Reflection Of Wikipedia

Wikipedia, one of the most powerful, accurate, and diverse dictionaries available to the human race, yet Wikipedia seems to fly under the radar. What is meant by this is that Wikipedia is looked down on and quite frankly scoffed at by the writers of the Encyclopedia Britannica and other well known encyclopedias. Wikipedia is looked at as not being credible and subsequently pushed aside and looked down upon. In the last four weeks, I have learned much about Wikipedia’s credibility and have plunged myself in the middle of this vast world of knowledge and even took my own shot at creating a Wikipedia article. During my journey, I have become well versed on the discourse community that is present on Wikipedia and how it plays a role in the creation of any Wikipedia article. During this essay I will give a narrative view of my experience in Wikipedia and my creation of an article.  Also I will discuss the growth of my knowledge in how writing is recursive, social, and how the discourse community of Wikipedia gives it structure, shape, and a style of writing which is unique to itself. Finally, in my discussion I will close with how in the 21^st century there has been a drastic change in how information can be accessed and gathered through online forums such as Wikipedia and how with these forums there is a distinct advantage present that wasn’t present before their creation.

When assigned the project to write an article on Wikipedia at first I was ecstatic and couldn’t wait to dive in and publish my own writings. I felt a sense of accomplishment and joy without even knowing what I was going to write about or how I was going to write it but I didn’t care. The thought of having a piece of my own work published for anybody to see and that it could possibly help inform someone in the future was exhilarating. Little did I know that within four weeks I would have my hopes crushed and tramped on by fellow authors/editors.

To initiate my journey into Wikipedia I had to first immerse myself in Wikipedia; learn how it work see the tricks of how the syntax is laid out, and most of all notice that Wikipedia is a enormous social network that spreads and discusses knowledge. Understanding that my writing was going to be looked at and scrutinized by others was something to wrap my brain around. Originally, the only people that would read and judge my work would be family members that would perhaps proof read an assignment for me and whoever my English professor/teacher was at the time. So, I was about to dive into a whole new world that I had no experience in or around. As, to begin creating my article for Wikipedia the first and foremost objective was to stay neutral and unbiased, this is easier said than done. My article was on Mossy Oak. Mossy Oak is a camouflage brand that originated and its headquarters are now located in Mississippi. When gathering my information and writing my article for Wikipedia I felt extremely confident that I was staying neutral and not being biased but obviously this was not the case. Before submitting my article for review I went to the “Drawing Board” on Wikipedia and decided to ask for input from fellow writers. I received a lot of positive feed back and it really got my hopes up and boosted my confidence. After submitting my article from review though and receiving rejection it quickly deflated my aspirations for the assignment. What was worse was that their feedback was vague and not very descriptive. The editors mentioned that I was coming from an un-neutral point of view and that my sources weren’t credible. With this in mind I searched back through my article trying to pull out anything that was in the form of advertisement and also added sources from newspaper articles and educational websites. Feeling that I had a firm grasp of what was required by Wikipedia I went live with my article with the hopes of success but in a matter of forty-five minutes my time and effort was for nothing. It was discouraging but on the flip side I have learned that if you’re going to write on Wikipedia about a company you might as well switch topics and try something different because companies seem to be the articles of the most frequent deletion.

During the course of the creation of my Wikipedia article I had to recall a lot of information about things such as: citation, retrieving sources, evaluating those sources and, writing styles and tones, which I had learned in my previous English class but that was nearly three years ago. Also, new topics had to be accounted for which were recently learned for example: intertexuality, writing as a social element, writing being recursive and a multifaceted process. Citing, retrieving sources, and evaluating the sources I chose for my Wikipedia article was time consuming and rather aggravating. Since Wikipedia has such a vast amount of information it is nearly impossible to find an article that hasn’t at least had an attempt at being written. Once finding a topic that hasn’t been published you must then decide whether there is even enough information out there to write your article and if it is credible or not. There is a reason that the article hasn’t been touched on yet obviously and that is because it is hard to write about, so that in itself was a challenge to say the least. Upon retrieving my sources and information I had to evaluate them by looking at things such as the credibility of the source; if it was a well known author, a large newspaper, or an educational website. On the completion of collecting my information then was brought to my plate the topic of intertexuality, which is nothing more than the fact that all writing is simply taking fragments of other writers’ passages and reusing them and piecing them together in a new fashion. Nothing is original and all writing is pieced together as that of a puzzle; in “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community”, James E. Porter writes that, “the writer in this image is a collector of fragments, an archaeologist creating an order, building a framework, from remnants of the past” (87). Porter is explaining that no matter what is being written it follows the pattern of something that has been written before it. In Wikipedia this idea fits like a glove; when writing my Wikipedia article I copied the exact format of other Wikipedia articles with the exception of my own information plugged in. This proves that all writing is intertextual to some point, whether it is an idea, a structure or style. While writing my article I also noticed the social element, obviously. Wikipedia is entirely devoted to the fact that no matter what is created on it; it is subject to edit and/or deletion. With this in mind, writing becomes a dynamic and multifaceted process. An article is always in revision and never entirely completed. Having the dynamic capability of being able to revise and look over past revision with the “View History” tab on Wikipedia allows editors to glide past the first draft stage and look directly at what has failed before and then adjust thereafter. As stated in “Shitty First Drafts”, Anne Lamott emphasizes that “The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that you can shape it later.…all good writing begins with terrible first efforts” (302-303), with this in mind and the fact that you can view old drafts on Wikipedia it demystifies the process of revision. This social discourse community allows editors to plug in directly where needed and pin point the targeted problem. 

Wikipedia is a tool that is invaluable and is without limits. Wikipedia is a totally new style of learning, informing, and researching topics that are dynamic and ever changing. Without a doubt I would boldly say that the changes that are occurring in the distribution and creation of knowledge through Wikipedia are irreplaceable. Wikipedia has taken knowledge and opened it to the world in a way that is indescribable, in “The Charms of Wikipedia”, Nicholson Baker asserts that, “More people use Wikipedia than Amazon or eBay—in fact it’s up there in the top-ten Alexa rankings with those moneyed funhouses MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. Why? Because it has 2.2 million articles, and because it’s very often the first hit in a Google search” (1).  Wikipedia has catapulted itself to the top of the totem pole when dealing with online search engines for factual information, but it still receives high amounts of criticism and disbelief of its credibility. The reason Wikipedia has low amounts of credibility is that anybody can edit an article and change it to whatever they see fit, but with nearly 1,500 articles getting deleted a day one can see that it is heavily monitored and patrolled by those in the upper crust of Wikipedia. Personally I believe that Wikipedia is a wondrous and amazing idea that is invaluable to our wealth of knowledge and participation in knowledge as humans.

Works Cited

Porter, James. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.” Writing About Writing. 

Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston, MA. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 87.

Print.

Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts.” Writing About Writing. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug

Downs. Boston, MA. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 87.

Print.

Baker, Nicholson. “The Charms of Wikipedia.” The New Your Review of Books.

NYREV, Inc., 20 March. 2008. Web. 5 Oct. 2011.