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Writing Wikipedia Articles (#WIKISOO) self-paced version
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WIKISOO Week 3
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Welcome to WIKISOO! Lesson #3 of 6

Week 3: What is quality?

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

After a short review, this class first explores the concept of quality in Wikipedia, as well as reviewing and expanding on Week 2's focus on communicating with other Wikipedians.

We look at several different peer review processes within Wikipedia, and explore articles of low and high quality. We also look at techniques for gathering information about a page. For instance, how many Wikipedians are "watching" an article for changes? How many page views have there been in the last month? We also talk about how Wikipedians with similar interests find each other and collaborate to improve the site, and how you can get involved in projects outside our class.

Class outline

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  • 0:00 Review session. Emphasis on student questions: How to add a comment to a talk page? What should you add to your watchlist, and how does that work? etc.
  • 0:15 ACTIVITY: Add all course pages to your watchlist, and find a few other articles of interest to add as well.
  • 0:20 What is a WikiProject? Short answer: informal pages that support collaborative efforts by Wikipedians interested in a certain topic. We will look at WikiProject Open, and a couple others.
  • 0:30 Join a WikiProject!
  • 0:35 How does quality assessment work? We have talked about Wikipedia's main policies; now we will look at how Wikipedians work together to systematically improve an article. We will look at WP:FA, WP:GA, and WP:DYK. Please note, FA and GA are very challenging to complete -- you are not expected to do work at this level in this course! This is simply intended to provide context to your work in this course.
  • 0:55 ACTIVITY: Find a DYK that catches your eye; add it to your watchlist; and add a helpful comment if you can!

Week 3 Homework

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Beginning in Week 3, your homework assignments are rooted in the course's Final Project. Please visit that page for a detailed description of the overall project. Below, you will find tasks that will help you get started this week.

Do:

  • Upload a photo to Wikimedia Commons and place it on your user page or in an article. (This is not explicitly part of the final project, but as you work on your article, you may find that adding an image is a useful skill!)
  • Get started on the final project! By now, hopefully you have an idea what article you want to work on. If not, there are some tips and pointers on the final project page. If you're still making your decision, feel free to use your user page, your sandbox, or our class discussion page to narrow it down. When you are ready, choose your article!
  • Start taking notes outlining your plans for article improvement on your talk page or in your sandbox.
  • If building a new article, start working on it in your sandbox. This can be a basic outline or notes to begin with.
  • You have several weeks to complete this task (which should ideally be completed by our final class session, 18/19 June), but plan to spend at least two hours this week wrapping your head around the requirements and your ideas before the next class.

Be sure to look at the Final Project page, to gain a complete understanding of what you should aim for by the end of the course.

Overview of Wikipedia article assessment

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This week, we discuss about various ways Wikipedians evaluate article quality. We introduce a lot of detailed information, so we've collected the most important links and notes here for your review.

Featured Article (FA) was the first kind of formal peer review established on Wikipedia, and remains the highest quality assessment an article can attain. The principles developed around the FA process provided important context for quality assessment in general; so by looking at the FA process first, we will gain insight into how Wikipedians think about article quality more generally.

FA was initially introduced as an answer to the question, "What are the best articles on Wikipedia, to be displayed on the site's main page?" The criteria (what it takes to be a FA) have evolved a bit over time, but are pretty straightforward. Decisions about what articles are awarded FA status are made by consensus, by comparing a nominee (or candidate) to the criteria.

Good article (GA) is similar to FA, slightly lower on the quality scale and a bit less onerous to attain. The principle difference is that, while an FA nomination initiates a discussion open to all, a GA nomination is an invitation for just one Wikipedian to review the article. The GA criteria are similar to those for FA, but a little less strict; and the process is simpler, consisting of a straightforward discussion between two people (the nominator and the reviewer), typically on the article's own talk page.

A much lighter peer review process is the Did You Know... (DYK) feature of the main page. This is designed to feature newly written articles (or really substantial expansions of existing short articles). An article with as few as 1500 characters can qualify to be featured on the main page in this way. DYK is not itself a quality rating, but a process that helps people get feedback and recognition while they are developing an article.

There is also a generic process called simply Peer Review (PR) in which people can ask for feedback at any stage in an article's development.

Back to the formal quality ratings. Below FA and GA, there are quality ratings that do not involve as much peer review. These are, in descending order:

  • FA - GA - B - C - Start - Stub

(You can safely ignore A class, which exists but is rarely used.) These lower quality ratings are generally handled by WikiProjects, in the process of keeping track of the various articles in a certain topic area. There are some general principles about what a given quality rating means, but each WikiProject is encouraged to develop guidelines specific to its topic area.

Students completing the Final Project and 200 edits to Wikipedia will earn the WIKISOO Burba Badge.

