Jessicashamma

A cupcake for you!

Great work on your project so far, Jessica! Elizabethrivelli (talk) 18:30, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Reflection

My Online Communities class and I spent our last four months working on adding many different topics from the Northeastern University Library Archives to Wikipedia. These subjects are notable figures, events, places, and literature that were based in the Boston area and/or Northeastern Community. And while I understood their notability and importance to our local community, I struggled to portray its importance through my article's page.

As a frequent wikipedia user, I had neither edited a page before nor bothered to notice the complexity of each page. The format, pictures, and citations. The photos, timelines, and bibliographies. Someone had taken the time to not only create the page, but cite and format the article in a way that was both scholarly and easily digestible. After learning more about these complexities, I have learned that creating a wiki article and learning about all of wiki’s lingo and idiosyncrasies is nothing short of an art form, one that I can appreciate and reap the benefits of as an reader. Contributing to Wikipedia as an editor, on the other hand, is a bit more intimidating.

The concept of Wikipedia is organically a gamified concept. Wikipedia gives the internet a huge blank book, and challenges them to fill it out with every and all information that they might find relevant and important. The rules? (Well, besides the fact that there are none.) Make sure to back-up your information with secondary sources. Seems easy enough. But from my experience, I have found that this “game” is easier if you have the intrinsic desire to do so. If you have a personal stake in the topic, even if it is only a shallow interest in finding more information about geodes, for example, you are already a few steps ahead of the game. Although I understood my article’s importance to the Northeastern Community, I struggled to document that importance in my article’s page. I found the important facts and concepts that explained my article A Note To You, but struggled to flesh it out. I wanted to stick to the relevant information, but found it to be difficult to find. As a result my article ended up looking more like a stub with a difficult notability case to argue. Although I do understand the benefits to helping the Archives department document topics that need to be recorded, I believe that the outcome of my article would have been very different had I had the option of choosing my own notable, article.

The next most important step to creating a fully fleshed out and important article is to understand the citation and coding system. I had had some coding experience in the past and thought I may have a leg up on this portion, however, the wiki world is really a world of its own with its very own language. After taking a few hours to pick a citation template that I was able to understand, I was able to really dig in without the worry of citation templates hanging over my head. And once I understood one, I couldn’t imagine how or why anyone would do it any other way. This learning experience was frustrating and confusing at first, but felt very proud of myself once I had gotten the hang of it.

The last and final aspect of creating my wiki page that had a major affect on my experience with Wikipedia was what I will refer to as “the other”. I was and still am, anxious every time I log on to Wikipedia to make edits. I feel as though it may take a few more article edits for that anxiety to go away. In my opinion, becoming a wiki editor comes with a responsibility to contribute thoughtfully and correctly. Not only did I feel held to a higher standard by myself, but also by “the other”. I knew that everyone else could see my contributions and edits as well. I felt extremely self-conscious because I knew that all of my contributions were visible to not only me, but everyone else.

All in all, the wikipedia assignment was a rough, yet rewarding one. I’m happy that I now have the knowledge to productively contribute to such an important site, and look forward to making more edits in the future. I think it might be a good idea to add in information and edit pages, while I look into topics for myself, killing two birds with one stone. In the case, I will have the intrinsic desire to make wikipedia better and contribute to a topic that is important and relevant to me personally.

Looking Forward to All of the Wiki Adventures to Come, Jessicashamma (talk) 16:25, 25 November 2014 (UTC)