Wikipedia activity as part of our service learning

Per your suggestion, I raised the issue in our last class, and it met with quite positive reception from Prof. Shulman - he encouraged us to try this, and noted that time we dedicate to it will count toward our service learning. Thus I am going to illustrate what I had in mind below - feel free to ask questions, offer suggestions and critique - and of course, participate in the project :)

As we all know (I hope!), Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia whose content is created by volunteers. It is now in Top 10 most popular sites online, comes up in many Google searches and as such, understanding and even familiarity with the site are increasingly becoming a basic requirements for any 'digital citizen'. If we can improve the coverage and quality of Wikipedia's topics, we will succeed in several basic tenants of service learning:
* we will create content useful for others; hence benefiting the online community (and I don't mean only the Wikipedia community of editors, but the online community of all people using Internet, who increasingly rely on Wikipedia for being their primary source of information)
* we will become more familiar with Wikipedia ourselves, thus gaining some important skills and knowledge

I suggest we target the digital divide article - a core concept in our course, and certainly an important concept overall. Unfortunately, the article is in sad shape:
* as far as I can tell, based on our readings, it is hardly comprehensive - it doesn't mention many key arguments or concepts
* it lacks inline citations
* it doesn't follow Wikipedia Manual of Style
And this is just a tip of the iceberg of the problems this article suffers from.

How can we improve it? It's easy. You can learn how to edit Wikipedia - which is hardly more difficult than learning how to use a text editor - by spending a few minutes following the Wikipedia Tutorial. Next, create an account - it takes only few seconds - and add yourself to the list here. What next? Well, you can review the current article; list 'to do' tasks, discuss it on its talk page, or just be bold and start editing the main article.

I hope we will be able to cross two important milestones in the next few weeks:
* reach the status of a Good Article
* reach the status of a Featured Article

For now, I have done a few technical tasks, such as creation of the 'to do' list and submission for the peer review. I have also used a script to generate some suggestions for improvement - see the peer review. So, let's waste no more time and start editing!

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me - by email, Wikipedia message system, replies to the blog or via one of many instant messengers I use (see my Wikipedia user page for my contact info).