Wikipedia

User:Darmokandjalad/projects/Black History Month

< User:Darmokandjalad‎ | projects

Wikipedia has become a go-to source for information, allowing us to get reliable answers to quick questions, broaden our horizons, and begin in-depth research on topics of interest. Nearly all of Wikipedia's content is contributed by volunteer editors — called Wikipedians — who do the unpaid research and writing that has made Wikipedia so helpful to us. One of the problems of this volunteer model is that it's susceptible to systemic bias, in that the choice of which articles to create and edit is based on the experiences and views of the average Wikipedian. Most Wikipedians are from developed countries, some 85% of them are male, the majority have college degrees (though a good number don't), and while Wikipedia does not track other demographics, it is generally thought that the vast majority are white and fairly affluent.[citation needed] This project aims to offset what we suspect is a systemic bias against creating and editing articles related to African American history, in celebration of Black History Month.

Note: Please make suggestions for the improvement of this project on this project's talk page.

Goal edit

This February, we encourage both novice and experienced Wikipedians to focus their editing on articles related to African-American history and culture. We challenge participants in our project to make the following kinds of contributions to these articles:

  • Make at least five spelling/grammar corrections
  • Add at least five citations to articles needing them
  • Fact-check at least ten citations in articles
  • Expand at least five articles by extending or adding articles with your own research
  • Upload at least one new photo to an article needing one
  • Start at least one new article on African-American history or culture

You should approach editing through whatever means you like best. Consider scheduling 10-20 minutes a few days a week to look for and tend to articles needing maintenance. Or, as you learn new and interesting facts about Black History during the month, remember to double-check it on Wikipedia. At all times, though, it is important to remember to include citations to the source of these facts. See Wikipedia's Citing Sources page for more information on citation.

Information for New Wikipedians edit

One of the exciting prospects of this effort is the potential to bring new users to the ranks of Wikipedians, the volunteer editors of Wikipedia articles. If you've never made an edit to Wikipedia, or haven't done so in a long while, we encourage you to read this section to learn how to:

  • Create an account
  • Find articles to edit
  • Best practices for editing
  • Asking for help

Creating a Wikipedia Account edit

While you don't need to create and use a Wikipedia account, it has a number of benefits. It allows you to keep track of all the edits you've made, create a User Page, track changes to articles you're interested in using a watchlist, and exchange e-mail with other Wikipedians. Having a user account also gives you greater editing privileges than editing anonymously, such as the ability to upload images, start new pages, and edit semi-protected pages after you've been editing for a while.

You can also edit Wikipedia without creating a user account, but when you make changes, the IP address of your computer will be made public. Revealing one's IP address carries with it some privacy concerns. When you edit Wikipedia while logged in to your user account, your IP address is not made public, and is known only to a few highly-trusted users.[1]

Some things to keep in mind when using your Wikipedia account:

  • It's best to use the secure login page to help protect the privacy of your username and password.
  • Use a unique password, write it down and keep it in a safe place.
  • Please read the User Account Security page for advice on account security, and the Personal Security Practices guide to learn more about general computer security practices.

Logging in for the First Time edit

After you log in for the first time, your view of Wikipedia will look pretty much the same, except there are now a series of links at the top right of the Wikipedia page. These links include:

<your username>: This is a link to your user page which you can edit as a sort of public user profile.

My talk: A page where you and other Wikipedians can discuss things (similar to a Facebook wall).

My preferences: A setting page where you can change your password, e-mail settings, and change the appearance of Wikipedia pages.

My watchlist: This page keeps track of changes made to Wikipedia articles you've chosen to follow regularly.

My contributions: A list of all the edits you've made to Wikipedia articles.

Logout: Self-explanatory.

Finding Your Way Around Wikipedia edit

Symbols edit

Wikipedia Etiquette edit

Wikipedia's editing philosophy can be summed up in two words: Be Bold! You're encouraged to stand up and make changes where you see they're needed. Don't be afraid about making mistakes; you can always roll-back to a previous version of an article or make another update.

That being said, there are some rules to help make Wikipedia a thoughtful and respectful place to write. In general, try to maintain a neutral point of view in your writing, take particular care when editing articles about living persons, and be polite to other users.

Please review the Wikipedia Style and Wikipedia Etiquette Guides for more information.

Editing Your First Article edit

Wikipedia has a number of resources to help you through your first edits and articles. See the following tutorials:

  1. Your First Article
  2. Tutorial on Editing
  3. The Missing Manual: Editing, creating, and maintaining articles

Finding Articles on African-American History & Culture edit

Wikipedians often create Portal pages to help keep track of articles by subject. Portals are mainly for research purposes, as they act as a sort of yellow pages for articles on their subject. There is no requirement for how broadly- or narrowly-focused a portal must be; there's a portal both for African-Americans as an entire people, and one just for the Jackson family. For this project, we'll make use of the following portals, which we've found to have the best scope of articles:

In addition, there are other pages called WikiProjects that are very active pages on which Wikipedians identify articles in particular need of editing. We suggest you look into WikiProjects having to do with African-American history & culture, and have identified the following to help get you started:

Consider looking for portals and WikiProjects on other subjects that may have an under-represented Black History component. A list of all Wikipedia portals and Wikiprojects by subject are available here:

Wikipedia can also keep track of articles automatically by subject when editors include category tags at the end of the Wiki Markup for an article. These tags are developed by the Wikipedia community as needed, and take the form of a subject name enclosed by double curly-braces. The African-American history category tag looks like this: 

{{African American History}}

There's no limit to the number of tags you can put on an article, though it's best practice to use only those that are appropriate. Each category has it's own separate page on Wikipedia, on which all articles tagged with that category are automatically listed. Some categories useful to this project are:

Category African American not found

It's important to remember that you don't have to confine yourself to working in established categories on African-American issues. Another route to take is to follow your own interests on Wikipedia and try to find ways in which you can introduce or expand upon African-American contributions to those subjects.

Finally, here's a list of pages known to be in need of improvement:

Some current open tasks at WikiProject African diaspora, including African American topics and other topics related to the African diaspora:

 
Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

High-Quality Articles on African American History & Culture edit

Wikipedia has two groups of high-quality articles, the featured articles and good articles.

Featured articles are of the highest quality and should be considered excellent examples of style, scope, and content. Examples of featured articles about Black History topics include:

Articles labeled with a green "+" symbol inside a circle are considered to be of particularly good quality, but do not yet qualify for featured article status. Good articles related to African-American history & culture include:

Keep in mind that there are also Wikipedia pages that are not articles, called list pages, but are still reference material. Lists are often incomplete, especially when they're open-ended (e.g. List of African-American writers), and require frequent updating. Examples of featured lists related to Black History include:

If you're hesitant to start writing articles, making updates to lists are a good way to get started editing.

See Also edit

For more on the systemic bias of Wikipedia content caused by the make-up of Wikpedia's editor base, see:

References edit

Notes
  1. ^ Wikipedia: Why Create an Account? Summary of Benefits.
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