Wikipedia:BI Norwegian Business School GRA6834

GRA6834 Wikipedia assignment

This assignment is intended to teach you something about collaborative software - and what better way to learn that than to use it? (A side benefit may be to improve the quality and quantity of information available in this, the English or in the Bokmål or Nynorsk versions of Wikipedia.) Wikipedia is an on-line encyclopedia, written collaboratively (that is, by the readers). It uses wiki technology, and everybody can update (more or less) everything. Order is maintained by common goals and common norms, as well as a strong underlying information model - that of the encyclopedia..

Assignment: (The following can be done in either the Norwegian or the English version of Wikipedia. If your main language is something else, you can edit there, but put links to what you have done here.) Be advised that this assignment takes time - not just in editing, but in understanding what you are doing and the interactions with other Wikipedians - so a good idea is to start early and work on it consistently.

  1. Register yourself as a user, read some of the documentation about what Wikipedia is and how it is to be used. You will find links to it on the main page. (The material in the English version is most rich here, of course.)
  2. While logged in, start editing and writing articles – anything you do will be tracked. Write on whatever you want, but make sure that you follow the intention of the Wikipedia. (The Norwegian version is probably the easiest to do this in, since many of the articles are missing and need to be added).
  3. Add yourself to the list of students, making sure you use the correct format (for an idea, see the 2005 list). (The intent here is that I should be able to click on each student, and then see what articles this student has worked on.)
  4. Write a memo, marked with both your student number and your Wikipedia user name, and whether you used the Norwegian or English Wikipedia version. For a total of less than 900 words, answer these questions:
    1. What, if anything, surprised you the most about the Wikipedia?
    2. What uses can you see for this technology in a corporate setting? What does it take for it to be successful?
    3. For which kind of businesses and technologies can Wikis be a disruptive technology?

The memo is to be handed in the usual way (it's Learning). Please include a list of the Wikipedia articles you have worked at the end of your assignment!!!

Good luck, and welcome to the ‘pedia!

Espen