Editing Online Communities and Crowds (Spring 2025)/Wikipedia assignment (section)

== Overview ==

This page provides information about the Wikipedia assignment for the course.

Because this course covers such a range of different online communities, it's helpful to have one online community that can serve as a sort of common object to think about and engage with. In this course, that community is going to be Wikipedia.

In the first weeks of the class, you will be asked to learn about Wikipedia, its norms, rules, and processes. With this knowledge, you will all be asked to research and substantially extend an encyclopedia article on Wikipedia. To do this, I will use material from [https://wikiedu.org/ the Wiki Education Foundation (WikiEdu)] to help you learn how to participate in Wikipedia. As part of this process, you will interact with other Wikipedia community members who are not part of the class.

You will need to participate in Wikipedia each week as part of this project. You should rely on the [https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/courses/Northwestern_University/Online_communities_and_crowds_(Spring_2025)/timeline course WikiEdu Dashboard] for specifics about deadlines and individual milestones that you are asked to complete each week. The instructor as well as a WikiEdu volunteer will be able to see this activity and help you if appropriate.

During the Wikipedia assignment, there will be some exercises or milestones due every Friday. These correspond to steps in a process of getting involved in Wikipedia. Most weeks, this will involve completing learning modules and assignments via [https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/courses/Northwestern_University/Online_communities_and_crowds_(Spring_2025) the Wikiedu Dashboard for our course]. 

The Wikipedia assignments are not precisely synchronized with the rest of the course material, but should provide you with many opportunities to reflect on the other cases, concepts, and challenges we are covering. I plan to take time to discuss our progress and experience with Wikipedia and to connect it explicitly to the theoretical concepts we are covering.

Although this means we'll be spending a lot of time talking about Wikipedia, the goal here is to build and apply critical skills about online communities ''in general''. Wikipedia's incredible openness and impact make it an excellent place to learn and explore the ideas of the course, but the goal is always to engage with the broader principles and underlying concepts and practice their applications.

Finally, as a dress rehearsal for the Community Advising Report at the end of the quarter, I will ask you all to think through and offer advice on a major problem facing Wikipedia. I ask you to post your report as a subpage of your Wikipedia user page ''and'' to submit a link to this subpage [https://canvas.northwestern.edu/courses/229769/assignments/1558282 via Canvas] (so that I can provide feedback and a grade there). Details on the report, submission guidelines, and assessment appear below.