Wikipedia Reflection: The purpose of our journey

            For the purposes of the class Wikipedia project our group approached our task by evaluating the access to the audience provided by certain digital platforms. We did not arrive at this conclusion easily, however, as the drafting process was an intricate and delicate situation that involved teamwork and critical thinking.  During this process we relied heavily on Jeff Bezerman and Gunther Kress’ work Writing in Multimodal Texts: A Social Semiotic Account of Designs for Learning as well as Charles Bazerman’s Intertexuality: How Texts Rely on Other Texts’.  

            Our main principle in showing the importance and the variety of the multimodal digital applications can be summed up by Bezerman and Kress quite succinctly: “We aim to show what changes in principles of designs of texts there have been and the designers of learning resources- visual artists, editors, writers- hae used and now use writing, image, layout , and other semiotic resources to create potentials for learning” (Bezerman and Kress, 235). Texts have undergone a huge makeover in terms of how they are created and what audience they are created for since the dawn of the printing presses. There are different composers for different texts, different platforms used to display these texts and different audiences for these texts. It is implicit that the change be documented in our Wikipedia project so that we can help teach others of the complete idea of multimodality. Bezerman and Kress define potentials of learning as the “ensemble of semiotic features of a text or of an environment- objects, text, people- that provide the grounds for learning.” (Bezerman and Kress, 235). We arrived at this stage of our Wikipedia group’s work by narrowing our purpose to tailor to the digital applications that are interactive with our audience such as Facebook, blogs, and Twitter.

            We chose these Facebook, blogging, and Twitter platforms because of their high popularity in the digital world and their prevalence in our society today. As we have learned, Wikipedia articles are constantly being updated and changed, and although years from now there may be other iconic platforms to be discussed in regards to multimodality- in today’s society the frontrunners of social media applications are undisputably Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.  These platforms provide a basis to understanding the different ways advertising is used in a multimodal way in today’s society. Advertising becomes intertexual in these different digital applications in different ways, due to the features and characteristics that are unique to each platform.  As Bazerman notes, “intertextual analysis examines the realtion of a statement to a sea of words, how it uses those words, how it positions itself in respect to those words” (Bazerman, 84).

            We indicated the intertexuality of different campaigns in respect to the platforms they were used on. There is a certain distinction among a campaign presented through Twitter for Coca Cola than a print ad run by Coca Cola. The interactivity given to the audience through the former is higher due to the multimodality provided thanks to hash tags, links, and the web. Our focus on the audience is critical since every text is catered to an audience who can now take advantage of these multimodal features. We outline different campaigns of a variety of brands in our Wikipedia section. This did not come easily to our group, however.

            The editing process involved a combination of two different groups’ ideas. Bezerman and Kress would define this part of our process as “retheorzing text making.” (Bezerman and Kress, 233). We had originally defined our section for the sole purpose of defining and explaining the social platforms, without a sense of the importance of why these platforms are necessary. Once combined with the group who focused on the audience and its importance to advertising, our goal was clearer. We had to draft a text tailored to a purpose, a more specific goal in order to promote the potentials for learning.

Bazerman, Charles. "Intertextuality: How Texts Rely on Other Texts." N.p.: n.p., n.d. 83-96. Print.

 Bezerman, Jeff, and Gunther Kress. "Writing in Multimodal Texts: A Social Semiotic Account of Designs for Learning." Written Communication (2008): 233-56. Print.

Reflecting on Arctic Spas

 I believe my strengths as an Editor lies in my knowledge, practice, and experience with grammar. I was the Editor-in-Chief of my high school newspaper and one of my favorite tasks was line editing the proofs. During my time in college I put the knowledge I gained before to use during two internships at public relations firms where I was responsible largely for copy editing content both in print and online form. This helped continue and improve my grammar skills and this is the area I feel most confident in editing. My weakest area as an editor, however, would have to be my reluctance to cut down on text. I feel a pang of guilt erasing sentences or rewording them because I feel as though I am taking away from the writer instead of improving it. I did the best of my editing abilities to edit the Artic Spas Wikipedia article, which was flagged to be edited for grammar, spelling, style, cohesion, and tone. I found all these issues present as well as missing citations – but I was unaware of how to fix this so I focused solely on the items listed above.

