Wikipedia:Meetup/Native American Literatures Symposium (Albuquerque: March 12th 2015)

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The Native American Literature Symposium has agreed to host a wikithon to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Native American literatures and Indigenous literary topics. Delegates will be trained in the basics of wiki-editing, invited to create their own article or improve existing ones, and given a presentation on using Wiki-editing tasks as a way to engage students in the classroom.

What: Wikithon, Native American Literature Symposium [1]

When: Thursday, March 12, 2015, 10:30 am-1:15pm

Where: Isleta Resort

What to bring: Your laptop and power adapter if you are interested in participating in the editathon. If you are willing to help others edit on their laptops, we just need you!

Focus: Improving and significantly expanding Wikipedia's coverage of Native American literatures.

Refreshments will be provided!


List of participating Wikipedians[edit]

If you plan on attending, please see above and also add yourself to this list.

Aims[edit]

Our primary aim at this meeting is to improve Wikipedia's coverage of American Indian literatures in English, making use of the extensive knowledge and research skills of the delegates at the 2015 Native American Literature Symposium. Our secondary aim is to encourage educators to use Wikipedia editing as a tool in education, getting students to participate in knowledge production and increase the visibility of Indigenous literary topics.

Many articles in this area have come under attack in the past due in particular to Wikipedia's notability guidelines, so we would ask that new editors apply the following criteria:

1) You should cite more than one example of the author/book/topic being discussed in an independent, reliable source (academic journal, monograph, newspaper article, etc)

2) You need to demonstrate in your article the clear reasons why the author or book merits coverage in an encyclopedia (awards, influence on other writers, media coverage, academic discussion).

Most importantly, this project will be best helped by editors who maintain a neutral, dispassionate tone and point of view in their writing (see WP:NPOV).

Tutorials on Wikipedia editing[edit]

Conflict of Interest Editing[edit]

Examples[edit]

Best practice[edit]

One of the best biographical articles on a Native American person can be found at Jim Thorpe. This was selected as a "featured article", meaning that Wikipedia editors considered it gold standard. In a short session like today's this would be an impossible standard to reach, but it exemplifies what we're aiming for. Full list of featured articles here.

Indigenous articles that have been rated "Good" include Greenlandic language and Kechewaishke. Again, this is an aspiration. Full list here.

The highest rated article I can find on an American Indian or First Nations literary topic are those on Louise Erdrich and Leslie Marmon Silko. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is also coming up to being an excellent article. reliable sources

Examples for this session[edit]

It would be good to aim at producing a decent-quality "Start-Class" article. This means an article that is short, but meets the requirement of cited sources that demonstrate the article's notability and verify that the topic exists and is discussed in other published works. Start-class articles include Heid E. Erdrich, Luci Tapahonso, William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. and Eric Gansworth (the bulk of Eric's article I produced in about the time available for this session). Book articles in this category include The Way to Rainy Mountain, Shell Shaker, Indian Killer, Pushing the Bear, or The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta.

Schedule for Incorporating Wikipedia Writing into a Native American Literature Class (from Siobhan Senier)[edit]

I ask students, in the latter half of a 15-week class on Native lit, to create entries for authors not already represented on Wikipedia. The whole process takes about 6 weeks, as follows:

  • Week 1: start drafting a post on our class blog on your (chosen/assigned) author, titled AUTHOR NAME (Your name(s)), adding

(a) a short paragraph of author bio [minimally, what s/he writes and has published]; (b) short paragraph on the author's tribal nation [geographic location? size, history? does the author live in the community, or elsewhere?]. (c) list at least five reliable sources

  • Week 2: Continue refining your blog post. Wikipedia workshop in class. Before class you need to go through Wikipedia's Intro for Students. Expect a quiz. You don't have to memorize every bit of the style manual, but you should definitely read the sections titled "About Wikipedia" and "Overviews," so you understand who writes Wikipedia, how it gets edited, and what its basic principles and philosophies are. Be able to define basic terms including "editor," "wiki," "open source," "crowdsourced," "sockpuppet," "edit wars," and "talk page."
  • Week 3: Keep refining and adding to your blog post. Wikipedia workshop in class. Before class, go through my helpful Wikipedia checklist. If you feel ready you can try uploading and saving your article; if not, give it a test-run in your "sandbox." I will be tracking your usernames to make sure this is working for you. Your Wikipedia article needs to be ready to go (i.e., you have posted your sandbox link to my talk page as an indication that you're finished) no later than midnight on SUNDAY. Review the criteria for making an article stick.
  • Week 4: As soon as your Wikipedia article is live and "sticking," send the link to your author for feedback. This may involve some wait time, so once you've done that, start reading (and editing) each other's essays. By the end of this week you need to have made at least half a dozen edits within Wikipedia, which I'll be able to track through your username. In class, meanwhile, you're going to be presenting your author entries [10 min per presentation: a quick overview of who and where your author is, followed by a reading of a sample text]

In Weeks 5 and 6 students continue to expand, refine and edit their articles in conversation with their authors or a tribal historian and each other. For more on this assignment, see my essay, "Indigenizing Wikipedia: Student Accountability to Native American Authors on the World's Largest Encyclopedia" in _Web Writing: Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching_, ed. Jack Dougherty (U of Michigan Publishing).

Articles that need to be written or improved[edit]

Biography articles that need to be written[edit]

If you are going to write a biography article for a writer, please copy the Template:Infobox writer onto the page, filling in all possible fields and deleting the rest (all fields are explained at Template:Infobox writer).

Biography articles in need of improvement[edit]

Of course, every article is in need of improvement to some degree - these are just some examples. You can find biographies of all writers who currently have articles on Wikipedia by going to the List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas.

Book articles that need to be written[edit]

Use Template:Infobox_book for these articles.

Book articles in need of improvement[edit]

Articles on journals and associations[edit]

General topics[edit]

Please note that I have alternated the use of "Native American" and "First Nations" in some of these article titles, simply because it's exhausting typing each one out over and over again. These topics are only suggestions, so you can create an article with any title.

Activist articles[edit]

Scholars[edit]

Please note that there are quite specific guidelines for whether academics merit their own Wikipedia pages. These are explained at some length at WP:PROF. Your article needs to demonstrate why the person you have chosen is generally considered to have made a significant impact on their field.

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