In this activity we scan Wikipedia for what is there in the content areas we know, what is not there, and showcase a range of ways you might consider contributing to it.
What’s in Wikipedia? Featured Articles
To first explore what Wikipedia editors indicate are well produced articles visit the main entry page to look at the ones noted as “Feature Articles”:
Featured articles are considered to be some of the best articles Wikipedia has to offer, as determined by Wikipedia’s editors. They are used by editors as examples for writing other articles. Before being listed here, articles are reviewed as featured article candidates for accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style according to our featured article criteria.
On the Featured Article index page, you will find arranged by categories 1123 featured articles out of a total of 1,391,071 articles on Spanish Wikipedia or only 0.08% of that total.
- Review a featured article on a topic you have some knowledge and share the link in a tweet (with #muraludg hashtag) as well as as much of a review you can fit in a tweet. You should look at the Talk (Discusión) tab to appreciate the conversations that have taken place by people who edited the page. Also look at the History (Ver Historial) tab so review how much editing has taken place over time.
What’s Not in Wikipedia (or Far From Featured)
Now put to use some exploration/search skills to research a topic about Mexico you know well that may not be well represented in Spanish Wikipedia. Rather than a discipline, narrow down to a specific concept, historical figure, important event, location, cultural artifact,
Be very specific; for example a geologist might do a search that is too broad on Volcano (Volcán) – the result is a long article but too general. We might look for volcanoes in Mexico and find the article on well known ones like El Popocatapétl is rather comprehensive.
However, with more explorating we see that the article for Volcán Evermann is not very detailed. If our geologist has references and facts to add, this would be a good candidate for her to consider editing.
Other ways you can find Wikipedia pages in need of help:
The goal of the activity is just to look for places in Spanish Wikipedia where your knowledge or perhaps activities designed for students can be put to use to make the content more complete.
Tweet out (with the #muraludg hashtag) any pages that might be ones you could contribute to.
Based on what you have seen here, consider how your team might propose to Acumulador an idea for an activity or project that will fosters the culture of open at UdG.
Featured Image: “Weather squadron visits local school” U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Sara Csurilla shared into the public domain as a US Government image.
