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Writing Wikipedia Articles (#WIKISOO)
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WIKISOO Week 5
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Welcome to WIKISOO! Week of 25/26 March 2014 (Class #5)

Week 5: A deeper dive into Open Educational Resources

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Our fifth live session took place the fourth week of March 2014 (see video at right).

This week we were honored to have two guests join us, reflecting on Wikipedia articles, and how they can be improved, and exploring some of their related work:

  • Maximilian Klein, a longtime Wikipedian who recently concluded a term as "Wikipedian in Residence" at OCLC Reserach. Max will discuss an article related to OER, and also some of his work helping OCLC Research work alongside Wikipedia toward common goals.
  • Dan Cook is a journalist and communications specialist for nonprofits. With more than a decade's experience as a newsroom manager, he has built and maintained an editorial staff and helped craft editorial missions for various types of newspapers and online publications.

Our guests took questions at the end of the first hour.


Week 5 Homework

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Do:

  • This is the last week to work on the final project for this course, as outlined in Week 3. Having either selected an existing Wikipedia article to improve at least one level on the quality scale, OR started a new Wikipedia article (which you will aim to bring to at least "Start" class in quality), you should by now have this well underway. Not so much? No worries. Work on it this week, joining us in the lab if you're stuck. Also bring any questions, concerns, or ideas up on our course talk page! We will be reviewing selected articles in the last class.
  • How many edits (changes) have you accumulated on Wikipedia? Check out your user contributions page to find out. By now it should be nearing 200. If not, don't worry -- you're getting there, and you're welcome to apply for the badge after the course's conclusion if you need extra time!
  • Enjoy what you're learning? Write a blog post about your experiences working on Wikipedia (or similar: a YouTube video, a series of tweets or Facebook posts, a Storify or Tumblr page…) Use the hashtag #wikisoo (and, if appropriate, #CommOER). Post about it on the course talk page!

Week 5 Extra Credit

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Choose from one or more of the following, if you haven't done so already:

Do:

  • Seek an assessment of your article. This could be from a WikiProject, through a formal peer review process (WP:GA, WP:FA, WP:PR). It's also a good idea to seek input from classmates, but we do not suggest that class participants assign article quality ranks on one another's articles.
  • Participate in a decision on Wikipedia (e.g. a peer review discussion, an article deletion or merge debate, etc.)
  • Discuss one or more of Wikipedia's policies with a colleague, student, or friend.
  • Help a newbie figure something out (yes, you are ready!)
  • Improve the lead section of an article (in addition to your main assignment).
  • Perform a Good Article review for another Wikipedian.
  • Leave a WikiLove message or a Barn Star for a fellow Wikipedian.

Notes from Max Klein presentation

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Class notes gathered from the Etherpad:

  • Max Klein and OCLC Worldcat: http://www.oclc.org/worldcat.en.html (just concluded Wikipedian in Residence at OCLC)
  • use of authority control, to deal with disambiguation (see Authority_control)
  • see the bottom of many articles (very famous people or topics) for "Authority control" navigation box (for instance, Mary Shelley -- look at the bottom of the article, just above "Categories")
  • Disambiguation in Wikipedia context: when two or more subjects have the same title/name. A disambiguation page, for example, might provide links to multiple people who share the same name.
    • example: John Adams
  • looked at OER article for different citation templates {{cite}}
  • to simplify, you can use {{cite doi}} template, adding only the DOI number after a vertical pipe (|). A bot will come along and fill in the bibliographic information! (see Other info below)
  • Some commentary on the open educational resources article: quite "large" section that least fits is Initiatives, because it's comparatively lengthy. suggest splitting it into another page, e.g., a list article.
  • Max is working on creating a "badge" to indicate when a citation is to an open-access journal
  • Click Edit links at the bottom of languages (left column) on an article, to be able to correct erroneous links to articles in the various language editions (e.g., Tango)

Closing

  • we know editorship has been in decline since ~2007
  • benefits of visual editor haven't been fully realized. but highly recommend clicking visual editor and other beta features in user preferences

Notes from Dan Cook's presentation

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Dan is a journalist and communications specialist

  • growing acceptance level of Wikipedia as a valid, reliable source of information
  • first worked on issue of notability (since small tech company)
  • Pete helped with Pixetell
  • impression of OER article: a little dense, particularly the lead section, for general consumption; thoroughly researched and sourced

Bonus videos!

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The "lab session" from Week 5 -- questions and answers after the main class session.

