User:Leejohnson898/Proposal

Assignment: Develop Your Proposal

Due Date: Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Before creating or editing your article on Wikipedia, you will need to develop a proposal. The proposal should be a typed plan (in a word document) describing the proposed topic and giving a blueprint for what your Wiki entry will look like. The purpose of the proposal is to persuade readers of the merits of your planned changes or new entry and how your entry will differ from or improve upon any existing or related entries. The proposal should cover the concepts necessary to a critical understanding of the issues; related theoretical and policy debates; the analytical plan and section outline intended for the entry; a substantive list of references expected to be applicable or useful; and the links to other entries that you plan to add. The proposal should acknowledge and adhere to the standards required by Wikipedia for creating and updating entries.

Instructions:

Your Proposal should answer the following questions/fulfill the following requirements.

1) Identify your topic.

2) Explain why your topic needs to be revised or added to Wikipedia.

3) Make an argument for the relevance of this effort (Why should we care about this subject? What makes it so interesting?)

4) If you are planning to propose a new entry, please explain why this would be better than presenting it as a subsection of an existing entry or revising an existing entry.

5) Describe how you will go about gathering evidence for your entry.

6) Anticipate potential problems.

7) Provide an outline of the sections you will be revising/creating for your entry. If you are contributing a new entry, this will comprise all the sections of the entry. If you are contributing to an existing entry, include an outline that shows existing sections to be kept or deleted and proposed new sections, clearly distinguishing between the two using the Track Changes feature of Word.

8) If you plan to coordinate work with a classmate on an entry or on related entries, please describe your work plan.

9) Briefly outline the points you plan to add to the WikiProject Group and Article Discussion pages.

10) Conclusion—Reiterate the importance of your new or revised entry.

Additional Notes

• Proposals should contain a minimum of 1000 words not including references for single person groups and a minimum of 1500 words for partners working together.

• References should include material from outside the syllabus as well as relevant course readings. These will need to be listed following an appropriate documentation format such as Chicago style (including author, year, and page number).