Day one of Junior Composition and I was already excited. I had tried to write a Wikipedia article once while I was in high school. The amount of work put in to my first attempt was not dissimilar to the amount of work I put in to writing a note on my fridge. I had neither knowledge of neutral voice nor any reliable sources, and as such, my article about a made up word was promptly deleted. Through my creation of a currently successful Wikipedia article I deepened my knowledge on intertextualitly, reliable sources, unbiased language, and author credibility. My revelations have come from the writing process itself and the reflection afterward. To convey the following reflection, I need to include my experiences during writing.
The first phase of writing my article required a topic. of course. That may sound simple, but with a library of 3,590,000 articles most topics were taken (Various) . I listed myself as having knowledge in civil engineering, but the requested topics for civil engineering were beyond my scope of knowledge. I ultimately decided to settle on a local event, and the Athens Ohio Halloween Block Party article was born. I settled on the block party idea because a similar article about Palmerfest in Athens had already been established on Wikipedia. Wikipedia suggests looking at and imitating similar articles. That advice made learning the particular syntax of Wikipedia easier to pick up on.
An article without sources; and, more importantly reputable sources is extremely tough to keep on Wikipedia. With that in mind, finding acceptable sources for my article became a little tough. The block party is large, on the magnitude of tens of thousands of participants, but there isn’t a formal invitation. There’s no list of activities, maybe a set list for the stage and a few flyers around town, but nothing concrete. The bulk of my sources were three, paragraph regional newspaper articles, although I did find an .edu source and a national magazine article. Establishing notability without any reputation takes references, a lot of references; and images.
It would seem simple to have a picture of Halloween in Athens, considering I live here. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. To capture the magnitude of the crowd I needed an overhead view. Luckily the wonderful City of Athens has cameras at the major intersections uptown and the images are public. Even though the image was taken from the public domain I still had to find the author and get permission to use it. I doubt I could track down the particular police officer or city employee that snapped that image, so I did what any upstanding author would do. I claimed it as my own. I was always told by my dad that, “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission”. Just don’t tell Wikimedia.
So there I was. I had this beautiful article, complete with image, table of information, history, and arrest statistics with several reputable references. I submitted the article for review and in less than eight hours I got back a response. The verdict was of course, not notable. In my eyes 30,000 people a year since 1974 is notable, but not to Mabdul, the user name of my friendly peer editor. Even with that confidence boost from the friendly editors at Wikipedia I went ahead and made my article live. After the article went live I thought I would be done, but that wasn’t true either.
That summary brings us to the current state of affairs with my article. I check back on the article almost daily, finding little things that need fixed and links that can be made. This process is known as monitoring. It was mentioned by Robert Tierney and P. David Pearson in, “Toward a Composing Model of Reading” (185). The article mentions that monitoring is a continuous process, and with Wikipedia the process is amplified even more. Not only do I monitor the article, any reader that finds a problem with the article and edits it then becomes a monitor. When I say, “my article”, I mean that in the loosest sense possible. The article takes on the ownership of anyone that edits it. To that end, the article will never be complete.
Looking back, Wikipedia’s hunger for neutrality and third person writing is reminiscent of a sixth grade English teacher. Any bias and the article is sure to be deleted. Writing about a subject the writer has knowledge of also means the author has an opinion or bias toward the subject. To be successful in the discourse community that is Wikipedia the author must play by the rules and meet certain general requirements. A lot can be taken from the experience. An author can’t just throw in random citations; they are actually checked for validity. When a writer creates an article for Wikipedia they must “sell” the article. Without a, “continuity of concern” the article is bound to fail. (Murray, 64)
It was mentioned previously that the layout of the block party article was borrowed from a similar article. This concept beautifully highlights the concept of intertextuality. Intertextuality is the idea that all texts draw from previous texts, and that no ideas are original; only that the ways they are placed together are original. All the information for the article already existed. No groundbreaking research was done on Halloween or alcohol consumption before this article. All the information existed, just not in the current form.
Since the Halloween Block Party article went live on September 28, 2011 four editors and one robot have made changes to the article. One of the edits made information on the article incorrect. Articles on Wikipedia are interconnected by linking different pages together and one of the edits for the Halloween Block Party was a link to the Athens Police Department. Unfortunately, the Police Department that was linked was actually in Athens, Georgia, not Athens, Ohio. The fact this change was made and went unchecked for several days raises the question of validity of facts on Wikipedia. Minor edits aren’t questioned. When the entire Pop Tart page is replaced by three words the error is obvious, but small things can go unchecked. A small error here and there may not seem like a problem, but spread that out over the massive number of articles on Wikipedia and the problem becomes obvious. During editing before going live with the article the article was submitted to the Drawing Board on Wikipedia. Some students received decent feedback on their articles. The author (I) didn’t receive notice of any suggestions, so the Drawing Board didn’t help much.
Online forums like Wikipedia are undoubtedly the future for encyclopedic information. The ability for experts in any particular field to post their wealth of knowledge for all others to see is an amazing idea. Sadly, any Joe Schmo, like an undergraduate at Ohio University, can also share their “wealth” of knowledge. The idea of ethos goes out the door and is replaced by a universal conscience. Articles are melting pots of hundreds of authors. And with “The Phenomenology of Error” article by Joseph M. Williams ideas’ in mind we have to wander which edits are right and which are wrong. And more fundamentally what is right and what is wrong. Error, much like love, is in the eye of the beholder. As Wikipedia grows and computer programs become more advanced and able to spot errors one has to wander where the limit is, what is notable when there is an infinite amount of space. Bigfoot and The Loch Ness Monster have pages. How long until the Cook family have a page? How long until personal profiles of every human being on the internet are available? Oh wait, Facebook.
Bibliography
Murray, Donald M. "All Writing is Autobiography." Elizabeth Wardle, Doug Downs. Writing About Writing. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 57-65.
Robert J. Tierney, P. David Pearson. "Toward a Composing Model of Reading." Elizabeth Wardle, Doug Downs. Writing About Writing. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 175-188.
Various. Wikipedia: Size Comparisons. 30 September 2011. 5 October 2011 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page >.
Williams, Joseph M. "The Phenomenology of Error." Elizabeth Wardle, Doug Downs. Writing About Writing. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 38-54.
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