Interview with the team behind one of the 2,000th featured articles
- Wikinews staff credits are listed here.
This week, the English-language version of Wikipedia reached 2,000 featured articles with the inclusion of the article El Señor Presidente. Featured articles (FAs) meet Wikipedia's highest standards for quality, accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style, and thus are considered the best articles on Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia process (Featured article candidates) that evaluates articles for featured article status promoted five articles to FA status at the same time: Walter de Coventre, Maximian, El Señor Presidente, Lord of the Universe, and Red-billed Chough. With five promoted at the same time, conferring the status of 2,000th on one is an arbitrary decision and in some respects any of these articles could actually make a claim to the honour.
One of the five, El Señor Presidente, was unique in that it is the first known article to reach FA status as part of a class project, WikiProject Madness, Murder, and Mayhem. Jon Beasley-Murray, a professor of Spanish literature at the University of British Columbia, decided to make Wikipedia editing a class assignment, divvying up a set of articles related to the theme of his Spanish Literature class. Students who reached GA status would receive As, while FAs would earn students an A+ on the assignment. Aiding the class was the FA-team, a new WikiProject of sorts whose aim is to help newer Wikipedians achieve FA status. The project consists of several editors with copy-editing and MOS experience to help guide new editors through the often-confusing process of reaching FA status. Out of twelve articles chosen as part of the project, eight have (as of the end of the project, April 22) passed as GAs, and a total of three are FA (Mario Vargas Llosa and The General in His Labyrinth were promoted subsequent to El Señor Presidente). Before the project began, a few of the twelve, including El Señor Presidente, did not exist.
Beasley-Murray began using Wikipedia as a collaborative space where his students could both do coursework and provide a type of virtual public service. Thus, he created a Wikipedia project, Murder Madness and Mayhem, that focused on creating articles relating to the Latin American literature covered in his class. Not surprisingly, El Señor Presidente is considered one of the most important books in Latin American literature, written by Nobel Prize-winning Guatemalan writer Miguel Ángel Asturias.
Beasley-Murray has written an essay describing the experience, in which he states that the assignment helped students improve their research skills and become familiar with writing for a public audience. Wikipedia, he says, does not encourage the kind of persuasive writing usually sought for in a university setting, but it can be a great exercise in critical thinking and research. This WikiProject has caused a bit of a stir on higher education discussion boards on the internet as in this post entitled: "Is murder, madness and mayhem the future of higher education?"
This is not the first college class to make Wikipedia editing part of its coursework. It is, however, the first to achieve this kind of success. In the past, projects of a similar sort have had varying degrees of success, some adding only a little information to the pages involved, and others being absolutely chaotic, having no leader, no respect for the rules of Wikipedia, and no real guidance other than "add to get the grade." This project seems to have succeeded where others have failed for several reasons. First, the leadership of the teacher of the class, Jbmurray. Second, the guidance of the FA-team helping the students and the professor become familiar with Wikipedia's etiquette and other oddities.
The Wikinews team contacted Prof. Beasley-Murray, who agreed to be interviewed for this story. His responses can be found below. Included are sections soliciting responses from three students who took the class and helped create and bring El Señor Presidente to Feature Article status. Thus far the project has created seven good articles in addition to the 2,000th featured article.