An Article Start to Finish: Creating an Article in a Wiki

2007-03-12T12:21:44Z

Week 2

Learning Objectives

After completing this lesson the participants will:

Select a strong title for their content that will be unique and easily discovered by search engines.
Correctly format a title according to the extension Manual of Style (See: Naming Pages in the wiki).
Create a new page.
Add their content to a page.
Demonstrate initial proficiency and understanding of working collaboratively in a wiki.

Introduction to the Lesson

This week you will create your article and begin to flesh it out. Properly naming your article is very important. It is the first thing you will do when creating a new article, and if done wrong, it is one of the more difficult things to correct. Almost everything you do in the wiki is easily reversed except an article's title. So, we want you to be sure you've done your homework before you create it. If you have proposed a title on your User page, your instructors and fellow participants will have commented. After reading their comments and suggestions, if you still have doubts we would like you to ask us for guidance. The primary goal of this seminar series is to take you step-by-step through the process of creating a quality educational resource. On the way to the barn you will learn a lot about working in a wiki. This week we start your article.

Demonstrations and Learning Activities

Creating your article page

Just as in the first lesson we are going to dive right in and create your article's page. It is important to have decided on your exact article title before doing this step. The following screencast will walk you through the process of creating a new page. When you get ready to create your page refer to the Step-by-step guide for additional assistance.

Screencast 1: Creating MediaWiki Article Pages - (Transcript: Creating MediaWiki Article Pages)

Hands-on Activity

After watching the screencast on creating a new MediaWiki article page, login to the Collaborate wiki and create your page.
- Step-by-step guide to Creating a MediaWiki Article Page
Enter some content in your page by either just typing (we like this- how easy can it be?), or by copying and pasting.
Once you've done this try searching and going to your page. You did practice this at Wikipedia as part of Week 1's activities... Correct?
Take a look at all the work you've done in the wiki to date by clicking on the your contributions text box in the upper right hand part of your screen.
Finally, go to the list of Start to Finish Article Pages. Select an article from the list and either:
- Edit the content in some way. Add some new content, correct some typos or mispellings
- Leave a constructive suggestion on the article's discussion page. (NOTE: If you are one of the first participants to create your page you may need to come back later in the week to complete this final activity.)

If you want to learn more

Titles and Google Juice

When utilizing an online search engine (e.g., Google, MSN, Yahoo), most users read the first page of returned results only. The Wikipedia creators have successfully engineered their site to appear on the first page of online search results lists. In an effort to also appear on the first page of search results, eXtension employs the same software as Wikipedia. Additionally, we encourage our authors to emulate Wikipedia, when writing their articles. There are several factors which increase the likelihood of your article being listed on the first page of an internet search. Careful attention to these factors will increase your viewing audience:

titles - require keywords and description
key words - possibly the most essential factor
language - avoid slang or silly terminology
first sentence - keywords from the title should appear again in the first sentence of the article
sections and subsections - again, the use of key words in section headings is helpful in searching online
links - search engines show a preference for articles containing 2 or more links to other webpages
article length - 250 word minimum

Words like "the, a, new" are noise words and do not make a difference in the search

The eXtension wikis are not searchable at this time to the public

Titles

Naming your article effectively is essential on a wiki. Creativity is not helpful; it is more important to include keywords and basic concepts. eXtension maintains an updated listing of keywords, which, in addition to the Google and Overture keyword tools above, is a good place to start, when considering titles for an article.

Once your article is ready to publish on the eXtension wiki, you will need to select a category in which the article will be stored. However, the category lists may also be helpful in naming your article effectively. Many users of eXtension will peruse articles by paging through the category names.

It is customary to include the keywords from the title in the opening sentence of your article.

Article sections

Sections titles (or headers) are also important when writing articles for an online audience, and for being found during an online search. Most of your audience will find your article via search engines, such as Google, Yahoo or MSN. Again, the use of keywords is very helpful, in making your article easily navigated by the users.

Body of the article

When writing for an online community, it is especially important to maintain uniformity from article to article. eXtension has published its own Manual of Style (you'll need to log in to the CoP wiki with your eXtension ID too) which addresses the general conventions as well as the minute details of submitting your article. Please familiarize yourself with this style guide, as well as refer back to it, when you have questions about format or conventions.

New Page

A new article in the wiki will require a new page, which you may create by simply clicking the new page tab in the yellow navigation box on the right of this page. The page must be named at the time of page creation. During week 1, you were asked to consider the title of the article you will construct, and to store that title on your user page. Please have your title ready, so that you may create and name your new page with that title. (The section below details information about page names or titles.)

Search engine optimization (SEO)

search engine results pages (SERPs)
plurals - may deliver different results
word ordering - may deliver different results
capitalization - less important

Keywords

title
headers/sections
metadata/tags

Keyword strength

Keyword density

Google's Keyword Sandbox [Google Keyword Tool]

Google provides a tool with which you can test and compare the usage of a given keyword. The results also provide a listing of potential keywords that may more accurately describe your subject matter, thereby sharpening the focus of an online search.

Overture [Overture Keyword Selector Tool]

WordTracker (paid site)

ALT tags or Alt attributes

Text that displays when an image or photograph cannot be displayed is known as alternate (alt) tags or attributtes.

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