Wiki writeup assignments for 10-710 in Fall 2011

There will be 8 wiki writeup assignments through the semester.

• by 9/6: create a user homepage, ideally with a photo (so we can be friendly and learn your name), as User:USERNAME, e.g. User:Wcohen (Freebie 0th assignment)
• by 9/30: 4 writeups
• by 10/31 11/2: 2 more writeups
• by 11/30: 2 more writeups

There are three types of Wiki pages to create: papers (list), methods (list), and datasets (list). During the semester, you must author at least 8 Wiki pages, of which at least 2 must be "paper" pages and of which at least 2 must be "methods" pages. Dataset writeups don't count (they tend to be small and easy), but you should make them if relevant for your paper.

See slides on Class_Meeting_for_10-710_09-01-2011 for some more details.

Grading criteria for a writeup:

• Must be well-written: not powerpoint-style or bullet point lists.
• Must be well-linked into the existing wiki. At least 4 outgoing links to other papers, methods, and/or dataset pages. You should also link to your page from existing pages where appropriate.
• For a paper, you are expected to explain what method they use, and explain the paper's relationship to other similar or contrasting papers, and explain what data they analyze (if any).
• For a method, you are expected to explain clearly what the method is and list papers that use it or are related to it. Think about inputs and resources, outputs, and things the method is comparable to. Explain what motivations or assumptions underlie the method, the circumstances under which it is meant to be used, and what makes it different from earlier methods.

Example: a writeup on Turney's 2002 ACL paper. As a rough guideline, a writeup might be around 400-500 words. But quality of writing is most important -- the goal is to succinctly summarize the most important aspects of the paper or method. Tables, equations, and figures can also be very helpful.

When choosing a paper (or method) to write-up, make sure of the following.

• You cannot do a writeup for a required reading (because they are heavily covered during lecture)
• You cannot duplicate an already-existing writeup page. When you select a paper, please search the wiki (for example, look at the full list for Paper or Method .. but apparently those lists aren't always up-to-date, so please use the search box on the left!) to make sure it's not a duplicate. Note, some of the pages on the wiki are actually stubs so for them it's okay to writeup, of course.
  • Exception: if you find an old page created during a previous course that you think is bad and needs to be rewritten, contact Brendan for permission to do a "rewrite" as your assignment.
• We strongly recommend you choose papers that are background/optional readings from the lectures so far, or that are referenced in Noah's book (particularly chapters 3-4), or that were considered in older versions of the course (L&S2, IE). If you find a paper that's not obviously in one of those sets, check with the TA.
• Note that some papers that already have pages would not have been appropriate choices for this course; that's because this Wiki has been used for other courses.

Finally make it easy for your TA Brendan to find your writeups! On your user homepage, please list and link to the pages you've created and specifically the ones you want to be graded.

Wiki formatting and listing issue

You mark the category of your page by using this double-colon link like: [[Category::paper]], [[Category::paper | boring long paper]] or even [[Category::paper | ]]. If you did it correctly, the semantic tagging information should appear at the bottom of the page.

Second, go to the Paper page, then click "Edit" and "Save". Now the paper should show up there. You have to do this to force a refresh of the Paper page, otherwise your new page won't appear there. Same goes for Method and the other categories. (This is a limitation in the wiki software that caused us issues in September.)

Sidenote: do *not* use a single-colon syntax. They are treated confusingly differently.

Final note: There are lots of other relation-y verbs to use too.

For an example with lots of semantic links, see this one.