User:Aliyahm/COM 482 Report

My chosen article was on the EDM and pop artist Chelsea Cutler. When looking at the list of stub articles, I chose her article because I already am a fan and listen to her music regularly, so I figured writing about a topic I have interest in would help my writing process. Prior to any of my additions to the article, it was very small and essentially only contained information on her career accomplishments, and a couple citations. Since her article was a stub, it was already clearly in need of improvement, but my main critique was that its’ content was not as well balanced as many other articles for artists are. I felt that it needed some background information on Cutler aside from just her career, as well as more detail in the progressions of her career. It included no sections to structure the article either. I perused the Wikipedia articles of some artists that were linked within Cutler’s article to help me ascertain what sections would be relevant to her article, which ended up being really helpful and gave me direction. While evaluating articles before settling on Cutler’s, what I learned about Wikipedia is to pay attention to the signals and tools that Wikipedia gives a user regarding an article’s quality. Wikipedia has warning banners and “locked” icons for certain articles, assessment tables, requirements for notability, stringent requirements for citations, etc. These were all helpful aspects of Wikipedia for me while I was looking for an article to improve.

My first round of editing and contributing to the article mainly included expanding the existing content. I followed the article’s trajectory of documenting Cutler’s career, accomplishments, and some statistics pertaining to her rise to popularity. My next steps were to add sections to organize information in the article. After digging into some Youtube videos, I was able to collect information on Cutler’s musical influences and academic history prior to college. That information, along with other references, helped me flesh out sections on personal life and musical influences. In the midst of my editing, another Wikipedian added a section on discography which was a welcome surprise, since I was already planning to do so myself. I also added an info box that included information I expanded upon later in the article. As Cutler is still  relatively new to the spotlight and an up-and-coming artist, it was challenging to find as much information as I would have liked on her aside from her musical journey and career, but I added as much information as I could back up with sources and write from a neutral standpoint. In comparison to earlier versions of my article, I think that I have definitely improved it. As a regular user of Wikipedia, one of the first things I look towards is the infobox, which I felt my article needed. With the addition of sections, I find it easier to read and find information. Content wise, the earlier version of the article provided a very concise overview of her career, but I was able to find more information on Cutler’s journey and growth.

In reviews I gave to my peers, the first thing I focused on was the quality of the information presented. I paid attention to if information was cited, sounded neutral, and was informative as well as relevant to their article. I provided feedback on where I felt there were content imbalances between different sections of my peers’ articles, and I also followed along with the feedback questions from the “Evaluating an Article” training. For my article, my peer reviewers both felt that I could organize my information better by including sections. When we were doing peer reviews, my article was still at the stage where it was just a single large paragraph of information I kept adding to, but going forward, I took their advice. As one of my reviewers predicted, it was easier to focus my research to find information on specific things about Cutler once I separated the article into sections and started to fill in the gaps. I have yet to receive feedback from other Wikipedia editors, but now that my article is live, I certainly will be checking back to see if there is any.

What I learned from contributing to Wikipedia was definitely enhanced by what I learned on online communities in class. I was able to understand Wikipedia’s history, how it gains and retains contributors/participants, growth patterns, and more. This Wikipedia assignment differs from most other assignments I’ve done because Wikipedia is such a specific and regulated community. Yes, anyone can contribute, but there’s lots to learn and adjust to first. Wikipedia has norms, rules, and standards that contributors adhere to, and they take effort to understand. Another difference is the impact this assignment may have. Most of my academic writing is for my instructors and peers to see, not the whole world. With this article, I contributed to the world’s largest online encyclopedia, and anyone can view my contribution. Wikipedia is often the place people look when trying to find information, and as a longtime user I feel that it is effective in improving public understanding for just about anything, including my topic. Especially since I have not found a lot of comprehensive information about Chelsea Cutler, I think that a Wikipedia article on her is a beneficial resource and starting point for finding information.

Feedback that I would like to offer Wikipedia is to help new contributors in improving articles by providing suggestions for improvement with the article itself. Similar to how our experience in the class involved working step by step through the tools we need to be able to contribute to an article, Wikipedia could possibly provide a set of guiding benchmarks for what a contributor needs to improve the article, within the article. Suggestions such as “improve internal citations,” “check reliability of references,” “balance content by adding more information to ‘x’ section,” “add infobox,” for example, would help a new contributor know where to begin to focus their efforts. If new contributors knew where to focus their efforts easily, they could then be able to filter through the myriad of resources available to them if they needed help.