due 4/11/13 by 11:00 a.m., to BB "Assignments" and your blog
The Situation
This assignment will allow you to familiarize yourself with wikicode and some of the norms of the community. There are two tasks: one smaller task that may help you overcome some nervousness about writing or editing directly into the sandbox environment, and one larger task that will allow you to propose more significant changes to either shape or clarify an article, similar to what you did for <Short Assignment #3>.
The Smaller Task
2. There is a 3-minute tutorial linked to this page that may help you feel more confident about the task, and there is a quick link from this page to Wikipedia's Style Manual if you are interested in knowing more at this point. However, for this smaller task, you do not need to know all of Wikipedia's markup style. Just get your feet wet, so to speak.
3. Then, select one of the following articles that Wikipedia has put on its "watchlist" as needing improvement (and that is open to editing):
4. Following the instructions on the "help" page, click the "Edit" tab of the article you'd like to edit, and begin typing directly into the html text window when it comes up. There is a toolbar that will allow you to do very basic formatting as well as more advanced formatting, through drop-down menus. There is also a toolbar at the bottom of the window that will allow you to insert citations ("references") and your signature, or username. You type, delete, copy or paste as you would in a word-processing program.
- portals page (this page is actually a portal to articles that need certain kinds of editing, so if you are feeling uncertain or hesitant, this is a good place to visit to select an article Wikipedia has set aside for editing)
- alternative education (needs copyediting among multiple issues)
- Bushra, Jordan (needs copyediting among other issues caused by poor translation)
- development communication (needs copyediting among other issues)
- multimedia (needs reliable sources/endnotes)
- bookbreaking (needs additional links)
- genre (needs inline citations and other things)
- rhetorical velocity (needs related links)
- metafiction (needs inline citations and other things)
4. Following the instructions on the "help" page, click the "Edit" tab of the article you'd like to edit, and begin typing directly into the html text window when it comes up. There is a toolbar that will allow you to do very basic formatting as well as more advanced formatting, through drop-down menus. There is also a toolbar at the bottom of the window that will allow you to insert citations ("references") and your signature, or username. You type, delete, copy or paste as you would in a word-processing program.
5. Make as few or as many improvements as you think you can confidently make that will be accepted or not reversed or undone. However, for each type of improvement, you'll need to write a brief description of what you edited in the "Edit Summary" box below the text window, then "Save page."
6. One more thing: although Wikipedia does not require users to log in before editing, I will need you to do that for this assignment. As well, it is a generally accepted "preferred" practice among Wikipedia editors to log in, so I always recommend that people do.
The Larger Task
1. From the "community portal" page, scroll down to "help out" for a list of various categories or types of editing needed. Select any one category (except "Add An Image") that you would like to practice more extensively.
2. In that category, find an article that you think you can edit, either because of familiarity with the topic or scope of the edits that are required.
3. Copy/paste the article text into a new document and "track" your changes, as you did for SA #3, inserting comment boxes where necessary, and ensuring that strike-outs remain visible in the text. Somewhere at the top of that document, please include the link to the original Wikipedia article you are proposing to edit so that I can navigate easily between it and your edited version. Please also include your Wikipedia username, so that I can begin to compile a list.
3. Copy/paste the article text into a new document and "track" your changes, as you did for SA #3, inserting comment boxes where necessary, and ensuring that strike-outs remain visible in the text. Somewhere at the top of that document, please include the link to the original Wikipedia article you are proposing to edit so that I can navigate easily between it and your edited version. Please also include your Wikipedia username, so that I can begin to compile a list.
4. As with SA #3, your job as an editor is to do whatever it takes to reclaim a sense of clarity, transparency, balance, and order, as a way of restoring meaning to the article. This will likely involve some reorganization, rewording, mitigation of tone, or line-editing for clarity and punctuation, depending upon the category that you choose. Keep in mind that, since you are not editing directly on the wiki, you can do more to it than Wikipedia requires, especially if you think it requires different kinds of edits than those prescribed. (This is not often the case, but sometimes editors feel that an article needs more than just what it has been flagged for.)
5. As you did for SA #3, please upload your edited version of the article (in a .doc or pdf.) to BB "Assignments" under SA #6.
The Editing Analysis (a.k.a., the Meta-Discourse)
Surprise, surprise! Yes, I'll ask you to write one final analysis in which you reflect on both the smaller and larger tasks, reflect on your choices and the ideas or principles guiding you, and justify what you have done (a.k.a., "build theory about it") by drawing on at least 2 of our critical texts. Any of our critical texts is fair game, at this point, although I can tell you the texts that students have found useful in previous semesters:
- Fahnestock/Secor “Stases”
- Jones “Finding the Good Argument”
- Lazere “Avoiding Oversimplification”
- Hood “Editing Out Obscenity”
- WWC “Punctuation: Graceful Movements, Confident Stops”
- Style “Actions” and “Cohesion and Coherence” and “The Ethics of Style”
- or any 2 critical texts that have to do with the content they have added (if their editing task was to build content specific to the topic of the article)
Feel free to categorize the kinds of changes you made, and to illustrate each category by discussing one or more specific examples of your editing. Feel free to discuss what you think are your own strengths or weaknesses as an editor (from both the smaller and larger task), and whether you were surprised by any aspect of the assignment. As you did for SA #3, please compose your Editing Analysis as a post to your own blog.
Evaluation Criteria
- Quality and Completeness of Editing – your editing of the text is justifiable and grounded in course principles, but moreover, it shows your comfort and competency with a series of editing tasks; your editing of the text is sufficient to regain its clarity and balance
- Content of Editing Analysis – your Analysis is interesting, and it explains your editing process with at least 2 critical texts (beyond merely using some of their key terms)
- Coherence of Editing Analysis – your Analysis categorizes your editorial changes in an organized fashion
- Evidence and Justification of Editing – your Analysis provides specific examples from your editing to illustrate each category
- Clarity of Editing Analysis – as always, the paragraphs in your Analysis are well focused, your sentences grammatically sound
- Blogging Guidelines – your Analysis not only follows these, but uses them to your advantage
Have fun with it!
-Prof. Graban
