CS 115 Wikipedia Lab
The goal of today's lab is to learn more about Wikipedia and contribute something to its content.
Make sure you read the Nature article on the accuracy of Wikipedia (several blog posts below this one.) It is important that you treat Wikipedia seriously as it is a resource used by many people.
You might want to read the entry on Bigfoot since you've just compiled an evidence sheet from today's film. How complete does Wikipedia's entry seem to be, compared to what you now know? (I also noticed as of today it contains an offsite link to this animated gif in the main body of the text. The image is very impressive (you can see how multiple frames have been carefully aligned) but probably against Wikipedia's linking policy.) You can even read about the authenticity of the film itself.
But we are here to contribute. Create a wikipedia account (if you don't have one.) Make sure to read the pros and cons of using your real name.
Log in to Wikipedia so your changes will be recorded under your username.
What do you think happens when two (or more) people try to edit the same page? Please form a hypothesis. Discuss this with your neighbor. Then, both of you should go the the Wilkes University entry and, at the exact same time click on the "edit this page" tab above the article.
Consider what you might add to the page about Wilkes. I suggest a few lines either about your Residential Hall (if you are ambitious, you can even add a photograph of one you have taken) or a brief paragraph about another club or organization you know about.
Save your work to test your hypothesis.
If this does not work for some reason, you may edit another page or even submit a requested picture.
After your edits, click on the History tab of the article you edited. This shows a list of page contributors. Notice anyone working regularly on the Wilkes page? Click on the date/time next to your user name to see a page that looks something like this. (It's just an archived version of the page.) Then click on the blue diff under the word Revision near the top of the article to see a page like this You can easily see the changes you made on the page; in the case of the example, John is deleting vandalism added by someone trying to be funny. Looking at the History of the page, you can see repairing this vandalism is a lot of work for him and he probably does not think these sort of jokes are funny.
Submit a short lab report to me by e-mail including: 1) your hypothesis 2) your experimental results 3) your conclusions 4) a link to the diff page showing your edits.
Make sure you read the Nature article on the accuracy of Wikipedia (several blog posts below this one.) It is important that you treat Wikipedia seriously as it is a resource used by many people.
You might want to read the entry on Bigfoot since you've just compiled an evidence sheet from today's film. How complete does Wikipedia's entry seem to be, compared to what you now know? (I also noticed as of today it contains an offsite link to this animated gif in the main body of the text. The image is very impressive (you can see how multiple frames have been carefully aligned) but probably against Wikipedia's linking policy.) You can even read about the authenticity of the film itself.
But we are here to contribute. Create a wikipedia account (if you don't have one.) Make sure to read the pros and cons of using your real name.
Log in to Wikipedia so your changes will be recorded under your username.
What do you think happens when two (or more) people try to edit the same page? Please form a hypothesis. Discuss this with your neighbor. Then, both of you should go the the Wilkes University entry and, at the exact same time click on the "edit this page" tab above the article.
Consider what you might add to the page about Wilkes. I suggest a few lines either about your Residential Hall (if you are ambitious, you can even add a photograph of one you have taken) or a brief paragraph about another club or organization you know about.
Save your work to test your hypothesis.
If this does not work for some reason, you may edit another page or even submit a requested picture.
After your edits, click on the History tab of the article you edited. This shows a list of page contributors. Notice anyone working regularly on the Wilkes page? Click on the date/time next to your user name to see a page that looks something like this. (It's just an archived version of the page.) Then click on the blue diff under the word Revision near the top of the article to see a page like this You can easily see the changes you made on the page; in the case of the example, John is deleting vandalism added by someone trying to be funny. Looking at the History of the page, you can see repairing this vandalism is a lot of work for him and he probably does not think these sort of jokes are funny.
Submit a short lab report to me by e-mail including: 1) your hypothesis 2) your experimental results 3) your conclusions 4) a link to the diff page showing your edits.
posted by Anthony at
5:14 AM
3 Comments:
well...
I sat down when I got home to clean up your changes to the Wilkes entry. I admit, probably half of what you guys wrote needed to be deleted or strongly edited.
but...
I found all the changes today were reverted by John. This left me a little angry, because you cannot learn anything from being told your work is poor without seeing any corrections - however it is not his job to teach you anything - and probably he thought, on balance you posted more crap than useful material.
So... be advised. Some people will not accept work at the level many of you produced today.
By
Anthony, at Wed Oct 18, 05:12:00 PM 2006
Ok, so between editing by John and I, some of your work has gotten back online. Please notice the difference in tone between some of your writing and the (still not optimal) writing that we kept.
By
Anthony, at Wed Oct 18, 10:43:00 PM 2006
Ok, so between editing by John and I, some of your work has gotten back online. Please notice the difference in tone between some of your writing and the (still not optimal) writing that we kept.
By
Anthony, at Wed Oct 18, 10:44:00 PM 2006
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