An interesting assignment, but the teacher made a major error by requiring this: "Choose two topics that are appropriate", requiring a NEW article. That might have worked 2 years ago when for example the article, [[Colorado]] was a new article. But now the experience is much more about making existing articles better.
I think a better assignment would be. Pick a Wikipedia article at least 10 editors have edited within the last month and make an edit which substantially improves the article.
This mission, of course, might be quite adventurous, involving geting reverted, having to justify one's edit, but would expose the students to the flavor of a wiki.
Ending up on VfD is much more sour and negative experience.
Fred
From: "Anthony DiPierro" anthonydipierro@hotmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 08:23:57 -0400 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth class project now on VFD
Just wanted to bring this discussion to the mailing list, as this is "*the* place for meta-discussions about the nature of Wikipedia." From what I've gathered, a Wikipedia user (possibly just a lurker as their user has not contributed before the 20th), [[User:Pcw]] gave his class an assignment which involved Wikipedia (http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~cs4/S2004/hw/hw6.html). The assignment asks the students, who are non-majors taking a computer science class, to create two new Wikipedia articles. It specifically points them to [[What Wikipedia is not]] and [[Wikipedia:Neutral point of view]].
Lots of articles were contributed, and many are now listed on VFD. Probably many others are not. Those listed range from [[Dartmouth Beer Pong]], which seems to be completely unverifiable original research, to [[Winter Carnival]], which although ambiguously named seems like a good example of just what Wikipedia is. [[Newton North High School]] also looks like it's going to survive, since we have a precedent for keeping pages about high schools. Others:
[[Dartmouth dodecaphonics]] [[Dartmouth cords]] [[Dartmouth Rockapellas]] [[Winter Carnival]] [[5 Die]] [[Snell Family Farm]] (maybe) [[Lob pong]] [[Exit 38 climbing area]] (probably) [[Dartmouth Wind Symphony]] [[Chorus of Westerly]] [[The Harlequins]] [[Dartmouth Night]] [[Dartmouth Mountaineering Club]] [[Dartmouth Ski Patrol]] [[Dartmouth Beer Pong]] [[Dartmouth Womens Crew Team]] [[Dartmouth film society]] [[Dartmouth Rockapellas]] [[Chi Gamma Epsilon]] [[Dartmouth College Men's Reserve Team]] [[Dartmouth broadcasting]] [[Native Americans at Dartmouth]] [[Newton North High School]] [[The Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College]]
I may be missing some others.
"Delete stuff by Dartmouth people. Ambi 10:40, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)"
That seems to sum up the current majority opinion.
Anthony _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l