Jingqinxin

September 3rd, 2014

Hello, I am glad to be part of the Wikipedia editor family! Look forward to contributing to knowledge production. My foci are intercultural communication theories, in particular, identities theories, and organizational communication, in particular, organizational control and resistance.

September 4th, 2014

I explored userpage, talk, and sandbox. I left a message on another user's talk page. It was quite fun. I know how to use some wiki markups, such as bullet, heading, subheading, number, and reference. I don't like to see those wiki markups. The beta VisualEditor is more user-friendly.
[Principles] I learned about Wikipedia five pillars.
1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
2. Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view.
3. Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute.
4. Editors should interact with each other in a respectful and civil manner.
5. Wikipedia does not have firm rules.

[Citing] I was a bit frustrated when I knew that citing resources is so complicated in wikipedia. I still need to learn how to cite efficiently.
[[[Wikipedia:No Original Research|NOR]]] At first, I didn't really understand the follow suggestion for the entry "Face Negotion Theory": "This article relies on references to primary sources. Please add references to secondary or tertiary sources. (March 2012)" I read the entry "Wikipedia:No original research" and then I can distinguish primary sources, second sources, and tertiary sources. However, so far I don't like this idea of using secondary sources. When writing academic papers, I am always required to cite primary sources. I knew that there were some entries regarding identity needing edits. So yesterday I borrowed some classical books, such as "Mind, Self and Society" by Mead, and "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" by Goffman from the library. However, I am not encouraged to summarize or cite these sources. Anyway, I will adjust myself to wiki rules.
I found a problem of Visual Editor. In the editing interface, I wrote "[NOR]", but it showed "[[Wikipedia:No orginal research|NOR]]".
[Edit #1](formatting)I edited the reference format for "Face Negotiation Theory" as the starting point of my wiki edits. It was the easiest thing to edit at this moment. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_negotiation_theory

September 10th, 2014

Learned about encyclopedia tone:

Articles should be written in a formal way. No slangs. "Articles should generally not be written from a first or second person perspective."

[Edit #2](Talk page) Read the talk page for the article "Corporate identity." Made a suggestion to the article on the talk page: lack of sufficient in-line citation. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Corporate_identity

[Edit #3](Article: Part-time job)I deleted the subsection of /* Asia */ because the heading of the section is "by country" and the "Asia" subsection has no substantial information. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part-time

September 11th, 2014

[Assessment of wikipedia] Before joinin the wikipedia editor family, I regarded wikipedia as a very good source to know about a lot information. However, with a critical eye, I now find many articles in wikipedia are problematic and need revisions. My personal impression is that half the articles I read need improvements.

[Feeling of editing] I felt a little bit frustrated when I wanted to add something to the articles. I could not just write something based on my knowledge, or express my opinion, or summarize classics by myself. I had to have references, especially secondary sources.

September 13th, 2014

[Edit #4 &5](Article: Intercultural communication) I added a sentence of the four major areas of intercultural communication studies. I edited one following sentence and added a reference. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercultural_communication

[Different approach and feeling] As I was frustrated that I could not fix the problems on the Wikipedia efficiently, I changed my approach. I did not start with the article but with the book I have at hand. It is difficult to find a secondary or tertiary source to fix a problem but it is easy to find something in the textbook I have and add it to the wikipedia. When I added that sentence to the article, all of a sudden, I felt very happy and relaxed. It is not that difficult. I also used the VisualEditor to add a reference, whose format I worried a lot before. But adding a citation using the "Edit Beta" function is quite inconvenient. It only provided a few blanks on the interface and I had to click "add more information" and repeat again and again because I could not choose several entries at one time. This function definitely needs improvement. Also, it said "First name" but did not indicate whether I should put in full name or initials. The result showed whatever I put in. I think it should add a "?" to each option and illustrate its citation formatting requirements. The formatting of the bibliography of the article I edited is uniform.

September 17th, 2014

I did several edits on the same page. (Article: Insitutional racism) Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism

[Edit #1] Changed the order of the paragraphs. Added the first sentence. Changed the title of the first subsection to "Criminal conviction" to make the levels of heading clearer.

[Edit #2] Reorganized the subsection of "United States." Made subtitles of "In health," "In housing and loan," and "In Education.")

[Edit #3/4/5] Added three citations about housing and loan in the subsection of United States.)

[Edit #6] Added one reference. Changed the second "References" to "Bibliographies."

Reflection: I made substantial edits this week. I put what I learned in class into wikipedia and felt good.

For the references and bibliographies, I was to find the citation templates but they were not complete. I could not find an example for a book chapter. Last time, I wrote that it was inconvenient to edit reference in the text using the boxes. I thought that I might directly edit the reference section. But I could not if I use the VisualEditor.

