User:Eponymous-Archon/Drew Archaeology

This page has information on the online writing assignment taught on Wikipedia for the Spring 2021 Drew University Greek and Roman Archaeology course.

The ultimate goal of this project is for several groups of students to choose an underdeveloped or missing article on Wikipedia related to classical archaeology, and improve it during the duration of the course.

Introduction for students

Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, is an encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone. It has many millions (!) of editors (Wikipedians), many of whom are students like you. The vast majority of them are volunteers who find editing this site to be an enjoyable experience, even a hobby. Therefore I hope you will enjoy this exercise and the course! After all, there are not many exercises that tell you to do something that over a million people think is 'fun'. :)

Wikipedia:Tutorial is the best place to start your adventure with this wiki. Please familiarize yourself with instructions for students and if you have any questions, check the Wikipedia:FAQ/Editing or Help:Contents and if you cannot find what you are looking for, ask the friendly people at Wikipedia:Help desk - or just contact me.

Before making any major edits, it is recommended that you create an account (video tutorial). You definitely need to have an account before attempting to do any wiki-related coursework (otherwise we will be unable to confirm if you have completed the exercise). After you create an account, if you know your group already, add your name to the relevant section of this page.

Remember that Wikipedia is not a project limited only to our university. We are guests here and we should all behave accordingly. Please make sure you read Wikipedia:Wikiquette. Please try to think what impression you want other Wikipedians to have of our university — and of yourselves.

You should expect that the course lecturer, other students, your friends, and even (or especially) other Wikipedia editors (not affiliated with our course) will leave you various messages on your talk pages. When working on the exercises below, you should log in to Wikipedia and check your messages as often as you check your email (I strongly recommend you read 'as often' as 'at least daily'). Whenever you have a new message and are logged to Wikipedia, you will see a large orange message, 'You have new messages', on every Wikipedia page you access. To make this message disappear, you should click on it and read the message. Note that it is customary to leave new messages at the bottom of the talk/discussion pages, and to reply to somebody's messages on their talk pages. If you want to leave somebody a message, make sure you are editing their talk page, not their user page. Remember to sign your talk and discussion messages (you may want to watch this tutorial on using talk pages).

Some other useful tips: whenever you are done with an edit and want to save a page, fill out the edit summary box and view a preview of the page after your edit to make sure it looks as you actually want it to look. Only then click the "Save Page" button. You may find the page history tool and watchlist tools to be very useful when you want to check what changes by other editors have been made to the article(s) you are working on.

Please direct any questions to my talk page. You are welcome to send emails, or drop by to see me during our office hours, and ask about Wikipedia how-to; but please try to find the answer first on the Help:Contents.

Warm-up Assignment

We'll start this in class, so it shouldn't be too painful.

To begin with, let's add some information to a page from a source that's already in use on that page. This will avoid any issues with the source being considered inappropriate.

The page is the List of Roman theatres and the source is the Theatrum database (which is in German, but don't panic!).

You'll see that the page contains a big table that lists known Roman theaters along with information about them, including - where possible - a link to the database. It's also organized alphabetically by modern country and then modern name for the site where the theater is located. For theaters that have geographic coordinates, Wikipedia has a nifty mapping function that takes those coordinates and sends them to a mapping site (MapQuest in this case) to be mapped. Look for the Map all coordinates using link in the upper right of the page and check it out.

The assignment is to:

1. Pick a country in the database. We'll do this together in class to make sure everyone has a different country.
2. Once you've got a country, use the map feature to see the plot of theaters within it. Take and save a screenshot for later comparison.
3. Look for theaters that haven't yet been entered into the Wikipedia table.
4. Enter at least three missing theaters. Use the existing entries as a model for how to enter the data. Use the preview function to make sure you've done it correctly. Once you've gotten a theater added correctly, save the page with a comment noting which theater you added. Depending on the country you've selected, you'll find new theaters more or less easily.

So we can keep track, please add your username and name below by adding your username and first name just below, so that it looks in the edit mode like this {{user|Username}} (Name). Then provide your country and the theaters you added, replacing the bits in the angle brackets.

Warm-Up Activity: Roman theaters

1. ? (talk · contribs) () - <country: location of theater 1, location of theater 2, location of theater 3>
2. ? (talk · contribs) ()
3. ? (talk · contribs) ()
4. ? (talk · contribs) ()
5. ? (talk · contribs) ()

Advice

Useful links:

• Good article criteria
• Guide for nominating good articles
• Good article review cheatsheet
• Good article nominations
• The differences between good and featured articles

We don't own the articles

Wikipedia is a project with millions of editors, who collaborate on all articles. We don't own the articles we work on. Don't be surprised if you receive comments from editors who are not part of the course, or if they do edit your article. All editors are here to help; don't hesitate to get extra help - Wikipedia has ton of places you can do so.

Expect to interact (politely) with others

It is likely that over the course of the project, you will receive messages from editors outside our course, and that they will make edits to your article. Be polite in replying, and don't hesitate to ask them to explain something.

Work on Wikipedia

A. Don't work on a draft in Microsoft Word. Work on a draft in the article on Wikipedia. This way your colleagues (and instructor) will be aware of what you are doing the instant you do so, and can comment on it sooner.

B. Don't exchange comments by email. Exchange comments by using article's talk pages, for the same reasons as above (unless you are certain that your discussion have to stay private). If you like to receive email notifications, you can monitor the article's talk pages (and your own userpage talk page) by subscribing to that page RSS feed (see Wikipedia:Syndication).

Plagiarism and copyvio warning

Plagiarism is not only against university's and course policies, it is also against Wikipedia policies (see WP:PLAGIARISM). And attributing somebody doesn't mean cut and paste jobs are allowed (WP:COPYVIO). Violations of plagiarism/copyvio policies will result in lower grade and other sanctions (per university's policy). Please note that the course instructor is not the only person checking constantly for plagiarism and copyright violations; the Good Article reviewer will do so as well, and Wikipedia has a specialized group of volunteers specializing in checking new contributions for those very problems (you don't want your work to appear here or here!). In particular, note that extensive quoting is not allowed, and changing just a few words is still a copyvio (it doesn't matter if you attribute the source). Bottom line, you are expected to read, digest information, and summarize it in your own words (but with a source). For more info see: this plagiarism handout, Wikipedia:Copy-paste, Wikipedia:Quotations, Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing, a guide from Purdue University.

Getting extra help

You can always ask the course instructor (me) or Wikipedia:Ambassadors for help. You should not hesitate to ask your fellow students from other groups for help, for example if you see they have mastered some editing trick you have yet to learn. Wikipedia volunteers are often active in this chat help channel. We are here to collaborate, not compete. If you can lobby and get help/assistance/advice from other editors to improve your work (for example by using Wikipedia:New contributors' help page, Wikipedia:Requests for feedback, Wikipedia:Peer review, Wikipedia:Help desk or Wikipedia:Reference desk), I am perfectly fine with it. Be bold and show initiative, it usually helps. See also "how to get help" handout.

Questions?

Post them at the discussion page of this article and/or email your course instructor!

Copyright notice

Wikipedia copyright: by taking this course, you agree that your work on Wikipedia will be contributed to under a free and open license used by that project.