In this assignment, you will improve some aspect of Wikipedia’s content relating to sustainability, climate change, or a related topic. This may be as simple as fixing a typo or adding a link or scholarly reference, or it may be as complex as adding an entirely new paragraph or even a new page (if you feel that there is a significant gap in Wikipedia’s coverage of a topic).
Wikipedia is editable by members of the general public. Because the general public can introduce errors, either accidentally or intentionally, Wikipedians (people who make lots of edits to Wikipedia and feel invested in the broad goal of Wikipedia) have put in place various mechanisms for checking changes that are made. The Wikipedia assignment for this course is structured to do two things: 1) cause you to make an edit to Wikipedia, and 2) have you check to see if your edit is still on the live site at least a day later, or if it has been removed by other Wikipedians. You can do the assignment any time; you just need to get started sufficiently in advance so that at least one day passes between steps 4 and 6 below.
Three examples of errors/gaps in the live version of Wikipedia are included below. Please don’t fix any of the below for now, so other members of the class can see them on the live site.
Example 1: Typo: The following page includes a typo: “director in Trafikverket)” should be followed by a period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_Sweden (Links to an external site.)
Example 2: Missing link: This page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change (Links to an external site.) , (Links to an external site.) includes a quotation without proper citation. The quote ending “estimates of natural variability.” should link to this article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/382039a0 (Links to an external site.)
Example 2: Missing link: This page discusses New Zealand’s Fair Trade Act, but that term is plain text, rather than being linked to the Wikipedia page about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming_in_New_Zealand (Links to an external site.)
This page could be improved by adding a hyperlink from that term to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Trading_Act_1986 (Links to an external site.)
Your task in this assignment involves completing all of the following steps:
1) Read this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Editing (Links to an external site.)
2) By Wednesday of this week, find an error (e.g., typo) or gap in coverage (e.g., missing link, missing reference, incomplete content) in one of the many dozens of relevant pages that you can reach via one of the two categories below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sustainability (Links to an external site.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Climate_change (Links to an external site.)
or some other Wikipedia page relevant to this course.
3) Look at the “Talk” and “View History” pages for that Wikipedia page, so that you have a context for the page and how it developed. (For example, are people already arguing about the item you’re about to edit?)
Figure 1: Sample page showing location of “Talk” and “View History” tabs.
4) Assuming that your proposed edit would not be at odds with discussions in the Talk page, improve Wikipedia by clicking “Edit” and correcting the error of filling the gap. You will need also need to write a few words in the “Edit Summary” box, where you describe why you made the change. Note that if you have arrived at a page that does not have the edit button this page may be “semi-protected” and is unavailable for edit and you should find a different page.
Note: With this assignment, there are two ways to make an edit: editing anonymously or creating an account and logging into it before editing. If you edit anonymously, your IP address is logged as part of your edit, and is publicly visible thereafter. Most of you probably have dynamically assigned IP addresses, which means that your internet service provider will change them from time to time. And while your IP address can be used to find your general location (e.g., you are on UCI’s campus) the fact that they change from time to time means that they are not typically personally identifiable. Given that, the fact that your IP address is being logged is probably not a major privacy/security concern for most of you. However, if you have a static IP address (e.g., you operate your own server) and do not wish to have that IP address attached to your Wikipedia edit, then please consider creating a Wikipedia account (possibly with a new gmail address, etc.) and logging into it before editing.
Figure 2: Sample page showing location of edit tab.
5) Write a brief essay (approximately 200-300 words) about the process of editing Wikipedia. What are the strengths and weaknesses of having this large sociotechnical system be editable by anyone? Did the process of editing it make you trust Wikipedia more or less? Why?
Please include a link to the URL of the page you edited.
Please also go to the “View History” page and include the log of your edit at the bottom of the essay. It will look something like this: ” 18:02, 23 September 2019 68.5.246.192 talk 19,262 bytes +21 Attempting to improve grammar/wording on sentence.”
Figure 3: Highlighted section showing an example log of a previous edit.
6) At least one day after step 2 above – check to see if your edit is still present on the live version of Wikipedia. (Wikipedia has many volunteer editors who review contributions and delete them if they’re problematic or poorly done.) If your edit was deleted, please add ~100 words to your essay describing why you believe it was deleted, and whether the deletion was fair. If it was not deleted, simply write “My edit was not deleted.”
7) Turn in your completed essay by the due date listed below.
Notes: Some of you (particularly those in other countries) may need to log in via UCI’s VPN in order to be able to edit Wikipedia. Please follow the instructions here: https://www.oit.uci.edu/help/vpn/ (Links to an external site.) and download the software VPN. The WebVPN may not be sufficient for this task. Notice that when you are using AnyConnect client, you should change the Group from “Default-UCI” to “UCIFull”, you will see the option to change it right after you have logged in. If you are still having trouble after using the software version, please let us know, and we will try to resolve it as soon as possible!
Also, there are two ways to make an edit: editing anonymously or creating an account and logging into it before editing. If you edit anonymously, your IP address is logged as part of your edit and is publicly visible thereafter. Many of you have dynamically assigned IP addresses, which means that your internet service provider will change them from time to time. And while your IP address can be used to find your general location (e.g., you are on UCI’s campus) the fact that they change from time to time means that they are not typically personally identifiable. Given that, the fact that your IP address is being logged is probably not a major privacy/security concern for most of you. However, if you have a static IP address (e.g., you operate your own server) and do not wish to have that IP address attached to your Wikipedia edit, then please consider creating a Wikipedia account (possibly with a new gmail address, etc.) and logging into it before editing.
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