Reflection Essay

Bobby Baldino

English 308J

Matt Vetter

10 October 2011

Wikipedia Reflection Essay

When I first heard our first assignment was to create a Wikipedia article, instantly a plethora of thoughts were racing through my head.  What should it be? What do I know about that no one else knows? Will it work? Well the topic I decided on was Lake Snowden because first of all it wasn’t on Wikipedia, and second, because I love nature and the outdoors I knew I would definitely not mind researching a local lake and publishing an article on it.  The topic selection process however was not at all easy.  The first idea I had was to write about Strouds Run, a State Park just outside of Athens that my friends and I have been to many times.  Unfortunately an article had already been created on the park, which turned out wasn’t so unfortunate after all.  The Strouds Run State Park article on Wikipedia was basically my template for Lake Snowden.  Both were popular local lakes in the Athens region with very similar wildlife and activities.  The Strouds Run page helped me form my frame, how to make headings and section titles with the “===History===” equal signs and the wiki code to make an information box on the right side of the article with a picture.  I was hoping to get a few good source ideas from the Strouds Run page; however I was very surprised to find the article only had one source, and it was the website they got the picture of the park map from.  I used to be worried about my sources, but now that I am done with the project and feel like a truly have an objective, well written article with a few decent sources and three solid sources, it will not be deleted for some time to come because the Strouds Run article’s last modified date was early June of 2011.  My point is for an article to last from at least June to October with zero sources I feel like my article should last as long as I didn’t make any overlooked errors.  I liked how unique and original this assignment idea was, never before have I been “bragging” to my friends that I get to make a Wikipedia article for an English class assignment.  This is the first class I have done anything like that before and I hope Mr. Vetter continues to use Wikipedia and online writing in his future classes.  Writing articles and posts that you know will be online that people may or may not even see, makes the way I structure my writing different than before because of that chance that someone could see it in the future. 

                The Wikipedia writing assignment really reminded me how rusty I was and how long it had been since I went through the writing process.  When I was first attempting to tackle the assignment I was lost with no idea where to jump in at.  After reading a few articles and assuring myself this assignment wouldn’t be like the classic dreaded English 151 research paper the traditional writing skills started flowing out, but not perfectly.  After reading “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott, I was relieved to hear that even the great and lucrative writers have terrible first drafts and try again and again until they have something they like.  Lamott went on to inform me that, “the first draft is the down draft – you just get it down.  The second draft is the up draft – you fix it up… And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth” (303).  This really spoke to me and I feel like I will have less trouble getting the ball rolling on future writing assignments.  Through reading other articles I learned what types of sources Wikipedia likes, and what types they say are not good enough through the article submission for review process, and went back and found more legitimate sources.  I also became very fond with the evaluation and summary writing styles, for that was basically my entire article.  The article deadline is past, but I know I need more in line citations and direct quotes.  The article I was basing mine off used no inline quotations and only had one source, and I should have just dropped Strouds Run and chose another article to structure mine from even though it was so similar to Lake Snowden.  For me, the Wikipedia assignment was the first time I really posted an article to the World Wide Web that comes up in Google when you search it.  This aspect totally changed the game when it came to the writing process for me because like I said earlier, there’s a small chance someone outside the classroom will actually read your article.  In writing this social article I was making sure I edited and worded my paper better than I ever had any paper before.  With an objective paper of course the process was not as difficult as say a persuasive writing but still was time consuming.  Writing a paper as a multifaceted process became very apparent to me after reading “Tuning, Typing, and Training Texts: Metaphors for Revision” by Barbara Tomlinson.  Most of the metaphors she described related to the writing process I had and didn’t even know it.  The metaphor that I felt was most like my writing process was the mechanic, or “fixing things”.  Tomlinson illustrates the mechanic metaphor in the writing process as, “gradually redying an old car for the road”, (Writing About Writing 262) or “Tightening up all the bolts.” (259). The drawing board on Wikipedia helped because it was a place for me to talk about my article topic and have other Wikians discuss ideas they had about the potential article.  This gave me some very helpful outside opinions that I could use to construct a legitimate objective well crafted article worthy of staying on Wikipedia for some time to come. 

                Online forums like Wikipedia are setting the standard for knowledge distribution in the 21^st century because this century is a technological century, full of tech savvy individuals who would rather find what they are looking for online as opposed to an encyclopedic collection of books.  As far as the forums go, Wikipedia is unique such that they offer the whole World Wide Web hundreds of millions of free encyclopedic articles.  When I think of a metaphor for Wikipedia in the writing process, I think of a liquid, “fluid, molten” (Tomlinson 255) material that can be edited and molded at anytime never quite reaching the casting status.  The web gets this valuable information for free because any of its users can be authors, writers and editors of the encyclopedia.  With this responsibility of writing a free encyclopedia comes with pros and cons.  The cons however can be taken as pros from some points of view; the possibility that anyone can get on and make an edit to any page draws attention by the original authors and Wikipedia administrators.  This confirms that the articles are being constantly watched, checked, protected, and updated all the time while other encyclopedias have to publish entire new editions to fix any errors or add any pages. The online forum approach for an encyclopedia like Wikipedia is, in my opinion and from my experience with the website, absolutely an advantage over traditional encyclopedias written by a room full of scholars and professors writing Britannica’s 14^th edition then casting that with a publisher, just to have another edition in a few years.  

Works Cited

Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts.” Writing About Writing A College Reader Ed. Elizabeth Wardle, Doug    Downs. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 301-304. Print.

Tomlinson, Barbara. “Tuning, Tying, and Training Texts.” Writing About Writing A College Reader Ed. Elizabeth Wardle, Doug Downs. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 251-269. Print.