EECS 6117 Wikipedia Assignment

Posted: November 1, 2016

Due: November 28, 2016

In this assignment, you must find a wikipedia page on the theory of distributed computing and improve it.

You should do the following tasks in order:

1. Read a little bit about how Wikipedia works.
   Start on this page and follow some of the links. WikiEdu also has an overview tutorial and a tutorial on editing basics.
   In particular, you should know about the Wikipedia policies on identifying reliable sources for information that you add to Wikipedia. WikiEdu has a good tutorial about wikipedia sources.
   Of course, you should avoid any form of plagiarism; see also the WikiEdu tutorial on avoiding plagiarism.
   Another good place to look if you get stuck on something is the Wikipedia Help page.
2. If you do not have one already, create a wikipedia account. (See this link for instructions.)
3. Choose a page of wikipedia to work on. This can be an existing page or one that you create. It should be about some aspect of distributed computing, and include at least some theoretical component(s).
   Below are some possible starting points to use when searching for a page. Follow links from those pages to find others, or pick a different page altogether. There are lots of other pages about distributed computing that need work, so you are welcome to pick one not on the list below.
   • One of the pages listed under Category:Distributed computing problems or Category:Distributed algorithms
   • Concurrent data structure
   • Distributed algorithm
   • Shared memory
   • Consistency model (Note that there are links to a couple of non-existent pages; you could also create one of those.)
   • Causal consistency
   • Eventual consistency
   • Input/output automaton (This page was created by a previous student in this course)
   • Mutual exclusion
   • Consensus (computer science)
   • Terminating Reliable Broadcast
   • Load-link/store-conditional
   • Synchronization (computer science)
   • Concurrent computing
   • Linearizability
   • Message complexity (create new page; should be included in Category: Analysis of algorithms and Category: Inter-process communcation)
   • Randomized consensus (new page)
   • Shared Snapshot objects (this page was created by a previous student in this course)
   • Shared register (this page was created by a previous student in this course)
   • Atomic semantics
   • Safe semantics
   • Regular semantics
   • Clock Synchronization
   • Borowsky-Gafni simulation (create a new page)
   • Read-modify-write
   • Non-blocking algorithm
   • Articles on non-blocking data structures that don't exist (e.g., non-blocking linked lists). Some articles that do exist (e.g., Treiber stack) could be improved. A category should also be created to gather all the articles on non-blocking data structures.
   The page you choose should be in English (even though the pages about distributed computing in other languages need even more help than the English ones; feel free to translate your newly improved page into another language, but you won't get course credit for that).
4. Email me your wikipedia username and the page you have chosen. (This must be done before you make any changes that you want me to give you credit for.) This step is so that I can verify that you have chosen an appropriate page to work on. Also, I want everyone to choose a different page. If two or more people want to work on the same page, whoever sends me email first will get permission to work on that one; the others will have to pick a different page to work on.
5. Improve the page. This can include correcting errors, adding more material, adding references and citations, improving links from that page to other pages, and so on. This will likely require you to do some background reading in papers or textbooks. If your page is marked as deficient in some way before you begin, find out what kinds of improvements others have asked for, and check the discussion page for the article. Also, remember to make technical articles understandable for a general audience.
   Important: remember to make all changes while you are logged in with your user name, since I will only give you credit for changes made by your username.