User:SaFrazer/OLES2129
'Bold text'Dr Sophie Frazer
Tutor for OLES2129 --TOC--
Seminar 1
Hello students and welcome to Writing for the Digital World. We will be working together to edit and create new content on Wikipedia. The most important thing I want you to think about this week in preparation for your first assessment in week 5, is your Wikipage topic, the subject of your own Wikipedia article. Importantly this article needs to be produced from scratch, so you cannot translate an existing article in another language. Turn-it-in software will pick this up, and you will be liable for plagiarism. It's important then to find a suitable (notable, verifiable) topic that holds your interest and yields a significant amount of source material.
Seminar 2
Dear all, below is the crucial information from today's Friday seminar (March 22):
- You must add a template explaining to the Wikipedia community that your page is for education purposes and drafting, not an article. Students must do all their work on article creation in the draft space – this is essential; if you use the main-space, it may be deleted by bots or other users. If you lose your pages, just click on ‘Contributions’ and all of your edits and pages will be listed there. The template I used (and I would encourage you to use this one) is template 2 (tutorial). Copy and paste the whole template box into your user-2129 page, and your default user page. You should also write a brief description of yourself on this page, careful to protect your privacy. Please see my user page for an example: User:SaFrazer
- Templates here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bidgee/editor_notice
- Watchlist: Activity: Add some favourite pages to your watchlist and be prepared to share two such pages with the class next week.
- LINKS: These make your Wikipedia pages legitimate and reference other existing pages on the site, creating a digital encyclopedia. On my draft page, I’ve selected the word phenomenology, linked to ‘phenomenology’ on Wikipedia.
- Sources: You must critically evaluate your sources with a hawk’s eye. They must be independent from the topic / subject you are writing on (no promotional material, no autobiographies, no press releases or PR materials, no company website information); the third-party sources must be reliable and reputable, a standard that applies to book publishers (Penguin; Allen and Unwin; Chicago UP). If you are writing a medical or psychological article, you have to abide by more stringent rules for sourcing (these are available in a separate dedicated module).
- Module 4: Please complete module 4 as soon as practicable.
Wiki-projects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels This is the project page for members interested in articles on novels and novellas. The discussion about their page and suggestions for improving articles are located on their common discussion page – click through to link. This is just one example of the numerous WikiProject pages under which your own topic might fit, essential to include in your assessment on March 29. - Visual editor versus Wiki-code or Wiki mark-up: Don’t worry too much about Wiki code or HTML format. As Frances’s lecture explains (module 4), you will rarely, if ever, use it in general editing and article creation. Talk pages, however, do require coding.We will leave coding for this week and just focus on visual editing (we will practice this in the first hour next week, in your 2129 page or draft page.
- Sandbox page: You need not worry about using a sandbox at this stage if you don’t want to. All experimentation and drafting are done in your user draft space – very important to remember to use this space for your work, not the main-space.
Finally, it was a pleasure to get to know each of you a little today and I look forward to seeing you next week, armed with your topics and I hope, with a substantial proposal near completion.
Best wishes, Sophie
Tutorial 3 (week 5)[edit]
Please do not try to enter information into the Google data spreadsheet, as it is now frozen for future edits. Instead I ask that you send all necessary information (the 3 primary URL links) to me in an email that includes your name, unikey and the topic name.
This week we are examining the elements of feature articles - what aspects of a given article's structure, style and formatting elevate it to feature status? Below is a link to the article on the sinking of the Titanic, which is a wonderful example of good prose, a sense of narrative suspense, factual integrity and comprehensive presentation of the facts:
Important message for all students: please do not create a new article in the main space. That will come later. Please do all work on your article in your draft user-page space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles
Below is an example of a featured, high-quality article on Kafka:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka
Go through each element in turn:
Lead section: This is the most important part of your article and the hardest to get right. Why is the leading paragraph in the Kafka article so compelling? What is it doing to make us want to keep reading, and to feel that we can trust this source?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Games
Here is another feature article that shows careful structuring.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_better_articles#Paragraphs
When writing your article, what you are ultimately aiming for is feature article quality, which is why it’s beneficial to read through some feature articles and familiarise yourself with the conventions they employ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Yannismarou/Ten_rules_to_make_an_article_FA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Tennis/Assessment
The above tennis Wiki-project link shows you an overview of the features that make a particular article on tennis a superior one, like a rubric for assessment. You can find these for whatever area you are interested in.
