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Wikipedia Artist Biographies

Saturday, October, 11th, 2014

This project provides students with direct experience of writing a public, factual, biographical account of an artist for Wikipedia. Students form groups and are given guidelines but ultimately have to make team decisions and be publicly accountable for their work. Its great for teaching art history students how to create valuable contemporary research but in an class it provides instruction in participative digital writing.

• Class size:
  • Minimum: 10 students
  • Maximum: No maximum

• Suggested venue(s):
  • A computer lab or a lecture hall where students can use their own laptops
  • A library or archive with biographical information about artists

• Duration:
  • Minimum: 6 hours
  • Maximum: 10 hours

• Lesson details:
  • Lesson 1 Artist Research (how to research an artist to write about)
  • Lesson 2 Editing Wikipedia (how to write a Wikipedia page)
  • Lesson 3 Knowledge Community (talk page negotiations)

• Content materials and resources:
  • Video: ‘How to edit a Wikipedia articles
  • Wikipedia training for students
  • Welcome, a short introduction
  • The Core, an overview of Wikipedia’s core principles
  • The Five Pillars of Wikipedia
  • Creating an account on Wikipedia (On signing up and choosing an appropriate username)
  • Editing, a tutorial on the basic mechanics of editing pages and communicating with others; and Advanced, some selected advanced topics to help you get off to a good start with your first article.
  • Wikipedia style guide for biography entries.
  •  Using the ‘article wizard’
  • Wikipedia ‘Help’ page

• Equipment/ tools necessary
  • Computers (set up in a classroom or students can bring their own laptops)

• Evaluation/ Grading System:
  • Students should be graded on their level of participation in the exercise and whether they can keep their page live, not by the sheer number of paragraphs or pages submitted (especially as a page can look good at first glance and be subsequently shot down by the Wikipedia community).

• Possible complications:
  • Wikipedia editing takes a while to get used to.
  • Its important not to use the Wikipedia ‘Sandbox’ but rather get students to plan their pages (perhaps in group Google Docs) and then add them directly (by searching for the artist they want to write about and clicking the red ‘add ****’ to make the page. Using Sandbox will send the page direct to editors who may never let it see the light of day.
  • Connectivity issues can be a problem if students are working from their own laptops.
  • The third part of this class is dedicated to dealing with the Wikipedians’ evaluation of the pages you have all contributed. It can be disheartening for students when pages are disputed but this is all part of the process.

• Instructor’s Evaluation:
  • Students had different levels of familiarity with the Wikipedia interface, and different levels of knowledge in summarizing and editing text. It would be useful to figure out in advance how many students had experience in summarizing and editing text, in editing on Wikipedia. The students’ knowledge in the language chosen for the class also matters, as this class was conducted in English but many students needed close guidance due to their language ability.
  • It is helpful to have a themed exercise to set boundaries for the class. For instance, this class was conducted on International Women’s Day and the Wikipedia pages focused on local female artists in Hong Kong.

• Submitted by: Charlotte Frost | City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong | Email | Twitter

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