Mlc299 cornell

Economy of Asia: Article Update Final Report

Contributions to Article

The initial Wikipedia article about the Economy of Asia was quite comprehensive yet it did not address many events that had occurred since 2010 and in recent years. Since the Economy of Asia has changed much in recent years we thought it would be interesting and valuable to add to this article. Wikipedia is a valuable resource not only because of its wide range or articles, but because these articles are kept up-to-date by users.

Our team decided to add a section that explained recent regional policies to focus on some important changes in specific Asian countries and how these changes affected Asia's economy. This section included recent economic policies deployed in Japan and China. Creating a new section also paves the way for other Wikipedia users (or perhaps us) to add future economic policy updates that may not have fit into a previously existing section. We hoped this might make this Wikipedia article more accessible to both readers and future editors.

Additionally our team expanded a section that was a general overview of the future economic development section of Asia's economy. Our addition to this section differed from the new section because our research indicated that the Shanghai Free Trade zone would have more of an international effect on Asia. We used a variety of sources to obtain the information used in our update. We tried to use articles that were primarily factual instead of opinionated. Most of the articles came from large news websites which are quite reputable.

The classifications that divide C-Class articles from B-Class articles are:

• "suitably references and all major points have appropriate inline citations"
• "contains appropriate supporting materials such as an infobox, images or diagrams" [1]

Our team added a large number of references that supported all of the facts we included in our additions as well as inline citations. Although we did not go through and edit the entire page we believe that are section additions are credible and add to the credibility of the entire article. We also included an image in our new section as supporting material. We believe our additions qualify for B-Class, however this may not apply to the article as a whole.

Evolution of our Contributions

We stayed true to the majority of the changes we initially proposed on the Economy of Asia talk page. The major obstacle we encountered was with another Wikipedia user who reverted many of our initial edits and additions. Our multiple attempts to contact him/her were unsuccessful so we went back and double checked that our facts were accurate and well supported as well as unbiased (this user had previous instances of edit wars that seemed to be related to strong religious and social beliefs).

• We initially added a section called "Regional Policies" which included some of the content now present in our "Recent Regional Policies" section, however this section was deleted by User:SantiLak
• Since the user's complaint was our lack of references we then did more research and accumulated more sources whose facts we then used to add a new section "Recent Regional Policies" with two initial subsections explaining reforms in Japan and Asia
• We also wanted to add information about the Shanghai Free Trade Zone but that was deleted as well
• Again, we went back to find more sources and added the information to an existing section so as to fit in with the flow of the article
• Throughout this process we reached out to Wikipedia users who had previously contributed to the article. We did not receive as many responses as we would have liked and perhaps it was just the nature of this article that did not provide the most active user base.

Learning Wikipedia Technical Requirements

Our additions to this Wikipedia article included:

• adding new sections
• contributing to existing sections
• including inline citations
• including a reference list
• adding images
• linking to other Wikipedia articles/sections
• communicating with other Wikipedia users

These actions were all explained during class and we often referred back to class power points for reminders as to how to accomplish specific tasks. Also our group used our sandboxes to write out the larger portions of edits. This enabled us to preview our additions without having to edit the entire existing article. A lot of the experience was trial and error. We made use of Wikipedia help pages and other internet resources. Overall Wikipedia is the type of online community where it simply takes time to learn and become comfortable with the technological skills unnecessary to contribute. We definitely felt more comfortable editing at the end than at the beginning of this project.

Wikipedia Community Experience

We began this project by reaching out to several of the Wikipedia users who had previously edited the Economy of Asia article. We used the article's Wikiprojects pages as a point of reference however the topic (Economics) was relatively broad given that we were trying to focus primarily on recent economic developments in Asia specifically..

At first We did not have the most positive Wikipedia community experience at the outset of this project. Some frustration rose up as our work got reverted 6 secs after our edit, and this happens to us almost every time we work together. We tried to communicate with the person who deleted our post and explained that we are newbies to the community and we are doing this for the class. He ignored our initial posts but at several weeks, he seemed to forget what he did and could not provide justified explanation. Meanwhile, we received some feedbacks from other users who avidly approved our work and even offered to proof edit for us. The words they said warmed our heart.

In summary, it has been a challenging and rewarding experience for us to interact with other community membersYz567 (talk) 18:53, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Division of Labor

Our team decided that we would each focus on certain aspects of developing this Wikipedia article. We approached the project with a focus on:

• 1. Research
  2. Community outreach
  3. Technological aspects
  4. Writing

Although these are broad categories they define the roles our team took. We all contributed to each aspect of the project and discussed developments continually yet we found it beneficial to have certain team members focus on certain areas. Gabby Zhang found many of our initial sources, ensured they were reputable and found follow-up support as the project continued. She also reached out to many of the Wikipedians who had contributed to the article, and to the user who kept deleting our additions. Alencia understood the more technical aspects of developing the article and helped include in-text citations and maintain our reference list. This was extremely important given that some of the initial complaints we received from another user had to do with our lack of references. Madeleine Used the resources our team found to write the actual additions to the article. We worked together as a team to make sure the additions were grammatical and accurate. I also wrote up the final report after our group discussed our reactions to the project and what we learned from it.Overall it has been a very positive team work experience, and all three of us are very collaborative in terms of hitting the deadlines and divide the work. Could not reach out to the other person who signed up for our group.Yz567 (talk) 19:01, 9 October 2014 (UTC) Mlc299 cornell (talk) 18:58, 9 October 2014 (UTC)