Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 3/Written assignment and conclusion

And I want to give you a small assignment for next time. You will be sent a little document which will include several passages inspired by actual Wikipedia text that has been identified as non-neutral. I have edited them to obscure some of the details so that you won't find the text exactly on Wikipedia, because the point is the exercise, and I want you to rewrite these texts into neutral point of view texts in a separate document, not on wiki. Focus on the text. Remember we're just practicing the *tone* here. So rewrite the non-neutral text into neutral text. And since the examples will not be about people or things that you know, you may have to make something up, and that's okay. My point is not to have you do actual research of the facts. Rather, it is for you to show you understand what a neutral version of this text would sound like.

In conclusion, I want to remind you the encyclopedia doesn't have opinions. It doesn't have likes or dislikes or favorites. It itself doesn't have a nationality or a religion or an affiliation.

I also want to remind you that nobody was born speaking neutral point of view. I certainly wasn't! It's a skill; it's learnable. And if you practice, if you follow these principles and listen to feedback you get -- people will tell you "this isn't neutral. You should change that." -- if you listen to the feedback, practice will make perfect and you will be able to generate highly neutral Wikipedia Voice paragraphs. Take the criticism and the feedback you get as a learning opportunity and just do better next time.

There are some links there on the Resources slide. You can click on these links if you want to learn more, and see the actual policy page on English Wikipedia. (One of you mentioned that on French Wikipedia the principles are similar. I guess some nuances may differ on French Wikipedia. I don't edit French Wikipedia myself.) There is a tutorial. There is a quiz. You can use these links if you like. Next week we will discuss these exercises, develop them in class, compare our results, do some more exercises and then prepare for module 4.