I used the principles of the period and comma outlined in the WWC chapter, “Punctuation: Graceful Movements, Confident Stops.” There were several examples in the text that needed proper usage of a comma or a period in order to improve the total cohesiveness of the text. This was evident from the start of the article in its introductory paragraph.

The original sentences stated: “The entrepreneur's continued to lose money until 1997, when the company was sold to the present owners, all of whom had previously been involved as dealers selling the product.”

My edited version states: “The entrepreneurs continued to lose money until 1997, at which point the company was sold. It was bought by the current owners, who all had been involved as dealers and in selling the product previously.”

The second version solves two issues that the first creates through the redundancy of the use of the comma. The first sentence reads awkwardly with the use of the comma, which is used improperly. Splitting the sentence into two allows for a confident stop as discussed in the WWC. Additionally there is a better sense of cohesion in the text by creating two sentences. The end of the first sentence tells the reader the company was sold, and the start of the new sentence tells the reader who bought it out and how they were involved with the company beforehand. It gives the information into digestible bits to the reader this way.

This short article suffered only few other mistakes as large as the one mentioned above but a few quick fixes cleared up the issues in style, cohesion, tone, and grammar. To view the entire article prior to my edits, click here.

Wikipedia is a stage, we are just performing in it.

W. Ross Winterowd provides a clear basic platform of the understanding of the rhetorical force in sentences. We can use his ideas to explore the use of sentences in other contexts and analyze what makes a rhetorical argument.

Winterowd states that the idea of intention is the driving force behind all rhetorical sentences. We have seen this repeatedly in the study of rhetoric, even from the early philosophers like Aristotle. In order to be considered a sentence it must serve a purpose, an intention. This prevents a sentence from being overly ambiguous, especially if the context the sentence is used in does not give away its intention on its own. In order to portray intention, Winterowd states there are certain verbs that are used to specify the purpose of your sentence. These verbs are considered performatives, “words with which the saying is the doing.”

A sentence can be a performative sentence when it states its own doing, and this can become so when the adverb hereby is used. When performatives are not used, a sentence is considered nonperformative.

For example:

Nonperformative: They appoint you chairman.

Performative: I hereby appoint you chairman.

It is evident that the latter example states its own doing.

Winterowd believes that the point of these performative propositions is to state the benefaction of one or more of the people involved in the sentence intention. This means that in order to be a sentence, the intention should be beneficiary for either the speaker or the receiver.

We can use Winterowd’s basics of sentence structure to analyze an article that compares the before and after of a Wikipedia article written by Carra Leah Hood.  Wikipedia is a medium with the idea of intention vastly present in its construction. It is a medium that intends to inform the public on a wide range of topics, after all. However, the controversial use of Wikipedia in academics has been challenged due to the uncertainty of its credibility with resources and factual information. As Winterowd might say, the context provides the content ambiguity.

But Carra Leah Hood argues for the opposing side of the Wikipedia debate in her online website “Editing Out Obscenity: Wikipedia andWriting Pedgagogy.” She says the collaborative, constructive nature of Wikipedia is part of the social web process and that the intention of Wikipedia is to help students in their research, not necessarily be the entire research component.

Her experience with Wikipedia comes in editing the Thermodynamics entry where she claims she edited out an obscene sentence from the article. The original sentence stated “Physicists also postulate the existence of a quantity named entropy, which can be defined for any system.” The edited sentence reads, “The starting point for most thermodynamic considerations are the laws of thermodynamics, which postulate that energy can be exchanged between physical systems as heat or work.”

The performative verb “postulate” in the original sentence was misused, misattributed to physicists while the new sentence states that the laws of thermodynamics guide physicists. In the first sentence, the benefaction is given to the physicists while in the second action the benefaction is given to the laws that guide physics. Hood considers this attribution an “obscene” sentence, which is why she worked to eradicate it from the article.

In the edited article, a sentence follows it that rounds out its purpose. “They also postulate the existence of a quantity named entropy, which can be defined for any system.”

The author then did not have an issue with the construction of the original sentence, just that its intention was “obscene” because it did not present the entire truth. By including the newly revised sentence in addition to the previous one, the audience is given a more inclusive view of the word. It is no longer obscene because it matches the intention to inform the audience of the factual information. It Is now attributing the claim to the law of thermodynamics and not just the physicists who study them.

