"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by many of its readers." You may have visited Wikipedia before, and even used it as a reference. If so, you have probably found that some articles are very well written and accurate, as good as anything you find elsewhere, other articles are poorly written or just wrong, and other articles haven't been written yet.
Because Wikipedia is collaborative, it relies on all of us to make it better. Your task in this course is to improve its coverage of the California flora.
- Familiarize yourself with Wikipedia. Read the Help pages, especially Editing Wikipedia - the_basics, Policies, conventions and guidelines, and Getting started.
- Next, get acquainted with some of the articles about California plants. One source is the category Flora of California, but it doesn't include 100% of the California plants already in Wikipedia. Another is to type the common name or genus of a plant in the search box on any Wikipedia page. When you look at these pages, make a note of the ones you think are good and the ones you think are bad.
- Get started (Due date: 2006-04-11)
- Create an account in Wikipedia (see How to log in); if you already have one, you can use it. Your user name can be anything you want, as long as it follows the guidelines. You must send an email to jcclark@csupomona.edu with a copy to egbobich@csupomona.edu listing your Wikipedia user name and your BroncoName (the last is not needed if you email from your Cal Poly Pomona email account).
- Create a User page for your account. It must contain the following sentence: "Some contributions are in partial fulfillment of the requirements of BOT 343, California Flora, taught at Cal Poly Pomona in Spring Quarter, 2006." The rest of the content is up to you.
- Go to the BOT 343 subpage of Dr. Clark's user page and add your user name to the list. Use the instructor entry as a guide to the syntax. If you did it right, the first link should go to your user page and the second to your list of contributions.
- Contribute to Wikipedia (Due date: 2006-05-25 )
- Improve an existing article – Find an article about a species or genus in the California flora (i.e., one that is listed in the Jepson Manual) and improve it. You should use verifiable information and cite references. Your edits will be listed in your contribution history.
- Create a new article – Choose a species or genus that doesn't already appear in Wikipedia (be sure to search for both the scientific name and common names). Remember that Wikipedia is worldwide, so you will be writing about the species everywhere it occurs, not just in California. Create an article for it by its binomial (e.g. Eschscholzia californica rather than California poppy) or its genus name. Create a redirect from the common name used in the Jepson manual. You have probably noticed that many plant articles have a "taxobox", a table in the upper right that gives classification information. You may create one if you like, but if you don't, another Wikipedian will probably do it for you.
- Do one more instance of either (a) or (b).
- Plagiarism and copyright infringement – Plagiarism is using someone else's writing without acknowledging them. Copyright infringement is using copyrighted material without authorization, whether or not you acknowledge its source. Copying information from another (non-Wikipedia) web page and pasting it into Wikipedia without attribution is both plagiarism and copyright infringement. And there is a whole army of Wikipedians to catch you doing it. So don't. Plagiarism is academic misconduct at Cal Poly Pomona. If you see something you like, write it in your own words, or if it's short, quote it and cite it.
- Using photographs – You may want to illustrate your articles with photographs. Some good places to find them:
- Wikimedia Commons, where you can enter the scientific or common name in the search box. All these are licensed for use in Wikipedia and almost any other commercial or noncommercial use.
- Plant images on Wikipedia are also available for use.
- Any photo you took yourself, as long as you are willing to license it, which means that others will be able to use it for almost any purpose.
- Ask the instructors. We may have photographs that we are willing to place on Wikimedia Commons.
Some bad places to find them:
Almost anywhere else.
