New brochure helps students editing history articles

History is one of the most popular disciplines for teaching with Wikipedia — but it’s also an area where students sometimes struggle. In history classes, students tend to do research, drawing conclusions from primary sources. But that’s not how history articles on Wikipedia are constructed as original research isn’t allowed on Wikipedia. Instead, student editors need to provide citations to peer-reviewed publications where other historians have already done the interpretation of primary sources.

This requirement trips up many student editors writing history articles for the first time, which is why Wiki Education has created a new guide to Editing Wikipedia articles about History. The latest in our series of discipline-specific handouts, the guide walks history student editors through how to pick a topic to write on, what sources are acceptable and not acceptable for history articles, how to include underrepresented voices, and how to structure a typical history article.

Drafted by Wiki Education staff, the guide was adapted thanks to valuable feedback from Wikipedia editors User:Another Believer, User:AustralianRupert, User:Cinderella157, User:Sadads, and User:Wehwalt. We extend our thanks to these editors for their work reviewing our draft.

The guide is available on Wikimedia Commons in PDF format for anyone to use, or courses participating in Wiki Education’s program can receive free printed copies. To learn more about our program, visit wikiedu.org/teach-with-wikipedia or email us at contact@wikiedu.org.

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