- Goals
- Becoming more comfortable making edits, explore the structure of Wikipedia and the relationship between articles in a topic area of interest, and identify possible articles to work on.
- Overview
- Students start from an article of interest and explore related topics, using wikilinks as well as Wikipedia's category structure and search features. Students identify eight articles that are within the scope of the course's WikiProject but not yet tagged as such, and add the project's banner to the articles' talk pages.
- These example instructions use WikiProject United States Public Policy; they should be adjusted for whichever WikiProject the course is working with.
- 1. Find an existing article related to a topic you are interested in working on that is within the scope of WikiProject United States Public Policy.
- 2. Examine the talk page to see if the banner for WikiProject United States Public Policy (template code: {{WikiProject United States Public Policy}} is present. If it is not, add the banner. Cut and paste the following code at or near the top of the talk page (with the code for any other banners already present):
{{WikiProject United States Public Policy
|class = <!-- a class specified here overrides the automatic rating based on the numerical scores -->
|importance = <!-- this works just like the usual WikiProject importance ratings -->
|comprehensiveness = <!-- 1-10 -->
|sourcing = <!-- 0-6 -->
|neutrality = <!-- 0-3 -->
|readability = <!-- 0-3 -->
|formatting = <!-- 0-2 -->
|illustrations = <!-- 0-2 -->
}}
- 3. Explore Wikipedia to find articles on related topics. Try using the links within the article, the category pages linked at the bottom of each article, or search for keywords or article titles that might lead to similar topics. heck each talk page to see if the WikiProject United States Public Policy banner is there. If not, and the article is related to United States Public Policy, add the banner using the above wiki code. Continue until you have added the banner to eight articles.
- 4. (Optional) Reflect on the network of articles you explored in a 1-page essay. How well-developed were they? How much did their subject matter overlap or inter-relate? If the articles had been rated for quality on the talk page, did the ratings match your perceptions of article quality? Did you find all the related articles you expected to, or were some articles non-existent? How would you characterize the structure and quality of Wikipedia for the topic area(s) you explored?
