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This assignment is worth 50% of the final score. Out of that, you get 25% for finishing things on time, and 25% by getting the paper close to a B-class status. Your 0-50% is then weighted by your activity, assessed both by the instructor and your colleagues.
Getting an article assessed as a good article by the Wikipedia good article reviewer guarantees the group the unweighted 25% score from this assignment. If you have submitted your article for GA assessment on time but your article didn't finish going through the assessment process in time, due to the failure of the external Wikipedia reviewer to react promptly, or if I think the reviewer treated you too harshly, and I am happy with your work, you may still get the unweighted 25%. If the article is assessed below the GA class, the unweighted score will be lower (see table below):
Here is a description of quality classes for an article. What we are aiming is is the GA-class (or above, but the GA-class will guarantee you max points). Read carefully what the lower classes (B, C, start, stub) lack and make sure your article is better!
| Article's quality class |
Course credit points earned
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| stub class
|
5
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| start class
|
10
|
| C-class
|
15
|
| B-class
|
25
|
| Good Article class
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50
|
The grade for this assignment is further modified as follows:
- you can get up to 25% unweighted score points by finishing the five 5% worth stages described above on time.
- so, the 25% from finishing the five stages on time and 25% from getting the B-class potentially earns the group the full unweighted 50% score for this assignment, HOWEVER
- the 50% will then be weighted based on individual students participation, incorporating the number and quality of that students edits to Wikipedia, and how each other member of that student group valued his or her input and contribution. The weight is calculated as follows: 75% is based on my impression of your work, 25% on the assessments of your colleagues.
What this means is that if a group had members who worked hard throughout the term (logged in regularly, discussed the article development with other group members and other interested Wikipedia editors on article's discussion page, and so on), and members who did very little worked (logged in rarely, did not participate in discussions, and so on), their end grades for this assignment will be different. For example, if the end unweighted grade was 40%, members who did not contribute much to the group project may see their grade be much lower - 30%, 20% or in case they did almost no work, close to 0% (in other words, students who join the group and don't contribute to the group project should not expect to get a good grade from this assignment - remember: I can see how hard you are working).
Example: you get 40% unweighted score. I and your colleagues rate your activity as 4 out of 5, so 80% of 100%. Your score of 40% is multiplied by 80% yielding the final grade of 32%.
To avoid getting your grade weighted down, read the tips above, and in particular, follow those simple steps:
- log in and make edits to the article regularly, preferably several times a week
- discuss the article with other group members on article's discussion page, where the instructor can see that you are actively engaged in planning and developing the article
It is, therefore, NOT recommended that some group members specialize in tasks such as library research or off-wiki writing, because the instructor cannot verify it.
Here is a checklist for article quality. If your article follows those guidelines, even if the official Wikipedia reviewer fails to pass it as a Good Article, you may get your unweighted 25%:
- Paper is on one of the subjects that were approved by the instructor
- Paper includes intro summary (lead in the Wikipedia terminology), at least 3 body paragraphs per group member, conclusion, and bibliography
- There are no grammatical/spelling errors throughout the paper (that does include absence of spurious capitalization, like Sociology instead of sociology and so on)
- Introduction summarizes the subject properly and does not include unique information not present in the main body of the article
- Conclusion sums up the paper without ending abruptly
- Paper is structured logically, and there are no weird gaps (Note: "weird gaps" occur for example when you chose to write about a historical trend, but your group "forgets" to research few centuries in the middle; or when you are presenting an overview by country, but decide that few random countries are enough, because you use an arbitrary "two countries per group" member rule instead of thinking which countries are important to cover the subject discussed)
- Sources used are reliable
- In-paper citations are present and used correctly according to Wikipedia format see Wikipedia:Citing sources
- In-paper citations are done in a consistent format, and provide all the necessary information (in brief: author's name, publication title, publisher information, page number if source has pages, URL if source is online, see ASA style for details)
- Body of the paper explores the chosen subject in adequate detail. (Note: “adequate detail” means I shouldn’t be able to do a quick literature search and find information not included in the paper. I want you to search current and past literature, books, newspapers, websites, etc. and summarize all the information you find into an easy-to-read and understand paper. If you are missing major bits of information, or have included incorrect information without citations to back up your findings, you will lose major points here).
- Paper should conform to Wikipedia writing standards (Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia:No original research)
With regards to getting the full activity score:
- Your group members will expect you to be easily reachable to discuss the paper, and come to their meetings
- Your group members will expect you to do "your share" of the work
- I will grade your activity based on two primary factors:
- Whether you contributed to your paper on a regular basis (every few days) or not
- Whether you were active on the article's talk page. This means that I see that attempted to address and fix any and all comments/suggestions given by me, your colleagues, the reviewer, and the Wikipedia community. If the change was not made, adequate explanation was given (which did not include "this is for a research assignment, so leave us alone)
How to fail the assignment:
- plagiarism, or extensive quotations
- letting others do all the work and hoping you can still get some points
- missing deadlines
- logging in an editing only at the very end of the course, where you discover you are not sure how to edit Wikipedia, and that your contribution does not really fit the articles your other members were working on
- not participating in the talk page discussions
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