[WikiEN-l] Ars Technica: Prof replaces term papers with Wikipedia contributions, suffering ensues

[Utkarshraj Atmaram]

On 10/30/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/30/07, Utkarshraj Atmaram <utcursch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Can anybody provide me with links to these discussions and (deleted)
> > pages? I tried searching, but all I could find was Martha Groom's
> > userpage <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mjgroom>.
>
> I can see something like this working if the area is carefully
> selected. There's little low-hanging fruit left, as we've noted here
> before - but any WikiProject will have endless lists of red links just
> waiting for someone to do the legwork to research and write an
> article. Someone with university-level research facilities should be
> able to do a much better job than from a mere Googling, in not much
> more time.

Just got links to two articles, via "Students Find That Wikipedians
Are Tougher Graders Than Their
Professor"<http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2497>. The
articles were created in December 2006.

Deforestation during the Roman period
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_during_the_Roman_period

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus

Both the articles are quite good.

Look at the first version of the article "Deforestation during the
Roman period" (user's only mainspace edit) -- great work for a first
edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deforestation_during_the_Roman_period&oldid=94219478

-- 
Utkarshraj Atmaram
http://utcursch.wordpress.com
http://utcursch.blogspot.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Utcursch