Due in class on Monday, Oct. 3rd:

• Keep reading ‘The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia’ by Andrew Lih; you need to have it finished by the end of next week.
• Add an article to the delicious feed.

• Pick a Wikipedia article for evaluation on Monday. Find an article in an area where you have some expertise. This may include:

  • a policy issue where you have some expertise and experience (for example: state absentee voting)
  • a policy issue where you have done academic research (for example: The Global Fund for TB, Malaria and AIDS)
  • an institution where you have worked or studied (for example: The Concord Monitor newspaper)
  • your home town (for example: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
  • your hobby or deep interest (for example: a specific writer or poet)

  Choose a topic or keyword that is well established in the discipline, but only weakly represented on Wikipedia. If there is a lot of literature available on the topic, but only a small amount of that information exists on Wikipedia, that is the best situation to work from.

  What to avoid in choosing a topic:

  • Trying to improve articles on very broad topics (e.g. Law) or articles that are already of high quality on Wikipedia (“featured articles”)
  • Trying to improve articles on topics that are highly controversial, e.g. Global Warming, Abortion, Scientology, etc. (Note: start a sub-article instead)
  • Working on topics that are only sparsely covered by literature
  • Starting articles with titles that imply an essay-like approach, e.g. The Effects That The Recent Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis has had on the US and Global Economics instead of Subprime mortgage crisis