Wikipedia:Citation templates Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_templates

[Book]

Mumford, David (1999). The Red Book of Varieties and Schemes. Lecture Notes in Mathematics 1358(2nd expanded ed.). Berlin: Springer-Verlag. p. 198. doi:10.1007/b62130. ISBN 354063293X.MR 1748380. Zbl 0945.14001

Cordell, Bruce R.; Grubb, Jeff; Noonan, David (September 2001). Manual of the Planes. Berlin: Wizards of the Coast. pp. 198–203. ISBN 0-786918-50-0.

[Journal]

Breyer, Stephen (October 1972). "Copyright: A Rejoinder". UCLA Law Review 20: 75–83.

Bailey, David H.; Borwein, Peter; Borwein, Jonathan M. (25 June 1997). "The Quest for Pi". Mathematical Intelligencer (Berlin: Springer-Verlag) 19 (1): 50–57.doi:10.1007/BF03024340. ISSN 0343-6993. MR 1439159.Zbl 0878.11002.

September 24th, 2014

[Institutional racism]

1,I moved the subsection of United States upward.

2, I added one in-line citation. (The 1936 Underwriting Maual used by the Federal Housing Administration to guide residential mortages gave 20% weight to a neighborhood's protection, for example, zoning ordinances, deed restrictions, high speed traffic arteries, from adverse influences, such as infiltration of inharmonious racial groups.)

3, I added one more paragraph in housing and loans.

4, I found the right way to edit reference. (Before I found VisualEditor inconvenient to use, now I know I should use "Edit source" which will automatically give me the mark-ups.

5, No one else edited this article Institutional Racism since I edited last time. I feel good because I am the contributor and no one will fight with me! I feel bad because I am alone and no one cares about this article.

6, Even though I only edited a little bit each time, I can make things different if I keep doing every week, especially if I form a habit of editing.

[Institutional racism] [Talk]Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Institutional_racism#Institutional_vs._structural_racism

When I read the talk page, I feel excited to see "This article is within the scope of WikiProject Discrimination, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Discrimination on Wikipedia." and "This article has been rated as Top-importance ." I went to the project page and found assessment statistics on discrimination articles by quality and importance. This is a good portal to go on for future work after I am done with this particular article.

1, [Institutional racism versus Structural Racism] Added my response: I agree that institutional and structural racism are not the same thing. But they are intertwined and inseperable as structural racism is embedded in institutional racism and research on institutional racism often acrosss institutions rather than merely focusing on one particular racism. We can conceptualize "structural" in a broad or narrow sense. Narrowly, it refers to social structure encompassing all domains. Broadly, it can be interpreted as "pervasive" and "beyond individual"; in this sense, racism in institutions in one domain can be regarded as structural racism.

2, I found there was a fight.Two users argued back aganist an anonymous comment. I am confused at first because commenter[a] signed his/her name on that anonymous comment.

[anonymous comment] But if you think that's the case, then rewrite it. I don't even have the patience right now to deal with the rather weak example given -- though I did delete the religion example. With all the real institutional racism out there -- and especially given my explanation of it earlier on this page -- you'd think they could do better than culturally biased standardized testing (assuming they really wanted to, which, IMO, seems highly doubtful).

[a]And who says I blame black crime on anyone and everyone but blacks? Please. Take your silly ASSumptions elsewhere -- preferably away from this talk page. Laura t has it right. Your nonsense has absolutely nothing to do with this article.

[b] That is, with the exception that adding the tag "theory" or a "con" section might be useful. This isn't a blog where we can spout off our political opinions about black crime, it is an encyclopedic entry on a body of (contested or not) theory. Let's keep it at that please!

3, Another fight over affirmative action:

[a]Some one explain HOW Affirmative Action is Institutional Racism???!!!??? It's Institutional Racism NOT to have Affirmative Action.

[b]Institutional racism is favouring one race over another in burocratic processes, so AA qualifies by this definition. Read before asking stupid questions.

Jing: I have an opinion on this issue but I don't want people to say ill words, like silly, stupid, and nonsense. They don't fight in a respectfull way.

October 2nd, 2014

I review my watchlist and was excited that some people edited the article Institutional Racism. I found one active user ClueBot NG. There was a full page of his/her edits history on October 2th. He/she always summarized his/her edit history in a similar way to the following sentence: "Reverting possible vandalism by 208.79.177.162 to version by Frosty. False positive?Report it. Thanks, ClueBot NG. (1975798) (Bot))." I don't understand what this sentence mean. No one edited on the talk page of Institutional Racism.

I knew Zhao created a new article "Umbrella movement." It is a good idea to catch hot issues and respond quickly.

