WikiWomen Erasmus+/Schools toolkit/Writing an article

Going live and building quality articles.

It is important to remember that on Wikipedia we want quality not quantity! There is no word count, but we want everything we add to Wikipedia to be of the highest standard possible - anyone in the world could be reading what you’ve written!

Lesson 8: Building Quality Wikipedia Articles

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Introduction (10 minutes):

  • Welcome students and take 5 minutes for a class check-in to see how the students have progressed with their articles in Sandbox since the research trip. Students will be given some time during this lesson to further edit their Sandbox drafts.
  • Discuss the importance of detailed sections in a biography article, providing a well-rounded understanding of the person.
  • Prompts: How can we ensure that the articles are long or detailed enough? Are there any challenges that you have with this?
  • Sometimes it will be a case that there is no further information available to add which is verified and in like with Wiki verifiability codes.

Infoboxes (10 minutes):

  • Discuss the specific sections of a Wiki article and how they add to the detail of the overall biography. Slide on the slide deck with this.
  • What is Adding an Infobox to Your Article
  • What are Infoboxes?
  • What should (and should not) go into an info box?
  • How to Add an Infobox to Your Article
  • Help Page for Info Boxes: en:Help:Infobox. This guide will give you more information on infoboxes, how to design and edit them, as well as templates for you to use.
  • How to Add an Image to Your Article.

Individual and Group Work Activities (15 minutes):

  • Students work individually or in pairs to continue expanding their articles.
  • Encourage students to look for images related to the person they are writing about and add them to the article - they can check WikiCommons first and if no image is found they can upload.
  • Those who have not added a Wikidata infobox should work on incorporating this feature into their article.
  • Circulate between students to provide guidance, assist with research challenges, and ensure proper formatting and citation.

Group Discussion (5 minutes):

  • Discuss any difficulties they encountered while expanding their articles.
  • Encourage students to share strategies for overcoming challenges.
  • Assign homework: Students continue working on their articles, ensuring all sections are detailed, well-cited, and enhanced with images and infoboxes where applicable.

Note: Encourage students to be creative and resourceful in finding information for challenging sections. Emphasise the importance of verifying information's credibility before adding it to the article. This lesson aims to refine their articles, ensuring they meet high standards of quality and comprehensiveness.