Wiki-Reflection

When I first heard about the Wikipedia project, I was excited. I use Wikipedia pretty often and I couldn't wait to see my own work on the site. Then, we had to decide the topic about which we would write. That's when things started getting tricky. Our topic had to be something which was lacking in the Wiki-world and be something about which we could write roughly 10,000 words. So, the class chose Multimodality. Unfortunately, I don't think the class was really thinking about that whole “10,000 words” part. Multimodality is so simple that saying so much about it is bound to be redundant and not as useful as we want. So, when we voted for our topic, I was none too happy about it. Then, we were assigned groups and actually started working on our sections. At that point, everyone else started to realize what I'd been so unhappy about to begin with. We all struggled to find credible sources and relevant information. Writing was the hardest task. Writing a Wikipedia article is so much more difficult than normal writing. Keeping a neutral point of view, stating only facts with no opinions or editorializations, and citing everything seemed to be too big of a task. But, I jumped in and tried my best. I managed to come up with some good information with credible citations, but... I was nowhere near my word count. I was actually only halfway to it. So, after searching and searching and failing to find any more relevant information for my part of our group's section, I just started writing what I knew about multimodality and what I felt was relevant. This got me to my word count, but I figured most of it would get edited out. Ultimately, some of what I wrote on my own ended up getting used in the end product along with my source-produced text. This made me feel a bit better about the writing, but the editing was still to come. Although I consider myself to be somewhat of an editor, looking at this combined article was a nightmare. 20 different voices sang out from this one article, sounding like a maniac's thousand voices speaking in his head. Since people learn different skills I different schools and from different teachers, the spelling and punctuation differed from paragraph to paragraph. Since we all wrote separately, there was a lot of repetition. It was hard to get through. But, eventually, as a class, we did. I've never taken part in such a large-scale collaboration, and to be honest, I wouldn't want to do it again. Although it made for less work on an individual basis, people are so different that it's too difficult to try to make them all the same person; it's too hard to turn 20 voices into 1, and you shouldn't have to. After this experience, I will never write for Wikipedia again. I'll just leave that to the people who the time, patience, and NPOV which it takes to create Wiki-articles.

Helping Out

Smaller Task

   For the smaller task, I chose the "Development Communication" article because it was an article which needed copy editing.  As an EWM major, I love copy editing and haven't gotten the chance to do much of it in my classes, so I saw this as an opportunity to play "Grammar Police."  ("Grammar Police" was a nickname of mine in high school due to my copy editing skills, which I gladly used to help my classmates with their papers.)  I went through the article with a careful eye, fixing many errors in punctuation and spelling.  ((Sidebar:  I forgot to sign my name using ~~~~ because I wasn't sure where to do so...))  I used many of the concepts in the WWC chapter about Punctuation, along with the many grammar rules I've learned throughout my school years.  As WWC states, "Indeed, it's amazing how a series of tiny dots and dashes and a variety of intuitive strokes can help direct our reading and comprehension." (97)  As amazing as that is, it's equally amazing to me how easy it is to forget how to properly use a semicolon, where to place commas, and what really merits parentheses.  I did what Wikipedia considers a "Minor Edit" that affects the article in a major way.

Larger Task

   For the larger task, I selected the article about Avalon High, a Disney movie.  I chose this article for two reasons.  Firstly, I was looking under the Copy Editing section of the Help Out page so that I could continue with my "Grammar Police" act.  Secondly, I've actually seen this movie and I liked it.  So, I figured that editing it would be fun for me and it could help promote a movie which, in my opinion, deserves a bigger audience.

    Unfortunately, this article not only fell prey to punctuation, spelling, and grammar errors, but it suffered from a miscommunicated plot summary.  This article was fairly short, so all of the information needed to be sufficient.  The summary made several assumptions, yet called them facts.  It was inconsistent with the information provided (more for one character, less for another).  It used words which perhaps had a denotation sufficient for the meaning conveyed, but lacked connotative support.  I used my Editing skills (not just copy editing, but Editing) to help this page.  However, I left the summary a bit inconclusive so as not to reveal any spoilers for those who haven't seen the film. (Personally, I hate spoilers and feel an intense rage toward anyone who reveals them to me.) Style says it best, "Once we decide that a writer is careless, lazy, or self-indulgent - well, our days are too few to spend them on those indifferent to our needs." (125)  I feel that the original author of this article didn't care enough about the reader to give them clear, concise information about the topic.  Conversely, I care about the reader enough not to ruin the surprise plot twist of the film.  As I remarked earlier, I feel that this movie deserves a bigger audience.  (I originally watched this movie with my stepdaughter who was 6 at the time (I was 21), and we both liked it.  Not too long after that, we wanted to watch it again, but her father who was 34 at the time, was home.  He even liked it. And he is not a big fan of kid/family movies.  That just proves that this is a great film the whole family can enjoy together.)  The editing I did to this article makes the film seem more appealing, yet doesn't drop any major bombs on the reader that would cause them to shy away from the film.  This editing task was truly a big help.

(After I turned the assignment in on BB, I went back to look at it for this reflection, and I realized that there were some other edits which needed to be made.  I made them, but then found that I couldn't submit it because I had already submitted one paper for the assignment.  So, I copied the edited text to a new page on my blog and linked it below.  It doesn't, however, show the changes tracked, only the final version.  I emailed you the Word document as well so that you could see the changes.)
(View Edited Page Here)

   Overall, I actually had fun editing these two articles.  I feel that I managed to help the articles become better, and that's what we're all striving for, right?