The University of British Columbia's class SPAN322 ("North of the Río Grande: Latin American Civilization and Culture") is contributing to Wikipedia during Fall 2008. Our collective goals are to bring a selection of articles on Chicano and Latino literature to featured article status (or as near as possible).

Feel free to discuss this project.

Students, your first step, after creating an account (and emailing me your username) is to sign in below, to choose a group and to add your username the list of project members. If you have any questions, you can ask them on the project's talk page or at my user page.

• To improve Wikipedia's coverage of selected articles on Chicano and Latino literature in the USA and Canada.
• To submit these articles to Wikipedia review processes, such as Did you know?, peer review, good article nominations and featured article candidates.
• To increase the number of featured articles in this area.

• This project goes live the week of September 1, 2008. Please check back regularly for latest progress.

Students, please sign (with two hyphens and four tildes, --~~~~) under the article you would like to edit. Groups should be no larger than three, or two in the case of Carmen Rodriguez and and a body to remember with. You can also (that is, in addition) indicate your interest in working on one of the two possible articles on the Spanish Wikipedia.

If you choose an article marked "DYK," your group will be expected to put it in for the Wikipedia "Did you know?" award, within five days of starting work on the article. But this is an easy award to gain, and will get you off to a good start.

• Chicano literature (talk ·  · history) (DYK)

• Maria Ruiz de Burton (talk ·  · history)

• Who Would Have Thought It? (talk ·  · history) (DYK)

• José Martí (talk ·  · history)

• Tomás Rivera (talk ·  · history)

• ...y no se lo tragó la tierra (talk ·  · history) (DYK)

• Sandra Cisneros (talk ·  · history)

• Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (talk ·  · history) (DYK)
  1. --Katie322 (talk) 22:56, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Julia Alvarez (talk ·  · history)

• How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (talk ·  · history)

• Carmen Rodriguez (talk ·  · history) (DYK)
  1. --Mstmaurice (talk) 16:30, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• and a body to remember with (talk ·  · history) (DYK)

• es:José Martí

• es:Tomás Rivera

These are the stages we need to pass through:

• Start. Get familiar with wikipedia. Make some trial edits, however minor. Demystify the process. Leave behind any sense of intimidation. As wikipedia puts it, learn to be bold. Learn basic editing skllls.

By September 8, everyone should have sent me their username, added themselves to a group (above) and the membership list (below), plus made at least one edit anywhere on Wikipedia.

• Continue. This is not a project that can be completed in a rush, as the deadline races up. Wikipedia articles are written in increments, as the result of many edits, often small.

Over the course of the semester, you need to log in and make at least one edit, again however minor, to your article twice a week.

• DYK. Those articles that are eligible for the "Did You Know?" section of the Main Page should be submitted within five days of their creation or first edit. See the DYK rules and this dispatch about DYK.

Groups that successfully get their article featured on the "Did You Know?" section of the Main Page will receive extra credit.

• Plan. But minor edits alone won't get us much closer towards Feature Article status. We need to have a sense of what more needs to be done, and an overall plan for the article. Look at models and guidelines (e.g. guidelines for articles about novels) on how to write good and feature articles. What sections are required? What will be the article structure? What information is needed?

By September 19, each group should have their plan in place, and have written it up on their article's talk page.

• Share. We will need to divide up the tasks that we've identified in the planning stage. Who is going to do what and when?

• Research. This is vital. A Wikipedia article is worth nothing unless it comprises verified research, appropriated referenced. This will entail going to the library, as well as surfing the internet! It may also require you get books from inter-library loan.

By September 26, each group should have assembled a bibliography that is as comprehensive as possible, and written it up on their article's talk page.

• Assemble and copy-edit. As the referenced research is added to an article, we need to ensure that it does not become baggy and disorganized, though there will be moments when it is obviously in a transitional stage.

• Review. First, informal reviews among ourselves and consultation with other Wikipedians. You may then also submit your article to peer review.

• Good article nomination.

By November 10, each group should have submitted their article to Good article nominations.

You may want to leave it at that. Or you may want to continue and work on getting your article featured article status. FA status will earn your group a grade of A+. If you are part of a group that is not submitting to FA, you can now join a group that is, and share in their group grade, so long as you are a full participant in the FA drive.

• Further Review, both informally and again, perhaps, to peer review.

• Feature article nomination.

By November 26, those groups that are submitting their article to featured article candidacy should do so.

There's no precise order for everything. Small, incremental change is always important. But over the course of the project we're looking for radical change, in some cases seeking to create a feature article from scratch. So we need also to be methodical.

NB see also what wikipedia has to say about article development.

To be awarded "good" or "featured" status, articles have to conform to the Wikipedia style guides. The three most important aspects of style are:

• Wikipedia:Layout – this guide describes heading and sub-headings.
• Wikipedia:Lead section – the all important abstract at the head of an article.
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style – the collection of rules.

Secondary style guide are specific to different projects. Articles must conform to these also. Conflict between any of these is inevitable and troublesome; editors simply have to work out conflicts through consensus.

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction) - collection of rules for fiction.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Style guidelines – mostly lay out issues for articles on novels.

The simplest way to understand the various style guides is to examine articles that have passed GA or FA. Here is a recently-promoted featured article of a novelist: Mario Vargas Llosa. Here is a featured article of a novel: El Señor Presidente.

• Getting started
• The perfect article
• Assessment
• Article development

• Good article criteria
• Guide for nominating good articles
• Good article review cheatsheet
• Good article nominations

• Feature article criteria
• The differences between good and featured articles
• How to satisfy Criterion 1a

Article traffic statistics indicate the size of the public for our work. Below are the figures for June, 2008. Numbers are likely to go up significantly as the articles improve.

• José Martí: 13,060 views.^[1] Or c. 155,000 views per year.
• Sandra Cisneros: 4,895 views. Or c. 58,000 views per year.
• Julia Alvarez: 2,354 views. Or c. 28,000 views per year.
• How the García Girls Lost their Accents: 1,309 views.^[2] Or c. 15,000 views per year.
• Tomás Rivera: 809 views.^[3] Or c. 9,500 views per year.
• Chicano literature: 282 views.^[4] Or c. 3,300 views per year.
• Maria Ruiz de Burton: 171 views. Or c. 2,000 views per year.

By comparison...

• José Martí (Spanish Wikipedia): 30,393 views.^[5] Or c. 365,000 views per year.

More information to track the significance of this assignment. Below are each article's Google page ranks, using the most likely search parameters,^[6] as of the beginning of September, 2008. Again, these ranks are likely to go up significantly as the articles improve.

• Jose Marti: google rank #1 on first page of results
• Tomas Rivera: google rank #1 on first page of results
• Sandra Cisneros: google rank #3 on first page of results
• Julia Alvarez: google rank #3 on first page of results
• How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents: google rank #3 on first page of results
• Maria Ruiz de Burton: google rank #3 on first page of results
• Chicano literature: List of Mexican American writers (current redirect) on third page of results

Students, please add your usernames below, using the format * {{user2|username}}. E.g. * {{user2|jbmurray}}.

• jbmurray (talk · contribs · count)
• katie322 (talk · contribs · count)
• valerie voikin (talk · contribs · count)
• mstmaurice (talk · contribs · count)
• exclamationpoint (talk · contribs · count)

We welcome participation and help from other Wikipedia editors. You may wish to add your username below.

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• Murder, Madness, and Mayhem