User:Eryk (Wiki Ed)/Womens Studies Brochure

What follows is the proposed text for the Wiki Education Foundation's brochure, "Editing Wikipedia articles on Women's Studies." This brochure will be printed and distributed to Women's Studies courses teaching through Wikipedia in Wiki-Ed supported courses throughout the USA and Canada. It will also be available as a PDF on Wikimedia Commons. I'm posting this for feedback, so please have a read-through and let me know if there's anything that could be improved or adjusted. I'll be posting links for feedback to:

If there's a WikiProject group I've missed that might be interested, please let me know.

Ideally we will send this to print by the end of the first week of March, but changes are welcome beyond that for reprints and updates of the web version. Thanks for your help, everyone! Eryk (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:10, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Women’s studies[edit]

Editing Wikipedia can be daunting for newbies, especially as a student editor contributing to Wikipedia for the first time as a class assignment. This guide is designed to assist students assigned to add content related to women’s studies articles on Wikipedia.

Be accurate[edit]

Wikipedia is a resource millions of people use to inform themselves about the world, draw conclusions about human behavior, guide policy decisions, or make sense of their culture and society. By documenting and sharing accurate and objective content about or related to women, you will help Wikipedia present a wider spectrum of human knowledge. You will make sure women are represented on one of the most-read web sites on the planet, and make sure that everyone has access to important information about women’s achievements and challenges.

Understand the guidelines[edit]

Take time to read and understand the suggestions here to maximize the value of your contributions to Wikipedia. If you post something that doesn’t meet these guidelines, resolving it may take up valuable volunteer time that could have been spent improving content. If you aren’t comfortable working within these guidelines, talk to your instructor about an alternative off-wiki assignment.

Engage with editors[edit]

Part of the Wikipedia experience is receiving and responding to feedback from other editors. Don’t wait until the last day to make a contribution, or you may miss out on important comments, advice, and ideas. Volunteers from the Wikipedia community might read, respond or ask questions about your work. You may not get a comment, but if you do, make sure to acknowledge it. Discussion is a crucial part of the Wikipedia process.

Watch out for close paraphrasing[edit]

Wikipedia articles are written in your own words. Plagiarizing by copy-and-pasting or close paraphrasing — when most of the words are changed, but the structure and meaning of the original text remains — is against the rules. For a Wikipedia assignment, plagiarism is a violation of your university’s academic honor code. Plagiarism on Wikipedia will be caught by other editors, and there will be a permanent online record of plagiarism tied to your account. Even with standard resources or authors, you cannot directly copy descriptions of social concepts, studies, or theories into Wikipedia.

The best way to avoid this hassle is to make sure you understand your material, draw from several sources, and write it in your own words. If it’s important to use a direct quotation, be sure to explicitly set it off with quotation marks, and cite the source. Longer quotations, up to about six or seven lines, are indented as block quotes and don't take quotation marks.

Don’t be scared. Be bold![edit]

Everybody on Wikipedia wants to make it the best it can be. Take the time to understand the rules and guidelines, and soon you’ll be contributing important knowledge to a resource you and millions of other people use every day!

Getting started[edit]

Choosing an article[edit]

Depending on the goals of the course, your instructor might offer you a list of topics to choose from, or ask you to select your own.

Good candidates to work with include those which represent the lives, activities, achievements, and struggles of women; the ongoing political, social, and cultural movements and issues that affect women in the present day, or their historical precedents and origins; and contemporary or historical women leaders.

Choose a topic with extensive literature in independent, peer-reviewed journals or books. Some Wikipedia articles are short – and will remain so – simply because there aren’t enough reliable resources to expand them.
You may wish to search for interesting and plentiful sources first, then choose a Wikipedia article to develop based on what you find.
Choose a topic that isn’t already well developed on Wikipedia. You might look for what’s known as “stub” or “start-class” article: To find an interesting stub for expansion, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types and choose a field that interests you.

Finding good candidates[edit]

this section has links, but the URLs will be transcribed for print

For global issues, search for “Women in,” “Women’s rights in,” or “Feminism in,” etc, followed by a country of interest.
For biographies of women, see lists of articles created by various WikiProjects dedicated to, for example, artists, historical figures, scientists, women’s rights activists, writers, and other notable women; or a mixed-gendered list of notable people sorted by profession.
For topics related more broadly to Feminism, visit the Feminism Portal (especially its categories section), or a list of feminism stub articles.

Frequently overview articles will talk about people or cultural items (scholarly works, pieces of art or literature) which have significant scholarly discussion, but not include a link to a Wikipedia article. This is often a sign that those people or items are not covered by Wikipedia, but deserve articles!

Organizing your article[edit]

Every article will be unique, but here are some proposed scaffolds for various types of articles, and general outlines of sections you should include in your article. You can add, remove, or reorder sections as appropriate for your topic or article improvement.

An article on a prominent figure

A great example for a biography page is Emma Goldman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman), Emmeline Pankhurst (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmeline_Pankhurst) or Harriet Tubman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman). Many good biography pages on Wikipedia are structured as follows:

Lead section, outlining the article
Career, actions, or defining experiences, provided chronologically and with historical context
Legacy: Major contributions to policy, theory, culture or other field.
Publications or other works.

Note that there are stringent requirements for editing articles on living persons, and sources should be reviewed more strictly for neutrality and verifiability. Type the shortcut “WP:BLP” into Wikipedia’s search bar to find out more.

