Assignment 3: Developing Your Proposal

Due Date: 9 pm Thursday, February 13

1. Overview

The proposal should be a typed plan (a minimum of 1000 words, not including references, for single-person proposals and a minimum of 1500 words for two partners working together) describing the proposed topic. The proposal should not be a draft of your proposed entry or contain paragraphs intended for your entry.

The purpose of the proposal is to persuade readers of the merits of your planned changes or new entry and demonstrate how your entry will differ from or improve upon any existing or related entries. To receive full credit for your eventual overall Wiki contribution, you will need to create a substantial amount of new material, regardless of whether you are adding to and revising an existing entry or creating a new one. The proposal, therefore, needs to clearly indicate the work you plan to contribute. You will need to do enough research to clearly explain (and not just list) your planned changes. Be sure to include all the required proposal components described below in sections 2 and 3.

The proposal should acknowledge and adhere to the standards required by Wikipedia for creating and updating entries. Be sure to carefully review the previously provided information, such as from the handout Guidelines and Criteria for Wikipedia and information on avoiding plagiarism.

2. Planning Your Proposal: Questions and Suggestions

In planning your proposal, consider the following questions and suggestions:

• Carefully read the comments you received on your topic assignment, including suggestions of references, reconceptualizations of your topic, title, etc. If you’ve been told your topic is too broad (or too narrow), alter your plan as suggested. Overly broad topics are discouraged since these are difficult to research and cover comprehensively.

• You have the option of revising an existing entry, creating a new one, or some combination that may involve adding to one or more articles and creating a new entry. New entries are generally discouraged unless a clear parent entry already exists.

• Issues to consider if you are considering creating a new article:

If your proposed topic does not have a clear parent topic that has been developed beyond a stub or start class article, you should instead develop or revise/expand the parent topic instead, which would generally be higher priority.

Post a query to one or more relevant project groups.

Find an active Wikipedian who has contributed to a related article or to the relevant project group, and seek out that person’s advice.

Prepare to be flexible in response to the feedback you receive.

• Issues to consider in planning a revision to an existing article:

Are all parts of the existing entry clearly relevant to the topic?

Does the entry present any unsubstantiated opinion as though backed by legitimate research? Can you identify any parts of the entry that should either be removed or require further support through citations?

Does the existing entry present all of the legitimate, research-backed approaches to a particular issue?

Are there essential subtopics that are not discussed in the existing entry?

Rather than planning to provide missing citations, first consider whether your research would suggest emphasizing different points or an alternative structure, possibly deleting some of those unsupported claims.

Does the existing entry appropriately link to other Wikipedia sites? Are there any links, particularly to sites written by current or former PJHC students that you could add?

• Issues to consider for both new and revised articles:

Identify the relevant subtopics for your proposed contribution and all of the legitimate, research-backed approaches to the topic.

Narrow the number of subtopics that you will create. (If some important subtopics are beyond the scope of what you can realistically include, you can note additional subtopics meriting further development on the Talk page.)

Your proposal should acknowledge and adhere to the standards required by Wikipedia for creating and updating entries. Be sure to carefully review the previously provided information, such as from the handout Guidelines and Criteria for Wikipedia and information on avoiding plagiarism.

3. Writing your proposal

Your proposal should include the following items and use proper grammar, style, and organization:

• Identify your topic. What is the name of the article (or articles) you plan to revise or create? [Note: avoid titles with the word “and,” which do not have a clear parent article, or with titles that sound like arguments or research paper titles.]

• Explain why your topic needs to be revised, expanded, or added to Wikipedia. This explanation should be about the existing representation of the topic (or lack thereof) on Wikipedia and should not include paragraphs that would more appropriately go in the Wikipedia article. Include an argument for the relevance (“notability”) of this effort (Why should we care about this subject? What makes it so interesting?).

• Compare the current article or your planned contribution with one or more specific Wikipedia articles you identify that have been assessed as B class, Good, or Featured and explain what would need to be done to bring the article to an improved status.

• If you are planning to propose a new entry, please provide substantial justification for why this would be better rather than expanding/revising an existing entry, given that new sections added to existing entries tend to receive far more traffic than completely new entries. You will need to show that the relevant parent article is well developed.

• All proposals should cover the concepts necessary to a critical understanding of the issues; related theoretical and policy debates, and a detailed analytical plan for the material you plan to add.

• Describe the planned work, and include detailed explanations of what you will include in each section that you will be creating or revising. (If you plan to contribute to more than one article, be sure to explain what you will be contributing to each.) Include a substantive list of scholarly references expected to support each proposed section you will be contributing to your proposed new or revised entry. The references should be organized by parts of your proposed outline, with references intended for each major topic labeled as such. Please include as a separate section from the tracked changed outline described below. Note that you should provide a minimum of two (and preferably more) scholarly references for each section you plan to add. References from news sources are permitted but these are not a substitute for the minimum number of scholarly references per section.

Note: References should include material from outside the syllabus as well as relevant course readings. These will need to be listed following an appropriate documentation format such as Chicago style (including author, year, and page number). You may also use the APA style or the citation style preferred by the main umbrella Project Group for your contribution. MLA and other styles that do not emphasize the use of inline citations with publication dates are not appropriate for PJHC contributions. Note that once you start adding to specific articles, you should adhere to the referencing style preferred by the main related Wiki Project Group.

• Describe the links to other entries that you plan to add, and links you will add from those pages to yours. To what existing Wikipedia pages will you add information about your page to increase traffic?

• If you anticipate any potential difficulties, please describe these.

• Provide a detailed outline of the sections you will be revising/creating for your entry. If you are creating a new entry, this will comprise all the sections of the entry. If you are contributing to an existing entry, include an outline that shows existing sections to be kept or deleted and proposed new sections, clearly distinguishing between the two using the Track Changes feature of Word. Follow the format of the example below. Plan to practice using Track Changes well in advance of the deadline since you may have trouble if you try to use it at the last minute without advance practice.

• If you plan to coordinate work with a classmate on an entry or on related entries, please describe your joint work plan.

• Briefly outline the points you plan to add to WikiProject Group and/or Talk pages.

• Conclusion—Reiterate the importance of your new or revised entry and raise any issues or questions you may have.

4. Sample Outline: Microfinance

See attached document for outline image

5. Submit to OWL-Space: Deadline: 9 pm Thursday, February 13

Submit your completed proposal to the relevant assignment tab on OWL-Space. For full credit, the file you submit must be labeled as follows: <LastName> WikiProposal.doc

Be sure to include page numbers and to proofread and double-space all text except the outline, which may be single-spaced. Also, include your name at the top of the document as well as page numbers. Points will be deducted for proposals that do not follow these instructions.