October 5th, 2014

Another interesting finding is that on October 3rd, "(Education Program article log); 22:44 . . Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk | contribs) added article Institutional racism to Beccanders's list of articles for course Education Program:University of Michigan/Social Work Practice with Community and Social Systems (Winter 2014)." I watched this course. The link is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Program:University_of_Michigan/Social_Work_Practice_with_Community_and_Social_Systems_(Winter_2014)

They also use wikipedia as an effort to address power difference and build on diversity within community. The following is their project description:

"Wikipedia Project Description

Overview: You and your partner will either create or substantially improve a Wikipedia site on a social work practice related topic, invoking concepts learned in class.

Why: The purpose of this project is two-fold. First, writing this article will sharpen your understanding of your practice skill and will force you to condense large amount of information into a cogent article. As students from the #1 School of Social Work you will be instrumental in making social work practices and methods more accessible, globally by creating easily an accessible Wikipedia article that is available to the public."

I watched their page.
I commented on their talk page (non-existent before I commented): Hello, I appreciate your efforts in participating wikipedia edits to address power differences and improve diversity and equality within community. It is going to be a great experience! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Program_talk:University_of_Michigan/Social_Work_Practice_with_Community_and_Social_Systems_(Winter_2014)
[Institutional racism] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism In previous weeks, I edited the subsection of "in housing and loan." Today, I moved onto the subsection of "in health." I italicized the part I added to the article.

Institutional racism affects access to health and health care in non-white minority communities, resulting in racial disparities in health status.^[10]During 1865-1906 period, racial discrimination in the union army disability pension system adversely affected black veterans' application and access to disability pension.^[11] The over-representation of minorities in disease categories (including AIDS), is partly related to racism, according to J. Hutchinson. In a 1992 article, he describes how the federal government’s national response to the AIDS epidemic in minority communities has been slow, showing insensitivity to ethnic diversity in preventive medicine, community health maintenance, and AIDS treatment services.^[12]

Institutional racism can impact upon minority health directly through health-related policies, as well as through other factors indirectly. For example, racial segregation disapportionately exposed black communities to chemical substances such as lead paint, respiratory irritants such as diesel fumes, crowding, litter, and noise. Also, black communities were more likely to lack safe recreational spaces and healthy food,and to be targeted for risky behaviors (e.g. alcohol and tobacco advertisment).^[10] Racial minority groups who have a disadvantaged status in education are employment are more likely to be uninsured, which significantly impedes them from accessing preventive, diagnostic, or therapeutic health services.^[10]

October 27th, 2014 (a)

I did not edit in last week because I was very busy. I continued my work on Institutional racism.

Unluckily, even though last time I found that this article was added to a class project, no one edited the article or talk page since I edited them last time.

I added one subsection of "In immigration" under the section of "United States" :

“The previous sections talk about institutional racism against black people or communities. Many other minorities group also suffer from institutional racism. One example is immigration policies against Chinese. The intensified job competition during the 1870s on the West Coast between Chinese workers and Whites invoked anti-Chinese movement. The first Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed to prohibit Chinese immigrating to the United States, resulting in only 10 Chinese immigrants into the U.S. in 1887. The labor shortage after the decline of Chinese immigrant labor proved the fact of White racism.^[14]”(I spent a bit time editing the citation.)

The above paragraph consists of my own summary regarding the Wikipedia article and information from the book I cited. I started with the information I have and would like to add to the Wikipedia. Then I realized that I can find and include more from existing articles in Wikipedia. I did some search and added the following information:

"For more information, see History of Chinese Americans."

"There were other anti-immigration policies in history against France and Ireland in late 1700s(see Oppostion to immigration), Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Jews, Africans, Arabs, East Asians, and Indians (see Immigration Act of 1924)."

The editing process illustrates that Wikipedia is a networked encyclopedia. I can collect information from other articles for the article I am working on. Of course, we need to bring external sources otherwise there is not much new knowledge.

October 27th, 2014 (b)

1, Add one sentence in "Institutional racism": Anti-immigration sentiment can also affect minorities who have been U.S. citizens for severnal generations(see Internment of Japanese Americans).

2, It is good to focus on one article, but I should also work on more articles. I choose to edit the article "microaggression theory."

I read the talk page and found this paragraph rewarding: "This article does not discuss who came up with this theory, whether it is widely accepted (or to what degree it is accepted), what schools of thought are for and against it, who advocates and who opposes it, and what criticisms, if any, have been levied against it. It simply presents the theory as though it were a widely accepted fact, without any comment. I am therefore adding the POV tag. Please fix it to be NPOV if you are knowledgeable enough to do so by addressing the above issues. Kwertii (talk) 22:56, 18 March 2010 (UTC)" It illustrated the standards of a good article about a theory.

