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WRI101 Into the Deep Past

This is a list of resources to support the Princeton Writing Program

Anatomy of a Wikipedia Article

Let us consider the Wikipedia article for The Inheritors (Golding novel). The main page that most people are familiar is also called the "Livespace" and is located under the article tab. This is just where the large body of information regarding the specific topic is housed.

The next tab to consider is for the Talk page.

  • provides information about how the article itself was created and evaluated
  • what projects the article belongs to
  • recent conversations about how the article is being edited

Another spot of interest is the View history tab.

  • shows who is editing
  • frequency of edits
  • and gives a method to evaluate the changes that were being made

Finally, the reference section provides a lot of information for the sources being used for an article.  Sources are very important, especially for articles related to health, medicine, and psychology.   There are strict guidelines for what sources can be used. 

  1. Respect secondary sources of information
  2. Primary sources are peer reviewed, but contain original research and controversies need to be supported by reliable secondary sources.
  3. meta analysis and systematic reviews are key
  4. needs to be consensus based

 

Strategic exploration of Wikipedia