The University of British Columbia's class SPAN322 ("North of the Río Grande: Latin American Civilization and Culture") is contributing to Wikipedia during Spring 2020. Our collective goals were to bring a selection of articles on Chicano and Latino literature to featured article status (or as near as possible).
Feel free to discuss this project.
If you have any questions, you can ask them on the project's talk page or at my user talk page.
Goals
- To improve Wikipedia's coverage of selected articles on US Latino/Chicano literature
- To submit these articles to Wikipedia review processes, such as Did you know?, peer review, good article nominations and featured article candidates.
- To increase the number of featured articles in this area.
Class members
- Pechodor13 ( talk · contribs)
- Ubcstudent1234 ( talk · contribs)
- Salo Ecu ( talk · contribs)
- Chr66 ( talk · contribs)
- Cmlcml25 ( talk · contribs)
- MLTodd ( talk · contribs)
- Eh1975 ( talk · contribs)
- Maymolina ( talk · contribs)
- Stephjos ( talk · contribs)
News
Articles and groups
Featured articles
- None yet.
Good articles
- None yet.
B-class articles
- None yet.
Groups
Planning and resources
Stages
These are the stages we need to pass through:
- Start. Get familiar with Wikipedia. Make some trial edits, however minor. Demystify the process. Leave behind any sense of intimidation. As Wikipedia puts it, learn to be bold. Learn basic editing skllls. By January 21, everyone should have sent me their username, added themselves to a group (above), plus made at least one edit anywhere on Wikipedia.
- DYK. Those articles that are eligible for the "Did You Know?" section of the Main Page should be submitted within five days of their creation or first edit. See the DYK rules and this dispatch about DYK. Groups that successfully get their article featured on the "Did You Know?" section of the Main Page will receive extra credit.
- Plan. But minor edits alone won't get us much closer towards Feature Article status. We need to have a sense of what more needs to be done, and an overall plan for the article. Look at models and guidelines (e.g. guidelines for articles about novels) on how to write good and feature articles. What sections are required? What will be the article structure? What information is needed? By January 30, each group should have their plan in place, and have written it up on their article's talk page.
- Share. We will need to divide up the tasks that we've identified in the planning stage. Who is going to do what and when?
- Research. This is vital. A Wikipedia article is worth nothing unless it comprises verified research, appropriated referenced. This will entail going to the library, as well as surfing the internet! It may also require you get books from inter-library loan. By February 6, each group should have assembled a bibliography that is as comprehensive as possible, and written it up on their article's talk page.
- Continue. This is not a project that can be completed in a rush, as the deadline races up. Wikipedia articles are written in increments, as the result of many edits, often small.
Over the course of the semester, you need to log in and make at least one edit, again however minor, to your article twice a week.
- Assemble and copy-edit. As the referenced research is added to an article, we need to ensure that it does not become baggy and disorganized, though there will be moments when it is obviously in a transitional stage.
- Review. First, informal reviews among ourselves and consultation with other Wikipedians. You may then also submit your article to peer review.
By March 12, each group should have submitted their article to Good article nominations.
You may want to leave it at that. Or you may want to continue and work on getting your article featured article status. FA status will earn your group a grade of A+. If you are part of a group that is not submitting to FA, you can now join a group that is, and share in their group grade, so long as you are a full participant in the FA drive.
- Further Review, both informally and again, perhaps, to peer review.
By March 26, those groups that are submitting their article to featured article candidacy should do so.
There's no precise order for everything. Small, incremental change is always important. But over the course of the project we're looking for radical change, in some cases seeking to create a feature article from scratch. So we need also to be methodical.
NB see also what Wikipedia has to say about article development.
Style guides
To be awarded "good" or "featured" status, articles have to conform to the Wikipedia style guides. The three most important aspects of style are:
- Wikipedia:Layout – this guide describes heading and sub-headings.
- Wikipedia:Lead section – the all important abstract at the head of an article.
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style – the collection of rules.
Secondary style guide are specific to different projects. Articles must conform to these also. Conflict between any of these is inevitable and troublesome; editors simply have to work out conflicts through consensus.
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction) - collection of rules for fiction.
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Style guidelines – mostly lay out issues for articles on novels.
The simplest way to understand the various style guides is to examine articles that have passed GA or FA. Here is a featured article of a novelist: Mario Vargas Llosa. Here are a couple of featured articles of a novel: El Señor Presidente and The General in His Labyrinth. Here is a good article about a collection of short stories: Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. And here is a good article about an author: Sandra Cisneros. What's more, these three articles were all written by UBC students like you.