An article on a social condition

This type of article may be more freely defined within the contours of the concept. Think carefully about the structure of your article, or what you can contribute to a pre-existing one. Useful touchstones include the following:

Lead section
Define concerns, including scope, those affected, regions, and case studies
Context and history for the issue, including prominent activists, relevant theorists and/or leaders,
When applicable, proposed remedies; efforts underway; and what roadblocks or criticisms those remedies face, presented neutrally and with sourced evidence.

An article on a cultural product

Women's studies research communities frequently focus on the artistic or literary representation of women, and women's issues. Wikipedia often has articles about individual items produced by artists, writers, performers or scholars. Such items are notable, if they have substantive critical discussion in at least 3 outside sources. Like with other articles, its useful to compare your article's structure to pre-existing ones. Many good cultural item pages on Wikipedia are structured as follows:

Lead Section
Background or development section - describes the context in which the item was produced
Description or Summary of the work - note these section do not need extensive footnoting, as long as they recount only what is in the work itself without interpretation
Themes, Style, Aesthetics, etc - these sections highlight common themes and topics of discussion amongst scholars relevant to the field of criticism
Reception - this space explore the opinions and analysis by scholars of the work, both from contemporary critics and later scholars

Useful guidelines can be found at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Novels and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Visual arts.

Finding sources[edit]

Think critically

How do you identify sources you can use to build your Wikipedia article? Ideally your sources should be reliable, published, and generally, reviewed by a third party for accuracy. In any article, the majority view and significant minority views should be presented in a neutral manner.

Keep in mind, too, that “published” work can include films, podcasts, or other work produced by a reliable author.

Evaluating sources

Learning to evaluate sources is a core component of engaging critically in your field and on Wikipedia.

The first consideration is the author. Authors published in a peer review process are preferred to authors who self-publish, whether that be a blog post or a book series. Of course, many experts in the field may write blog posts or conduct interviews that are not peer reviewed. These may be sources of information about the perspectives or biographical details of an individual, but rarely should they be used for sourcing factual data.

The second consideration is the text itself. Wikipedia articles may include unchallenged conclusions that contradict the dominant consensus of those in your field. Is there a reliable, trusted source that could illustrate the issue from a feminist perspective? If so, use that source to contribute this viewpoint to the article.

Finally, consider the publisher. Work cited could come from a reliable publisher of sociology literature, such as Sage Publications, Verso, or Routledge for books, or journals such as Gender and Society or Feminist Economics. Take care citing as fact any material from publications which advocate strongly for a particular point of view. Such advocacy journals should only be used to provide examples of their particular viewpoints.

A note on neutrality

Wikipedia is not a place for crafting compelling critiques of culture or society; it is a place for sharing the knowledge that informs those critiques. That’s why neutrally presented information on women’s lives, achievements, and experiences is so important. Because Wikipedia is often lacking this kind of information, these contributions have a tremendous impact on improving the content and quality of articles.

Wikipedia’s neutrality guidelines encourage “representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without bias, all of the significant views” and articles should “indicate the relative prominence of opposing views.” In many articles, women and women’s perspectives are missing. Good contributions will represent these viewpoints, but should not advocate for them.

While Wikipedia requires a neutral tone for articles, it does not require neutral sources. Interviews with affected parties or strong feminist advocates, regardless of their “neutrality,” may make excellent quotations for illustrating a particular viewpoint. Attribute the text in your source, and acknowledge the perspective if it is relevant to your quotation. For example, “According to feminist scholar Sara Ahmed...”

You may encounter some language biased against women when you’re editing. For example, inappropriately gendered language (“actress,” for example, can be changed to “actor”) or by not representing women’s achievements or concerns adequately (for example, at the time of this printing, archaeologist Mary Leakey’s lead section immediately names her as archaeologist Louis Leakey’s wife, but Louis’ lead section doesn’t mention Mary). You can challenge this type of bias through carefully considered edits (but don't change direct quotes).

Use good, reliable sources to create articles and share the facts that motivate your interest in a topic or issue. Wikipedia articles can’t advocate an interpretation of those facts, but can neutrally present the viewpoints of advocates. Good information offers readers a way to see all sides of an issue and draw their own conclusions.

Writing your article[edit]

As you start writing, remember to keep these guidelines in mind:

Unlike most school assignments, Wikipedia doesn’t permit original research. A Wikipedia article should cover what the literature says, not your interpretation.
Be sure you’re writing impersonal, fact-based encyclopedic content, not an essay or blog post. See the Editing Wikipedia brochure linked from your course page if you need a refresher on the difference in tone.
Give appropriate weight to aspects of the topic as the literature covers it.
When mentioning technical or academic terms for the first time, provide a short plain-English explanation in parentheses, if possible.
Let the facts speak for themselves. Respect your readers and recognize that empirical data doesn’t always lead two readers to the same conclusion, and consider what this means about your own interpretations of empirical data.
If you discuss research, aim for a thorough description of its methodologies. This is why it is important to understand your material and cross-reference your understanding with a variety of sources.

Final thoughts

Don’t procrastinate! Writing good, reliable Wikipedia articles takes time. Don’t wait until the last minute. If you get stuck, always ask your instructor for extra time rather than adding content to Wikipedia that doesn’t meet these guidelines.
If you have additional questions about contributing to Wikipedia, you can ask the Wikipedia Content Expert listed on your course page, or post a question at the Teahouse. You can find the Teahouse by entering “WP:TH” into the search bar.
Take pride in your contributions! Your hard work will bring awareness of women, women’s achievements, and ongoing struggles around the world to a mass audience.