Questions & Answers from Etherpad

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  • Q1: How do I add a comment on the Talk page? - MabelQ +1
    • Talk page is at the shortcut WT:OPEN
    • We share this Talk page with WikiProject Open
    • Click edit by a section or click New section (at the top of the screen), scroll down to end of section, add your comment and sign it (use ~~~~)
  • Q2: What should I put on my own user page? +1+1
    • Please discuss on the class talk page (shortcut WT:OPEN)
  • How 'basic' should we keep our userpage?
    • Take a look at classmates' user pages. Copy code of stuff you like. Experiment with the code in edit mode, click Preview, cancel if you don't like or save if you do.
  • Q3: When should I leave a question where? User talk pages...class talk page...article talk pages...email...??!
    • (One opinion) Our class talk page (shortcut WT:OPEN) is a great place for how-to questions. An article talk page is great for discussing the article's content, reviewing the article, proposing new content or structure, asking questions specific to the article's content, etc.
  • Q4: Where are the guidelines for choosing an individual or team project?
  • Q5: Is citing a source (eg from an online magazine in a wikipedia article) in a page kind of advanced topic? Had one in mind
    • Citing sources is vital to Wikipedia! The quality of sources to be used is outlined here: WP:RS ("reliable sources"). Don't worry too much about formatting, that can always be fixed!
    • Go to the page's Talk page, mention it there.
  • Q6: Adding photos: how do you do it? What are sources for copyright-free photos? Appropriate photos? +1.+1
  • Q7: How do i add links in my userpage and make it look like the other well organized userpages? this is my link
  • Q8: How should we handle plagiarism on pages we edit?+1+1+1
    • Be sure to check the class video for Pete's explanation
    • Everything does need to be verifiable, so plagiarized material is not allowable
    • Good to raise on the article talk page. Whether to go further if there's a disagreement depends on whether you want to continue working on the article (as opposed to a passing interest).
    • If there's disagreement, cite WP:5P. If disagreement continues, perhaps leave a note to the article's Project page or through dispute resolution (WP:DISPUTE) and ask for someone else to take a look.
  • Q9: Do personal photos (taken by me) that I want to put on my user page have to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons first? +1
    • Yes. The person who takes the photo is the "author"/"creator" who, ideally, should be the one to upload the photo to WikiCommons
    • Generally, photos should have an educational use or purpose; however, exception is for personal user page
  • Q10: Adding audio files/players Policies, procedures, requirements, formats
  • Question 11: How to create an Archive on user talk page +1+1
    • Basically you cut stuff and paste on a new user page. Create a new user talk page by adding /yourchoice to the end of your user talk page address.
    • To get even fancier, and have Wikipedia bots automatically create archives, like User:MiszaBot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MiszaBot/Archive_HowTo
  • Q12: For signing, is it 4 tildes and then your name, or just the tildes?
    • Just the 4 tildes. You can customize your signature in your user Preferences (thanks!)
    • Why would we want to give more information than just the name?
  • What is happening when a Wikipedian appears to frequently change controversial articles often, but her/his ID has a 'red link'!?
  • Question 13: Is anyone still facing this issue? https://www.dropbox.com/s/doh9mm0zt8l6fvc/Screenshot%202014-03-12%2000.26.01.png
    • (Pete responds:) Yikes, that looks awful! I don't know what's going on with that. If anybody is still having that issue, please do let me know and I will get to the bottom of it!
    • I've NOT had that problem.
  • Q14: How do we oen NPOV discussions on Wikipedia articles? How do we engage (in) these discussions with civility?+1
    • I think related to this: when participating in talk page discussions, how do we make sure we see their responses? Watchlist that talk page? I'm worried I'd miss a response. See the section on notifications below: if you use User:Username that person will get a notification that they are involved in a discussion, and a link to that page.
  • Q15: Are 'dead links' termed 'redlinks'?
    • Great question -- this hadn't even occurred to me! They are different concepts. A "red link" always refers to an INTERNAL link -- that is, a link to a Wikipedia article or page. It's red because the page doesn't exist YET. "Dead link" typically refers to an EXTERNAL link -- a link to another web site, like a reference etc. -- and it's a link that USED to be live, but has vanished. (That web site has taken the page offline.) There are often ways to "fix" dead links by using a site like archive.org.
  • Q16: Can you refresh for me who determines when an article becomes a featured article? I think I missed that...
  • Q17: How do you, as a Project member--or not--add stub articles and other small articles or ideas into that Project? +1+1
    • A WikiProject name and surrounding box appear on an article's talk page (toward the topmost portion, before the discussion area). In that box you'll find importance and quality ratings.
    • But IF we want to add a number of topics which haven't yet been developed - perhaps not even thought of (except by yours truly), how do we add 'stub' notes for those?
    • Add to Project talk page by creating a new section.
    • If your notes are in the form of a draft, perhaps place the draft on your user Sandbox page and refer to it on the Project talk page.
    • If there's an existing stub, add the Project tag to the article talk page.
  • Q18: Do articles end up in multiple projects? or is it generally part of one Project's "turf"?+1
    • Yes, one article can be "claimed" by multiple projects. And a project does not "own" an article -- though occasionally there are disagrements around this when a project's members act like they do!
  • Q19: What are some guidelines for assigning Wikipedia contributions in the classroom? This came up in chat:what's a reasonable amount of time for a student to get an article to GA status? Is that a four week project? Six week? +1
    • Lots of good info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Training/For_educators#Classroom
    • Four weeks might be too short, if planning on wriitng article and then submitting it through one of the Wikipedia processes for review. Review alone might take four weeks -- 2-3 months gives a good time to create the article, then submit for review, then improve.
  • Question 20: How do notifications work?
    • It'll show up next to your username at the top right of the screen.
    • Anytime you post a username, that user will receive a notification. (You can optionally put "@" at the beginning, but that doesn't affect whether or not they see a notification -- just a visual cue to indicate that your comment is intended for a specific person.)
  • Q21: In previous years, I've been told that friends who are friends outside Wikipedia are NOT supposed to work on articles together. Is there any truth in that claim? I was told that a term applies to such 'cabals' and that there's an implied conflict of interest that breaches NPOV standards.
  • Q22: How about our recruiting our friends whose first language is NOT English? What interests would the Wikimedia Foundation have with their aggressive, selfless, dedicated involvement with the project, and how ought we to educate them about how much they would enjoy their dedication to our global project?
  • Q23: Index of our articles or pages?
  • QQ24: How does an editor leave an article for review? What is that process?
    • Question 25: Does one generally need to have some knowledge of a topic to copy edit it successfully?


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