Structure
Your article should have:
a) A clear, easy to understand lead section, like an introduction to an academic paper. It is the summation of the page, a synopsis of what will follow. Reading the links above will give you the best idea of how to write a feature article-worthy introductory paragraph that is suitable for the Wikipedia mode of creation – these articles are specific to the Wikipedia ecosystem, which is unique in its style and formatting.
b) A clear structure, with several headings and sub-headings arranged chronologically or by themes, with images or diagrams where appropriate.
c) Balanced coverage of the subject, with more important viewpoints receiving greater prominence than others. Here is the page for Barack Obama:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
Note the reporting of increased drone strikes, and the way the author has avoided including the substantial questions that were raised about the US administration’s decision to pursue this. The author has here made the decision – rightly or wrongly – to omit that controversial, political critique, to maintain neutrality. This raises the question of what Wikipedia is and what it is not. What is the function of an online, global encyclopedia? Can bias be removed from any piece of writing?
Here is an example of an historical figure. You can see the extraordinary level of detail and care with sourcing facts. It reads as a catalogue of events and actions, while remaining engaging and eloquent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra
- If you are creating a new topic (not from Requested Articles), please make a URL specific to that title. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Peewee
This is a nonsense page, but for the purposes of an example, this is a bird native to Wikipedia. The underscore between the words makes a space between words on the mainspace article site. The root of the URL here is what's important: if you title is Victorian novels, you would simply add after the wiki/Victorian_Novels. Click enter - a new page will appear asking you to create a Wikipedia article (it will look like the Peewee page above) - don't do this yet. Please click the URL and copy and paste that in an email to me, with your name, UniKey, title of topic as it will appear and your student ID, plus your Wikipedia ID (the name you have chosen for the site). Thank you for your patience with this process.
Seminar 6[edit]
This week we will be discussing the function of Talk pages, Wikipedia's brainstorming forum. Here is a useful introduction on such pages:
Maintenance and editing existing articles:[edit]
Here is a list of articles in need of editing: Wikipedia:Maintenance
Talk pages are administrative pages where other Wikipedians or editors can discuss possible changes and improvements to a given article. The talk page is attached to every article on the encyclopedia – just click the tab on the top right of the screen. It should be seen as an open forum – a virtual agora, if you will – where you can follow the discussions on a topic that interests you or propose changes that you might wish to make to an existing article. You can just simply edit an article if you wish, but it’s good digital etiquette to raise your potential improvements on the talk page first.
You also have a personal talk page, in which other editors can contact you about changes you’ve made to an article, or if they have a suggestion about an article that you have authored.
You should always identify yourself on talk pages. Do this by signing off in code: four tildes (~~~~). This will convert to your username and include a date and time of submission. You must click ‘publish changes’ after making a comment.
You can notify other users that you have replied to their thread by linking to their username in your post on the Talk page. Do this by writing {{reply to|Editor 1}} your message. SaFrazer (talk) 03:17, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
Practice using the talk function by writing a message to me (using my 2129 page) or, better still, to the person next to you or across the room.
Editing articles in need of maintenance:
Select a page from the maintenance request database on modules and do the exercise (or for a more extensive list, see my user2129 page). To let me know what you’ve done, create a sub-page branch of your 2129 page.
Editing articles nominated for deletion:
This is an article nominated for deletion that might be of interest. You can see the debate that surrounds its proposed deletion and the way an article can exist in this digital afterlife. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Clendening
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Anna_Clendening.
Many students’ work from last year’s program were nominated for deletion, so it may be something that you face. It’s worthwhile, then, to understand the reasons why this might happen and ways to prevent it.
There is a quiz reviewing the past two modules – please do this in your own time.
