Michaela Fredrickson

Reflective essay:

I.              Critiquing Articles

During the article evaluation, I learned a good deal about Wikipedia. I learned that it is not the wholly unreliable source that my teachers have always claimed it to be, and that well-written Wikipedia articles will always provide the resources necessary to continue your own research on a specific topic. I approached critiquing the article I chose by focusing on two key questions. The first question was, “Is what is being said backed by a credible source?” For this question, I looked at the references section and I analyzed how often sources were interspersed throughout the article. A good article will have a source added every 1-3 sentences, and the sources will not be random websites. The second question I asked was, “Would this article make sense to someone learning about this topic for the first time?” For this question, I did general read-throughs and checked grammar (which always plays into the flow of an article and how well it can be understood by readers) as well as watching out for excessive amounts of jargon. If any scientific statements in the article did not have good sources or a key concept was missing that would help non-experts understand a subject that they were studying for the first time, those were the things I decided to add in. If there was anything that seemed biased, I also did more research into those areas and expanded upon the ideas initially written there.

II.            Summarizing Your Contributions

I added to, found sources for, and expanded on the summary of pet cloning and the controversies surrounding pet cloning. The majority of the controversy section when I first found the article focused less on scientific issues and more on social issues like pet adoption. Not only was this a very biased section, but it seemed out of place for what should have been a science-backed article on cloning. For this reason, I contributed more on how animal welfare is affected by existing as a clone and polished up the pet cloning controversy section with more unbiased language. When I found the article at the beginning of the project it was marked as a problematic article by Wikipedia, and part of the reason was the controversy section and how it was written. While I do not believe the page has been reviewed by Wikipedia since my edits were made, it is clear to me that taking a marked issue from the page and working to edit it increased the usefulness of the article.

III.          Peer Review

While our class did a peer review process, I quite honestly got very little from it. I was happy to be able to give suggestions to my classmates, but I did not receive many edit suggestions for my own article. When reading over the articles of my peers, the way that I gave edit suggestions really revolved around grammar (to increase how well the writing could be understood) and suggesting where to add links to other pages into the article. I found that the number one reason an article or paragraph didn’t make sense wasn’t because the language used was too complex, but because it was written in an incorrect and confusing manner. I did a lot of copy-editing. Some suggestions for my article that were made focused on re-phrasing a sentence in the controversy section in order to further reach towards my goal of making that section sound less biased.

IV.          Feedback

During this process, I did not receive any feedback from other Wikipedians. That being said, I tried to incorporate previous feedback that had been left on the page (such as re-focusing the controversy section) into my goals for the page during the project. Another interesting thing that happened is that without warning and without a comment, some other contributor randomly changed the entire page mid-process. They renamed the page to make it a broader subject matter (which is honestly probably better) and added many sections (though didn’t write all of those sections themselves, so some of them still don’t have much information in them). I did the best I could to adapt to those changes for the sake of my project and utilized the new sections given in the controversy portion to structure my attempt at the more scientifically-based blowback of the issue.

V.            Wikipedia Generally

The main takeaway I got from contributing to Wikipedia was how to do so. The trainings were incredibly helpful, and I feel confident that if I stumble across a Wikipedia article in the future that needs copyediting, I find a source to add, or something else along those lines, I could easily contribute to that article. I thought it would be a lot more complicated than it actually was (not to say it was an easy adjustment, but now I feel equipped). This assignment was pretty much the polar opposite of a lot of other assignments I’ve done in the past. I feel like fancy language and 8-page discussions are really favored in academia, and it’s refreshing to have made something specifically for common consumers. I believe it is the job of scientists to take the knowledge they have and then home in on a simplified way of explaining it so that that knowledge can be shared with the rest of the world. Wikipedia is a great source for making that a reality. Large parts of the population, as we have discovered in the time of Covid-19, distrust scientists because they do not understand what scientists are talking about and working on. Breaking up this distrust with easily consumable and accurate scientific information can make the world a safer place and allow scientific advancements to positively impact the world on a broader scale.

My contribution in no way addressed major equity gaps or improved coverage for historically underrepresented and marginalized populations, but I do believe that each scientific topic explained simply and succinctly on Wikipedia closes the gap in knowledge between scientists and the general population a bit more. Ultimately, this education is a form of empowerment. This assignment did change my understanding of the construction and sharing of information, especially because this was really my first time getting to participate in that process for a resource that is available to everybody with internet access. As a college student with access to the library catalogs and online journal subscriptions, I now understand that I can utilize these amazing resources not just to educate myself, but to spread that education to others who don’t have those same privileges that I have. I can use my education to break down complicated topics and add them to a free resource so that all may gain understanding backed by actual science. That is a huge honor.