Hood continues her argument by admitting that in her classroom she asks that students read and edit the Wikipedia entries that they are writing about, even if they do not cite the article itself in their research work. Her purpose in doing so is to teach the students not only to consume the information, but to contribute to the history and future of a text since Wikipeda is such a constantly changing and collaborative space.

What's in a Wikipedia Article?

Comparing and contrasting autobiographies in Wikipedia can give readers a better sense of what constitutes a Wikipedia article and it can help in distinguishing key factors that create a better, more in-depth article versus one that is weak in certain areas. To do so I have conducted an analysis of two sets of autobiographies that outlines some key comparisons and differences among the autobiographies.

Marshall McLuhan and Michelle Citron’s autobiographies serve as the first set of biographies that I evaluated. At first glance, it is evident that McLuhan’s biography is significantly lengthier than Citron’s, which gives the impression that it is more developed than Citron’s.  McLuhan was a well-known communications theorist who produced popular theories and contributed greatly to the study of communication in history while Citron is listed as an artist and filmmaker. The difference in length and depth of the articles may be attributed to the popularity and research available on each of the figures, since it is apparent that McLuhan’s work was widely published and used in the academic realm while Citron’s influence was seen in a much smaller niche. McLuhan’s biography lists 85 notes, while Citron’s lists seven. McLuhan’s biography also contains a larger list of external links and a completed works cited page. The quality of those notes also is important to note. As Charles Bazerman would say, McLuhan's article provides the reader with a higher quality level of intertextuality. The McLuhan article uses the words in the texts to form a relationship among the text, as a way of providing the most knowledge and understanding to the reader. The amount of embedded links in McLuhan's article provides the reader with all the pieces necessary to learn the most about McLuhan and his contributions to academia. However, the lack of intertextuality in Citron's article leaves a reader with additional questions instead. Most of the sources used in McLuhan’s biography are academic sources that reflect on communications theories while some of Citron’s sources as questionable, and include websites like “queerfeast.com” and “Jewish looks.” This brings into question the credibility of the article as well. It is evident that for research purposes McLuhan’s biography is more extensive and thorough than Citron’s, leading to fuller subsections of the article as well. This shows the difference of quality of two Wikipedia articles and how sources and notes can affect the quality, credibility and depth of an article.

The second set of biographies will serve as a way to compare the quality of a Wikipedia biography versus the quality of a more traditional encyclopedia, on the same individual. The format of both biographies is similar; they begin with a lead then provide a link to the subsections within the article. However, it is important to notice the tone difference in the article. Wikipedia’s article is strictly fact-driven, since one of the guiding article principles of Wikipedia states “no original research.” This means that the authors cannot make claims based off other research. The difference of the style of writing is evident from the first lead sentence of the articles.

Wikipedia Article: “Henry Sidgwick (31 May 1838 – 28 August 1900) was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist.”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Article: “Henry Sidgwick was one of the most influential ethical philosophers of the Victorian era, and his work continues to exert a powerful influence on Anglo-American ethical and political theory.”

The Wikipedia article is more succinct and leaves out the opinion that Sidgwick was among the most influential philosophers- which sounds more claim driven than fact driven.

It is evident that some articles do not meet up to the standards set out by Wikipedia, however, their section titled “Featured Articles” showcases articles that meet specific criteria. One of these articles is the article on Windsor Castle.

This lengthy article is well written and extremely well researched. It has vast information of the castle from the 11^th-21^st century as well as specific details of each section of the castle such as the importance of the middle, upper and lower ward. It begins with a lead that introduces the topic well and the article is organized in an easy to follow format.  In addition to the information it also provides illustrations of the castle during different time periods. In the article it embeds links to important figures related to the architecture and history related to the castle. In total, the article has 239 references as well as a fully cited bibliography.

This article is a great example of Wikipedia content that meets the Featured Article criteria in all aspects. The criteria to be a Featured Article on Wikipedia is extensive, but all criteria are important for the dissemination of knowledge in the digital and public sphere. Wikipedia says because Featured Articles are supposed to represent their highest quality work, the criteria is at professional level in all senses including in writing, presentation, and sourcing. To be a Featured Article on Wikipedia an article must be: well-written, comprehensive, well-researched, neutral, and stable. It also must follow the style guidelines that Wikipedia outlines.