In the summer 2013, I gave my first class on Wikipedia. It mainly dealt with Wikipedia as a tool for literary scholars. The students compared articles in the field of literary history in such different Wikipedias as the Italian, the French, the Spanish, the Turkish, the English and the German speaking one. During that term, the focus of interest emerged relatively quickly: it revolved around questions of quotability and authority.
A few weeks ago, I started my second class on Wikipedia. This time, it is at the Stuttgart University, where I am teaching Digital Humanities this term. The students are B.A. and M.A. students in English Studies and they will post in English on this blog – the first contributions are to be expected at the beginning of December. The focus this time is on a comparison between the English-speaking and the German-speaking Wikipedia. In a first step, the students will analyse articles in order to see if the editorial rules are the same in both languages (in what do they vary? where are the expectations higher or lower? what is the meaning of such expectations for scholarly standards?). They will then write articles of their own and, in a second series of blogposts, reflect on their experience as Wikipedia contributors. Continue reading “New class, new look, new language”