![]() |
Writing Wikipedia Articles ( #WIKISOO) |
![]() |
home page: [
Feb-Apr 2014 ] class pages: [
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 ] talk page: [
WT:OPEN finishing the course: [ final project | badges self-paced: [ course page |
Class video & links | |
---|---|
![]() | |
This week's links | |
Emails |
Welcome to Week 3 Week 3 followup |
Shared notes | Etherpad |
Class time may vary! (Time zones, Daylight Savings Time, etc.) Click here for this week's class time. | |
< Previous week < > Next week > | |
Welcome to WIKISOO! Week of 11/12 March 2014 (Class #3)
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.
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:
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.
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:
(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.
![]() |
Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond (WIKISOO) |
Past courses:
March •
May •
August 2013 February 2014 • February 2017 |
![]() |
Writing Wikipedia Articles ( #WIKISOO) |
![]() |
home page: [
Feb-Apr 2014 ] class pages: [
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 ] talk page: [
WT:OPEN finishing the course: [ final project | badges self-paced: [ course page |
Class video & links | |
---|---|
![]() | |
This week's links | |
Emails |
Welcome to Week 3 Week 3 followup |
Shared notes | Etherpad |
Class time may vary! (Time zones, Daylight Savings Time, etc.) Click here for this week's class time. | |
< Previous week < > Next week > | |
Welcome to WIKISOO! Week of 11/12 March 2014 (Class #3)
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.
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:
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.
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:
(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.
![]() |
Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond (WIKISOO) |
Past courses:
March •
May •
August 2013 February 2014 • February 2017 |