Questions & answers from etherpad

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  • How do we determine whether or not to link a page to its foreign language equivalents via interwiki links or wikidata—it all seems very confusing…Is it too much for us newbies? What is that process about?
  • What’s the best way to change the name of an existing page (that is ambiquous or mislabeled)? Specifically-- I want to change this article to "Prestes Maia (building)" : Prestes Maia
  • How does the beta editor (WP:Visual editor) work - why don't you use it in class?
  • +1Can I start any new article I want?
    • yes. just make sure it doesn't exist AND follows "notability" guidelines. WP:GNG
  • ..Is the burba badge tool specific to En Wikipedia? As opposed to all Wikimedia projects that we might be involved in?
    • You may earn the WIKISOO Burba Badge (which is specific to this class, which is taught in English) by working on articles in any language edition of Wikipedia.
  • ..Editing one article, I got vague feedback. First it was too much OR (original research), then sources not up to par, etc. Which websites are ok to use for sources, acceptably? (I know addressed before, but specifically, for me as someone who is not a journalist/librarian, and it's been a very long time since I wrote an academic paper, etc.)
    • Your best guide is the "reliable sources" guideline: WP:RS
  • Should an article always have a list of references -- in addition to footnotes -- and what's the utility to use to do that?+1
    • see class talk page topic (type shortcut WT:OPEN)
  • What happens if we're behind? :) +2.25+1
  • ..How do you know when a stub becomes not-a-stub? Is this change the same thing as changing the overall status as required for this course?+1 +1
    • if you're the main editor of the article, best to have someone else assess/rate the article, especially at B and higher levels: go to one of the more active WikiProject for the article, request on the Project talk page and include a link back to the article
    • but from stub to start, it's okay to do it yourself: on article page, click edit whatever the very bottom section happens to be for that article (often "External links"). And on Talk page, edit the class=stub within the WikiProject boxes. Change to class=start to move it to "start" class.
    • quality at a glance from stub to start: multiple references, references are formatted, infobox is complete+1
  • Same question, if we have worked on an article stub, and developed it, how does one document this? By editing out the stub status, or is there another review process?+1 +1+1
  • when does an article move from contemporary info (e.g., for marketing purposes) to historical info (e.g., for educative and/or community-sourced topic of import to many others in the field) - and needs contextual info on how the topic has morphed into something else and/or impacting a larger topic/issue?+1
    • example: Dan Cook's article on a small company that went defunct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixetell
    • Wikipedia aims to cover the historical perspective. (This always comes up in movies, e.g.)
    • If it hasn't been covered by independent sources, it doesn't meet the notability criteria
  • Totally off topic question--what is the software platform wikipedia articles are written in ??--is it php??+1
    • The software is known as MediaWiki (see http://mediawiki.org) -- it is free/open source, and yes, generally written in PHP.
    • The article themselves are written in the MediaWiki syntax; there are various "wiki syntaxes" which generally aim to take the HTML syntax, and make it a bit more "human-readable."
  • do companies rely on or expect the Facebook versions of Wikipedia articles when hiring Wikipedia writers for marketing purposes? i.e. the cross-over relations between the use of Facebook advertising and the community pages that rely on Wikipedia articles...?+1
  • Are DOI numbers specifically used in Wikipedia?
    • No! used everywhere in bibliographic data now. Like an ISBN? Yes, sort of like ISBN except, they are for a specific article not for a book -- so one edition of a journal might contain many DOI numbers.
  • How does one distinguish between a robot and a human within the WIKIPEDIA universe?
    • bots usually have BOT in the name. See WP:BOT
  • I'm doing some biographies and have lots of anecdotal 'stuff' from persons who knew those persons closely. I've chosen to not include anything I cannot validate, but can a biography of a recently deceased person or of a living person remain a stub for this project? I think that those with interests in any of those persons would get much value from any of these articles, but ...
  • Last week, a reference tool was shown for doing APA or other formats (starting from only the ISBN #). What was that tool?
    • In the editing toolbar, ... (Pete will come back to this!)
  • When does Page Stats start applying to new articles in our Sandboxes?
    • It should be almost immediate!
  • How many 'pin level' badges can we display at one time? Is there a hierarchical list, or are there non-hierarchical badges, or only semi-hierarchical?
  • May we have more than ONE article as a project?
    • There's no harm in doing that, and of course edits to multiple articles count toward the 200 edit threshold; but you need to improve one article sufficiently. A second article won't impact that part -- but it will make us happy to see you working on more than one thing! Just don't bite off more than what you want to deal with.
  • Don't finished articles attract future editors? Are we REALLY finished when we submit them?
    • Wikipedia articles are never considered "finished" -- even after a FA review! The topic might continue to evolve, people might have new ideas about how to cover it more clearly, etc. "Publishing" to namespace can be done as soon as the article clearly indicates that the topic passes the notability threshold; you can wait if you like, but we recommend publishing early :)
  • I have catch up the weeks I had miss up to this week and I have found what will be my final projet.

I will create a new article about the Shutter Island's graphic novel adaptation published by William Morrow with art by Christian de Metter. Shutter Island (Novel)

Notes

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Class Week #5 homework and extra credit

  • Great if you write a blog post about your class experience, what you've learned about Wikipedia (homework)
  • Great if you engage more broadly (extra credit)
  • For help finding a Wikiproject for an article, post to the class talk page (shortcut type WT:OPEN)
  • Lots of great ideas from students about improving Wikipedia structure—Pete will follow up
  • An orphan (article without any links to it from other Wikipedia pages)
  • Moving a draft on your Sandbox page to an article space
    • choose Move from (top) drop-down menu
    • no need to assess/rate but good to include it in a WikiProject
  • Determining reliable references: see shortcuts WP:RS and WP:Verifiability
    • usually not reliable: personal blogs because there's not an editorial process
  • more on disambiguation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disambiguation (process of separating the multiple versions of the same things into separate articles)
  • DOI: Digital Object Identifier... wikipedia's definition: A digital object identifier (DOI) is a character string (a "digital identifier") used to uniquely identify an object such as an electronic document. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found. The DOI for a document is permanent, whereas its location and other metadata may change. Referring to an online document by its DOI provides more stable linking than simply referring to it by its URL, because if its URL changes, the publisher need only update the metadata for the DOI to link to the new URL.
  • Who can reclassify something as NO LONGER A STUB? anyone! edit out the templates youself when you think an article is ready. :) ALSO go to talk page and edit any tags rating class = stub.
  • To go HIGHER than stub, go to the one of the WIkiProjects paying attention to an article and click on the talk page!
  • After moving your own article into ARTICLE namespace, no need to classify it...
  • What is a reliable reference? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RS
  • Articles can be nominated for DELETION or marked obsolete

Urls mentioned

  Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond (WIKISOO)  
Past courses: March • May • August 2013
February 2014 • February 2017
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