User:Amay1355/essay

Having English Composition ll based around Wikipedia has been an extremely interesting experience. This class has taught me a lot about how writing can be interpreted not only as an essay for a professor, but also as an article for millions of people, if you're lucky, to read. It is very cool knowing that millions of people are reading, editing, and critiquing the articles on a daily basis. Having Wikipedia as a learning tool has also been an interesting experience as well. Students have always been taught that Wikipedia is a website to stay away from when it comes school, because anyone can add to Wikipedia, and not everything on Wikipedia is true. However, through the trainings and learning tools given by Wikipedia, I learned that although this is true, there are people out there that work to fix this issue. The Wikipedia/ English class hybrid is highly recommended.

Critiquing Articles
Wikipedia is a work in progress. This site works to provide accurate information, and through this work comes what might be considered competition. When evaluating articles, people are working towards putting that article on the front page. This means that the article is the best of the best, it has no mistakes, the whole thing flows, and everything is accurate. People evaluating these articles care about the topic, and want to make sure that the articles are perfect. Through this training, I learned that evaluating the article is one of the most important parts, because this is where you learn where your article stands. The people evaluating want your article to succeed, so they will add points opinions, and even information to help the quality of your article. In doing this, your article gets better and better. Learning to critique articles has taught me skills that I can now use later on in life.

Summarization of Contributions
Contributing to Wikipedia is important when learning to create your own article. In order to create your own article, you have to learn the ins and outs of Wikipedia. The best way to do that, is by playing around and contributing anything beneficial to Wikipedia. Copyediting is a great start, because these are just small edits. Some examples of copyedits are: removing overlinks, grammatical error changes, fixing run-on sentences. These are important, because you learn not only how to do these things, but also, so you can help other people and their articles becomes the best they can be. In addition to copyediting, learning how to spot vandalism is helpful. Being able to find vandalism throughout an article can led to your removal of the vandalism. Helping this issue not only improves articles, but it also helps to improve Wikipedia, and its image. Another great tool was learning how to add to an article. At first, it was hard for me to add to an article, because I was stepping out of my comfort zone by adding to public space. I was constantly worried, and still am, that I would completely ruin an article when I added. I was also worried about whether or not people would be mad about the information I added, however I quickly had to get over that and just roll with it. All of these tools helped me to create the improved article I now have.

Peer Review
Having a peer review online like this was very different than a normal in-class peer review. Because everything on Wikipedia is public, all of the reviews of your article are public. All of their opinions are also public. For a closed-off person like me, I hate open criticism, therefore am not the fondest of everything being public. However, this pushed me to make sure that my article was polished and as good as it could be. As for reviewing other articles, I felt a bit more freeing, being able to just post what I wanted, to ensure the article was being helped in the process. I guess it is a little hypocritical you could say. The process of reviewing really helped me to analyze the articles in a different way than in-class reviews, and I am very grateful for the learnings. One in particular, I learned how to look at how an essay flows in a different way, by having section titles for what one might call a paragraph. This helped me to understand how the writer wanted me to get the information across.

Feedback
I received quite a bit of feedback from other editors, and they were all very polite, and wanted to help me help my article. This type of positive feedback gave me motivation to keep going and make my article better. It helped give me new ideas, and new perspective for where my article was going.

General Wikipedia Evaluation
I have always been one of those people that was so skeptical of even reading information on Wikipedia in fear that it wouldn't be true. I wouldn't even get celebrity birthdays off Wikipedia, because anyone can add to Wikipedia! However, my skepticism has changed since this class. Six months ago, if you would have asked me anything about Wikipedia, I probably would have given a negative answer. Today however, I find myself in arguments with people over how Wikipedia is accurately sourced, and how it is protected by people who care about its integrity. Through this learning experience, I have gained insight on not only a reliable place for information, but a ground for expansion and hobby. I can definitely see myself continuing to add to Wikipedia, and helping it grow. Having this as a learning tool has definitely thrown me in the deep end, and pushed me out of my comfort zone, and I am very grateful. Being told to publish work to a public space where anyone and everyone can see it has definitely helped me grow not only as a writer, but as a student and person as well. I now feel that my work is acceptable, where I did not before.