My
WikiExperience
Becoming an author on the well-known and widely
controversial Wikipedia is something that I have not ever pictured myself
doing. I was originally taught to be a skeptic of Wikipedia, due to the site’s
known stigma of not being notable or reputable. By going through this
author/editor process, I now have a new outlook on the online encyclopedia, and
I am proud to be a contributor.
When beginning this project, my first step was naturally
to think about what article topic I wanted to add to Wikipedia. I got a couple ideas and then narrowed them
down by seeing what topics were already established on the site. I did that by
looking through the Article Wizard.
Next, I created my account and found an article to base my page’s layout
on. The entirety of my drafting process
took place on my personal Drawing Board.
The Drawing Board is essentially an author’s own personal palate for
them to write, save, and make changes before submitting the article. The writing, the saving, and the editing were
things that I did again and again using the Edit Function and then saving my
wanted changes. Once I believed that my
article was ready I submitted it for review to the site’s editors. This process was nerve-racking because myself
and my other classmates really wanted our articles to be accepted. My personal review came back with concerns
about my writing style and my sources.
After going through and making the changes that I thought were
necessary, I then went live with my article and did not look back.
Throughout
my experience I have learned quite a bit about writing in the traditional sense,
the social sense, and the recursive sense of the word.
The traditional sense of writing includes the aspects or
skills that basic writing consists of.
These are the skills that one learns in high school or possibly during their
freshman college writing course. These
aspects include gathering and quoting sources, effectively summarizing, and
writing styles. With source retrieval, I
learned which sources are considered independent and reputable. I learned this mainly due to the conversation
that was sparked from the feedback that our class received after we submitted
for review. In-class sessions also
helped me learn how to quote my sources correctly using in-line citations within
the article. Effectively summarizing
information was something that I found to be difficult to do especially when
pairing it with taking on a neutral writing style. Summarizing is something that I have always
thought to be tricky. When taking information from any source and relaying it
to another it is very difficult to change the text and still get across the
same message. It is especially difficult
when you have already read how the source worded the information, because you
have to ignore that and create new. Taking
the summarized information and trying to write in neutral style was something
that I could probably have worked on more before “going live”. In fact, when submitting my article for
review, my writing style was the editor’s biggest reason for rejection. The issue was that with my topic being an
event, Ohio Brew Week, it was hard to find facts that did not double as
advertisements. For example, in my
article I listed the brand names of certain beer and what venues sell the beer
during Ohio Brew Week. To me that
information seemed like cold hard facts, but on the other hand I can see how
that information would be used to advertise the event.
The social sense of writing is another aspect that I learned
a bit more about by while completing this project. Intertextuality is a big part of social
writing and it is something that I had not yet understood until this
assignment. In the article titled
“Intertextuality and the Discourse Community”, author James E. Porter defines
the term as, “…the idea that all texts contain ‘traces’ of other texts and that
there can be no text that does not draw on some ideas from some other texts “ (Writing
About Writing 86). When I think about
this definition I first picture all works of writing to be puzzles. With
intertextuality, the same puzzle pieces are used in an infinite amount of
works, it is just the combination of the pieces that varies. I find this concept to be one that is very
interesting and very relatable to my Wikipedia experience. With Wikipedia, every single article can have
a multitude of editors. These editors
are all getting the information that they add or the justification for what
information they delete from a different source. By bringing in different information from
different outside sources to create and edit articles, the end product is
essentially a work made up of many different works. This is why Wikipedia
showcases intertextuality at its finest.
Until this project, I did not understand the importance the
collaboration between authors and editors.
I feel like I have always heard that the process of writing involves an
author creating, editors fine-tuning, and then a piece is published. Wikipedia’s style of articles takes that
process to a whole new level, where publishing is just the beginning. Each article is created by someone and then
published, or “taken live”. Published
articles are forever open to change by editors.
Often times, authors will put out an article that has just a little bit
of information, knowing that other editors will add to it. That process continues, with the product being
the many well established, informational pieces that one can find. Collaboration is so important because there
is never one author or editor who has knows every bit of information about a
topic. With Wikipedia, authors have the
ability to write what information they know and then pass it on to the next “Wikipedian”.
The recursive sense of writing has to do with the idea
that writing is not a one-and-done process.
Almost each and every piece that an author writes, with the exception of
scrap notes, includes several steps.
Author Anne Lamott writes in her article “Shitty First Drafts” that,
“Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it…They do
not type a few stiff warm-up sentences and then find themselves bounding along
like huskies across the snow” (Writing About Writing 301). What I interpret Lamott’s message to be is
that no writer sits down, pumps out a few pages, and then calls it a book.
Writing is a multi-faceted process including drafting, revising, editing, and
re-writing a couple times before a work is considered done. The steps that I went through to create my
Wikipedia article are an example of this multi-faceted process. First, I researched, found my topic, and made
sure that it did not already exist in Wikipedia via the Article Wizard. Next I began drafting, which took a while
because I was not sure what information was relevant, and how I should present
the information in a neutral, educational way.
When the first bit of drafting was finished I had a peer look over it in
the peer review, and then posted to the Discussion Board. The Discussion Board is a place where editors
can tell a potential author what to include and what not to include in their
article. After reading my peer’s review
and looking at the Discussion Board I went through and added information where
I saw fit, and I deleted or re-worded some of the text where I felt it was not
working. Then I submitted my article for
review and received feedback from more Wikipedia editors. I took this feedback, looked at my article
again, and made a few final changes before “going live” on the web. The fact that creating my article took that
many steps, without even approaching being a finished piece, is a true
testament to how multifaceted the writing process is.
As I mentioned earlier, I have been taught by multiple
people to be skeptical of Wikipedia, and that it is not a legitimate source of
information. What I have learned while
becoming an author on the site is that that idea is wrong. Wikipedia, with all of its movement and
constant fluid editing, is an honest and reputable source of information. In this 21st century, filled with
new technology and inventions, Wikipedia is changing the way information is
available. Being able to be constantly
reviewed allows for the online encyclopedia to always be current and
relevant. Wikipedia is not something
that will become outdated because it is constantly changing along with the topics
that make up its articles. I think that
is the reason Wikipedia is almost better than tangible, traditional methods of
research because it evolves and changes with the current times. Yes, it is possible for vandalization to
occur, and for pages to be filled with wrong information, but that pales in
comparison to the amount of solid reputable information that it provides. I am extremely glad that I was able to do
this project and become a part of the knowledge of the future.
Porter, James E.”Intertextuality
and the Discourse Community.” Writing
About Writing (2011): 86. Print.
Lamott, Anne. “Shitty
First Drafts.” Writing About Writing
(2011): 301. Print.
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