Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Poverty Justice and Human Capabilities (Diana Strassmann)/Review an existing wikipedia page

Assignment: Wikipedia Page Review

Due Date: In hard copy either in class Thursday, Jan. 31 or to HUMA Room 106 by 4PM Friday, Feb. 1

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge." -Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia

The typical Wikipedia editor has been described as “a college degree [educated], 30-years-old [male], [who] is computer savvy but not necessarily a programmer…and lives in the US or Europe.” As a consequence, certain topics (Star Trek, for example) are much more thoroughly represented on Wikipedia than others. In particular, topics related to gender, race, class, development, poverty and sociology are grossly underrepresented on the site. Through the Wikipedia assignment, you will actively contribute to improving the representation of these topics on a publically accessible and widely used source that more than 400 million people reference per month. With this assignment, you will learn and practice how to evaluate existing Wikipedia articles.

First, read the following items from the Wikipedia resources handed out in class:

• “Life of an Article” (p. 10) and “What Makes a Quality Article?” (pp. 12-13) from the Blue introductory booklet ~ also available online at: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Welcome_to_Wikipedia_brochure_EN.pdf
• Evaluating Article Quality (green cover) booklet ~ also available online at: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Evaluating_Wikipedia_article_quality_2010-11-26_(web).pdf
• “Contributing to Wikipedia: Overall Guidelines and Evaluation Criteria” handout (contains links to more information and guidelines)

1. Choose one course topic and one STEM/Popular Culture/Video gaming topic. List these topics on the evaluation sheet below.
2. Quickly read through your STEM/Popular Culture/Video gaming topic page. Reflect on the quality of the article, the type of information included, organization and readability. Use the sheet below to prompt your thoughts and fill in the chart.
3. Quickly read through your course topic page. Get an overall sense of the page. Reflect on the quality of the article, the type of information included, organization and readability. Fill in the chart below. Consider in comparison with a Wikipedia Featured Article written by a Rice student on the American White Ibis.
4. List two areas where each page may most benefit from improvement.

Wikipedia Page Evaluation

Area	Scoring Methods	Course Topic Score	Other Topic Score
Comprehensiveness (Possible Score 1-10)	Content Analysis: Does the first paragraph of the article include a useful and clear overview of the topic? Does the contribution include a sufficient amount of information for the topic and a reasonable outline for the material that fully covers the core material, relevant issues, and key debates? Are the points well supported by evidence with sufficient references and analysis? Thesis and Analytic Focus: Dies the article focus on a clear topic? Does it include detailed scholarly support (where appropriate)? Representativeness:Does the contribution consider a variety of perspectives rather than relying on just he point of view of one or two scholars? Does the contribution take an appropriate tone in providing competing points of view? Are nuances and subtle distinctions clarified appropriately? ||
Sourcing (Possible Score 0-6)	References and attributions: Are all claims supported where appropriate with references, and are sources represented accurately, with references following an approved form? Is language precise, so that sources do no overstate claims and represent the nature of studies and the evidence provided?
Neutrality (Possible Score 1-3)	Does the article have a neutral point of view, accurately representing signficant points of view on the topic without advocating or placing inappropriate weight on particular viewpoints? Does the article avoid stating opinions as facts? Does the article avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts? (if different reliable sources make competing claims, mention both claims and attribute both claims to their respective authors).
Readability (Possible Score 0-3)	Language: Are sentences carefully crafted to be clear, avoid passive voice and grammatical errors? is the entry accessible to Wikipedia's broad audience, including people from difference educaiotnal levels, backgrounds, nationalities, and expertise in English? Is complex language avoided when simple words and sentences will express the same idea clearly? Organization and style: How well written is the entry? Does it have a clear focus and is it well organized? Are the paragraphs well structured? ||
Formatting (Possible Score 0-2)	Mechanics: Does the contribution follow the appropriate Wikipedia style? Has the entry been proofread to remove typos, wording errors, misspellings, etc.? Has the submitted entry followed the proper formatting details of WIkipedia? Article Titles: The first letter of a title is capitalized, but not the first letter of secondary words (Ex. Human development approach; Funding of UNESCO projects) Section organization: Does the lead section have no section headings? Links: Does the entry link to a wide variety of other entries? Are there sufficient links to relevant related topics? ||
Illustrations (Possible Score 0-2)	Does the article include appropriate images where possible? Are these images used in accordance with the image use policy? Are the images appropriately captioned?
Total	(1-26)

Licensing

Review of an existing wikipedia document by Diana Strassmann is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.