User:Acmunoz14/Reflective Essay

Reflective Essay
Wikipedia, It’s An Artistic Process

Wikipedia seemed intimidating at first, but as I peeled back the seemingly endless layers of formatting and source coding involved in our training, I was able to clearly see the systematic approach to our learning. There is a certain beauty and art to this particular writing process.

The most challenging aspect of writing for Wikipedia was following the specific guidelines, it’s a process similar to creating art. In Wikipedia you can only work with certain types of media, in certain ways, and if you were creating art as a commissioned piece it would be specific in the subject matter and tone as well. Like any well-balanced composition, you would need to take some things out, add something new, take a step back to review your work, ask for suggestions, and make edits as necessary.

Critiquing Articles

When critiquing an article, I found that I could only make an accurate critique by comparing and contrasting it to several other articles. Much like comparing an artist’s work without also seeing other types of art, types of media, or artists, I had to see all of the various types of articles, formats, styles, and then I was able to really see why the author chose to make certain choices throughout the article. The critiquing process was a necessary for to understanding the intentions of the author.

Summarizing Your Contributions

After researching several different novels, poems, music groups, artists, famous people, things I like to do, and even spices, I realized I’m not an expert on anything yet. Finding an article that met all of the criteria for making a contribution proved more challenging that actually writing the article! I finally decided to edit an article which had very little information and needed some more information and resources added to make it more verifiable. I chose to update an article for the children’s novel, Little Men by Louisa May Alcott. I was surprised that the article had so little written about it, especially since the Little Women movie had just recently been released from theaters. I decided to add a Background section, change the Plot title to Summary, include Analysis, Reception, and Publication sections as well. For the The Faith of Graffiti article, I spent most of my time searching for information that could be used in the article. I found some relevant information about the Mayor mentioned in the article from a book studying Hip-Hop culture and I was able to add it to the Background section. I also read through Pieces and Pontifications by Norman Mailer and I was able to briefly describe the synopsis of Part 3 and added the last sentence to Part 5. Much of the information I added proved to be relevant, verifiable, well written and my work appears to have made the final cut.

Peer Review

The peer review of my article Little Men was overall positive, and included creative criticism which I worked very hard to incorporate into the final edits of my article. It was refreshing and humbling to see how others viewed my work, and I enjoyed reading their comments as it offered a pleasant challenge to build more, write more, and make it better overall.

While reviewing the work of my peers, I was able to get a feel for the type of work other students had been working on. For most of the class, we are very focused on Faith of Graffiti and our own article, and the peer review assignment offers a great opportunity to see how other authors approach their topics, articles, formatting and communication with other contributors. Suggestions to improve my work were very welcomed, and I was able to make several edits which made great improvements to my article.

Feedback

I received a few messages from Wiki Editors to add citations to verify information, so I quickly researched and added citations to the areas where I could verify that the information was found, but I did struggle with verifying television and movie adaptations. I’m not sure what a reliable source would be for verifying a show or movie, since I was told by a Wiki Editor that IMDB was not a reliable source, but the Wiki Editor could not give me any other resources that would be reliable either.

I received feedback from our Wiki Education contact about my DYK Nomination which was rejected because an article with contributions had to be expanded on 5 times the original size, and she said that mine did not have enough information. Although I tried to add as much information as I could find from reliable source, the article proved to be a challenge and I was not able to add enough information to resubmit the article.

In hindsight, I would have looked at every assignment related to the article we would need to choose, and perhaps, picked one with more resources and even less information already available. I’m not sure I could have picked a better article though, as I did find one that is sure to get more views with the recent spike of interest from the Little Women movie. I’m hoping that with this interest, someone down the line will decide to write more scholarly information on Little Men, and I can continue to expand the article for another nomination.

Wikipedia in General

This class was surely a challenge and it presented a huge learning curve because of the new editing protocol. I do like the fact that although all of the students have a somewhat similar background at different levels and in different areas in editing and writing, this course single-handedly leveled the playing field. Whether we were brought to our knees by harsh editing critiques, or elevated by our clever edits, we all shared in this peculiar art form that is Wikipedia.


 * "There is a certain beauty and art to this particular writing process." Oh, I so agree, and I'm glad you see it, too. You should use subheads here, and be sure you italicize titles, like Little Woman. Good article choice; I hope you will continue to improve it. Finally, I hope I didn't give you any "harsh editing critiques"! —Grlucas (talk) 15:32, 27 February 2020 (UTC)