviews from classmates as well as comments from outside the class, you are required to provide a detailed response to the review. If suggestions are made to improve the article you should act on them and then respond to the review on the article talk page explaining the changes you made. If you don't agree with the suggestions for improvement, you must explain politely why you don't think the article would be improved with the changes. In cases where there are many outside comments please contact me and I will limit the number requiring a response.

For secondary reviews, you need not comment unless you would like to.