M4 Assignment: Write a Wikipedia Page (Major Assessment)
Overview
Throughout the semester, we have examined the sources of our biases and learned how to identify biases in others’ writing. We have considered the purposes for different types of writing and begun to learn how to use sources in an ethical and effective manner. This assignment asks writers to put those skills together to create a useful Wikipedia article. Although you don’t have to publish your article to Wikipedia to complete this project, you are welcome to do so!
How Wikipedia is different from a college essay (from Wiki Education Foundation)
A Wikipedia page is not an argumentative essay. The final draft of your page should be
Fact-based, not persuasive writing. Rather than making an argument, you will be writing a description of the information about a topic, cited to reliable sources.
Written with a formal tone and easy-to-understand language. Wikipedia isn’t the place for you to show off your extensive vocabulary. The audience of Wikipedia is global, and people who have never heard of the topic before will be reading what you are writing. You will need to clearly convey the basics of the topic in your writing.
Mostly paraphrased from sources, with no large block quotes. Wikipedia’s policies state that you should try to paraphrase whenever possible. Brief quotes from sources is fine, but you should try to provide the context in your own words and only quote the truly key phrase or two from the original.
Source Requirements
The purpose of your Wikipedia article is to share in-depth information with readers. You do not want to provide information that others can easily find on their own – say, from a different Wikipedia page. Instead, you will present information from expensive and hard-to-access sources usually blocked by paywalls. As a Northern Virginia Community College student, you can get to those sources through the NOVA library system.
Because the purpose of your article is to present in-depth, reliable information with your readers, your article must cite at least five reliable sources as defined on the Wikipedia pageLinks to an external site.. Unless stated otherwise by your instructor, all sources should be obtained through the NOVA library system.
Note that Wikipedia uses a complicated system of hyperlinks and footnotes (a number in the sentence, along with information about the source corresponding to that number at the “foot” or bottom of the document to show readers where information has come from. Rather than learning a new method of citation for this single assignment, writers are asked to continue using MLA guidelines for citing sources. See the MLA module in the class for further information.
Purpose
This assignment draws together all the work you have completed so far in the course. You will engage in all phases of the writing process, show your knowledge of purpose, audience, and context; use active reading to evaluate sources; and find reliable information.
Instructions
Choose a Topic: To choose your topic, please choose a “stub” from the culture Links to an external site.category. Make sure to choose a topic that interests you! Choose a topic that is notable and provides sufficient credible, reliable sources for your research. This will take some time, and you will probably have to choose and discard several topics. You may refer to conversations in M4 Prewriting Discussion: Choose a Good Topic to review.
Conduct Research: Keep careful notes about what you want to include in your page, and where information has come from. See page seven in the brochure Links to an external site.for an example of a well-developed Wikipedia page. Refer also to M4 Prewriting: Research and CABLE Source Vetting and M4 CABLE Source Evaluation Form.Download M4 CABLE Source Evaluation Form.
Write a First Draft: Follow the conventions of Wikipedia: use formal, neutral language; avoid word choices that show a point of view or an argument, and cite your sources carefully. See page eight in the brochure Links to an external site.for examples of a poor and a good Wikipedia page.
Tips for Success:
Headings should never be questions.
Don’t number your headings or sections.
Only capitalize the first word of a heading and any proper nouns.
Don’t keep naming the subject in your headings. For example, an article about Barack Obama might use the heading “Childhood,” not “Barack Obama’s childhood.”
Pay close attention to your lead section. “When you create a Wikipedia article, the lead is the first section. It’s the part of a Wikipedia article that most people read, and it can even be presented by search engines when you look up your topic! That’s why it’s crucial to get it right. A good lead summarizes the entire article by briefly covering all important aspects of the topic. One good strategy for writing a Wikipedia article is to draft a lead section first, which you can then use as an outline for the rest of the article. Ultimately, you’ll need to revisit your lead when you finish writing your article. Adjust it to reflect the finished product.”
Write a first sentence that works as “a definition of the article topic, with the topic itself — be it a person, place, thing, idea or concept — in bold, and a brief description that puts it into context.”
“Use section headings to distinguish important ideas or broad subtopics. Don’t use them as paragraph headers, or to break up the article. Think carefully about the structure of your article before you start writing. As you write about different aspects of a topic, those aspects will guide sensible choices for your headings.
Cite all facts and ideas that you have learned from outside sources using MLA guidelines. See “source requirements.”
4. Revise your draft.
5. Complete a final review: see page 15 of the brochureLinks to an external site..
6. Consider publishing your page to Wikipedia!
links –
reliable sources : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources
Culture link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types/Culture
My topics : For this assignment, I chose three topics that were in the culture stub and society stub. The first topic I chose was the comedy festival. I chose this topic because I love having a good laugh as well as It provides a platform to examine the cultural importance and the demographic and social trends that have led to the dawn of comedy festivals and their impact on entertainment and society. The second topic I chose was the New Year’s Glasses. The topic allows for detouring from the runway to cultural customs and uses a celebration event as a starting point. Lastly, I chose the topic of human rights. They safeguard against violence and prejudice as well as uphold freedom. Human rights provide the cornerstone for a fair and caring society where everyone can prosper by defending basic rights and needs.
You must choose of these topics to write on.