I added my comment: "When I first read about "microaggressions," Sue did not label it as a theory. I think it describes a everyday phenomenon. But I don't know who has the right to change the title of the article."

This value-laden topic also features fights regarding the validity and usefulness of the article:

2a,

One user commented: "Could it be that some people, dare I say blacks or Hispanics, might be more than a little hypersensitive? I know Wikipedia is dominated by editors with left-leaning politics, but seriously: doesn't someone else think this article might be a little skewed? 71.106.159.145 (talk) 11:25, 13 April 2010 (UTC)"

Another user responded："You clearly cannot understand what the article is talking about. Has none of it resonated with your stupid brain? Do you know nothing about history? Are you blind? People get defensive about being racist because it is now out of fashion but racism is a reality both overt and covert. What you have written just conveys your assumed superiorty and you can't see anything but this default. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.40.147.141 (talk) 20:06, 9 August 2010 (UTC)"

Actually through my reading, the former commentator's response of minorities being "hypersensitive" is a form of microaggression-microinvalidation. I don't know whether the statement of "Wikipedia is dominated by editors with left-leaning politics" is true or not.

2b,

One user wrote: ""Microaggression" is one of those terms like "privilege", "cissexist" and even "racist" that will be of utmost importance to students at universities and colleges - and absolutely useless after they graduate. Some things are better left forgotten, since this term is synonymous with "nitpicky whining". San Fernando Curt (talk) 20:10, 20 March 2013 (UTC) San Fernando Curt"

Another user commented: "Noted. If you want to make a point about something, it's probably best to not be so dismissive and rude. I read this section trying to find what the legitimate opposition to the article was (especially considering its template for {{npov}}). That said, neither your comments nor inops were constructive. Pity, because we cannot improve the article without that. And so you know, I never graduated college, only spent a transitory period of time there, and I consider the term to be useful."

This fight concerns the attitude toward education about inequality. I disagree that the education about inequality should stop after graduation. It is eye-opening to see that someone thinks it is "absolutely useless after they graduate" and "better left forgotten." This reminds us that more efforts needed to address inequality outside of campus.

2c,

One user commented on the method of the study on microaggressions:"I'd be surprised if nobody has. I took a paper from the references at random: "Perceptions of Racial Microaggressions among Black Supervisees in Cross-Racial Dyads" and had a look at the method. Is this what can be passed off as science in Psychology these days? Shocking. Look at how they selected their participants. One of the criteria for becoming a participant is: "those who had experience regarding the phenomenon under study". It starts off by filtering out anyone who doesn't support the hypothesis and then doesn't provide a control group. They select 10 (Yes, what an impressive sample size! No room for error there I'm sure) without any kind of control group. This gets a Jadad score of... 1 for documenting the dropout then basing the findings on anecdotal evidence obtained by asking leading and vague questions such as "[your] supervisor may have thought at times that you were overly sensitive about racial or cultural issues." The other papers I skimmed through didn't fare much better. I'd be surprised if no academics have questioned the merit of some of these studies. 10:54, 21 November 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.0.173.21 (talk)"

In the article, microaggression is discussed in the field of psychology. What the commentator found about the fact of method is true. But s/he dismissed indepth qualitative interviews, by criticizing the sample size, the lack of control group, and the leading questions. I agree that this study can be conducted totall differently in rigorous psychology experiments. The commentator does not understand the logics of humanisitc research.

3, Discussion: Question the effacy of "numbers"

In the video "Truth in numbers," we have seen the Wikipedia founders' belief in the mass production of knowledge. It is a ideal situation that everyone can participate in Wikipedia editing and expand the knowledge pool. However, reality is nerver perfect. First, not everyone is able or willing to participate in the knowledge production process. Second, even though it is true that a huge number of articles are being created every day and many articles are undergoing constant editing, many articles are left unattended. I am not satisfied with the article "institutional racism" so that I keep working on it. But every few other people is looking at this article. Luckily, I am improving this article. Unluckily, I can imagine that the quality of many articles remains poor. The more articles people create, the more editing needed. The increase of editors may not keep up with the increase of problematic articles. What the professors worry about in the video can be true, that is, the quality of Wikipedia.

Discussion: Knowledge production

In Wikipedia, editors cannot write in their own research or express their personal opinions. Therefore, editing is a process of moving one's knowledge from one place to another place. That's why I always start with what I know for sure because I cannot just add arbitrary information into Wikipedia. This week I mentioned about internment of Japanese American, which I first knew about in a book recommended by my professor. This editing process expands my understandings of Wikipedia but does not add to my own knowledge.