The module on ‘creating an article’ is not necessary to do – it simply couldn’t be removed from the unit page. Do not do this, please.
Writing a lead:
If you wish, you might start drafting a lead paragraph for your main article, in your Draft userspace (and in a separate Word document). Read this very clear and informative pdf brochure on editing.
Seminar week 7 (April 11)[edit]
This week, we need to boost our number of edits. By creating at least 10 edits on the Wikipedia mainspace, you have then accrued enough editing practice to be able to contribute an article to the encyclopaedia. We've practised some editing over the last few weeks (if you missed some of those discussion thread exercises, please do them as soon as possible). Here is a maintenance page that lists editing tasks by skill-set: you can choose to re-punctuate some prose; add images from Wikimedia Commons; add in citations or references; or re-write prose that doesn't meet the necessary standards of objectivity. Wikipedia:Community portal
Please see this manual for tips on writing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style
Using your Sandbox: IMPORTANT: You will now be doing all your draft article work in your personal sandbox page, rather than your user draft space. This is crucial, as otherwise your work might be deleted from the 2129 draft page.
Black hole: Breaking news![edit]
Begin to search for and add relevant links on your article page to other Wikipedia articles, so as to improve your work's visibility. Have a look at the portals: Portal:Contents/Portals. These are wonderful resources for searching and reading content within your subject field; you can find templates and other style features suitable to your Wiki-Project. You could also begin to consider external links to add to your article - that is, links to other websites outside of the Wiki space. This page will provide some details: Wikipedia:External links
There are so many ways to start improving your page so as to make it a contender for a good or featured article.
Another fantastic resource is Wikiquote, a free compendium of quotations from a range of subject fields, such as books, authors, films, plays, etc. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Main_Page
Seminar week 9 (May 3)[edit]
This week we are moving our draft articles to a draft space, as we finalise content in preparation for the final move to the Wikipedia mainspace. In class, we will create a new page through the use of Article Wizard. This is the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_wizard/CreateDraft (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. When moving your text and images to this new draft home, please switch to source editing (not visual editing), clicking on the pencil icon on the top right of your screen. Simply copy and paste your prose from the sandbox over to the article draft space. For those of you who are not moving your article to the mainspace because of duplication issues, please do not follow this process; instead, remain working on your articles in your sandbox page.
You must log-in to Wikipedia every time you edit your own or other pages on the site. Please remember to do so.
Today is dedicated to reading, writing and researching your article, drafting and re-drafting. Remember to familiarise yourself with the manual of style (links to which are above) and always check the featured articles for ideas on style, good structure, robust prose, and formatting. I look forward to seeing how each one of your pages takes shape!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Navigation_template
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Illustrating_Wikipedia_brochure.pdf
Seminar week 11 (May 17)[edit]
This week is an important week for you in re-writing, editing, and adding media and embedded links to your draft article, reading it for main space publication. There are some steps that you must follow in order to be granted permission to submit your piece for publication. Please read the information in module 11 on Canvas. Once I've approved your work for submission, you can click the submit for review button. If this doesn't appear on your page, click source editor mode and type at the top of the page: Go in to source editing and at the top of the page they type {{AFC submission|t||ts=20190516012035|u=SaFrazer|ns=2|demo=}}.
If you have met all the criteria for a good article as determined by Wikipedia guidelines, then you should add some links to other articles, firmly situating your page within the ecosystem of the site - this will help to preserve your page as an important contribution to the encyclopaedic network. Wikipedia:Tutorial/Wikipedia links This link here takes you to a useful information page on why creating hyperlinks is important for your page, and how to create them judiciously.
If you have successfully launched your article then you can continue to work on your page, adding a navigational template to the bottom of your page, ensuring references are in line with your project page, adding a hat note to the top of your article, and generally improving the quality of your prose, ensuring it is clear and accessible, while being factually rigorous and stable.
Here is a list of WikiProject shortcuts and a directory, if you need help in finding a suitable project page:
Wikipedia:Shortcut directory/Project shortcuts
For those student writing a scientific or medical article, please see the guidelines specific to such articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Scientific_citation_guidelines