User:Ashleyjohnmartin

Ashley J Martin is an undergraduate of the University of Hull, Scarborough Campus. Most of Ashley's hobbies and interests revolve around his degree of study, in BA Hons Design for Design Media.

Background
Prior to coming to the University of Hull Ashley was in attendance at the University of Chester, and studied for a degree in BA (Single Hons) Graphic design. Whilst here Ashley experienced many of the traditional methods of production ingrained within the design industry, to include silk-screen printing, letter/ink-press processes, and practical making of design artefacts. At the time, the traditional route within design was a pathway of interest to Ashley, however due to a change of circumstances he wanted to change route and update his skills to reflect the technological and modern creative industries of the present, and thus attained a place at the University of Hull.

Outside of education, he enjoys reading crime novels by award-winning author Ruth Rendell, as well as learning about different world cultures, through letter-writing and other communication methods.

Focus topic
The topic of study will be focussed on Sheffield based company Lovebytes, who are a digital & creative company that focuses on the running and the commissioning of digital artists worldwide, and is most notable for starting the Lovebytes International Festival of Digital Art

The future outlook
Personally, upon completion of my undergraduate studies I would like to study at Postgraduate level (degree results permitting) in some capacity, whether this be through a taught or research-led pathway. Although I still have time to consider my options I would ideally like to study for a Masters degree in a creative subject linked to my current studies, but I am contemplating expanding my scope to a more combined programme. I feel that by studying a combined option this will enhance my chances of employment and allow flexibility in future endeavours. Failing this, I would ideally like to go and experience the world, secure an internship and travel around the United States.

The learning curve of Wikipedia, problems and recommendations for improvement
The following documentation is a culminated record of my progress, with regards to my interaction, engagement and experience of editing/producing a Wikipedia entry, as part of a reflective account for my University coursework. My immediate response to Wikipedia upon being introduced was one of shock, since I had never have foreseen how difficult it is to edit, and even though I am technologically sound, I found the protocols by which Wikipedia follows hard to comprehend. I am someone that is usually very comfortable, with platforms similar to Wikipedia such as, blog entries, forums and other such content management methods, however I believe I found the interface rather overwhelming. Because of all the links, and the many help pages at my disposal I believe it was much more complex than was initially intended. I would also like to add, that perhaps the functionality, and jargon based frameworks that exist on Wikipedia likely skewed the way I had come to understand Wikipedia during the early stages. One example of this is the guidelines that exist when operating on "Talk" pages, and the "talkback" functionality (See Template:Talkback). I think that, personally, the Wikipedia 'help pages' (See Using talk pages) seemed to 'cloud' matters more than solve the problem, and that a suggestion for improvement would be to simplify these further, in relation to helping novice users.

The smaller more finer details towards sending messages is probably more relevant here, in relation to my experience, such as the syntax systems like: 'talkback|user1', this is not my only observation so it is not an exhaustive observation, but I believe that such conventions may be more 'cryptic' than common sense to beginners.

Overall taking a more holistic perspective, I am happy with the progress so far on the Lovebytes Wikipedia entry, although there is still plenty to do (namely; tweaking references, sourcing secondary research, and amending errors), I feel that I have acquired the right knowledge to edit, modify and finalize information on Wikipedia, and as such this serves the right purpose for adequately passing the criteria for the module.

Interacting on Wikipedia
In terms of interaction, I have communicated within my team, as much as possible within the confinements of the system. This has meant that team members were not always at the receiving end of the messages, dependent on when they had logged on. I found this to be a particular problem in relation to this project, and one that has hindered progress. With respects to communications outside of the group, I have been in correspondence with external moderators after the page went live, this afforded individuals the ability to critique the page. Some of the feedback received has been of mixed variety, including making amendments to minor details and typos.

Once I had overcome the initial learning curve of understanding Wikipedia, I was able to coherently respond to individuals and reflect upon my own editing skills, taking the appropriate course of action towards individual critiques. The only real problem was the jargon and inherent language style used in much of the help guides on Wikipedia.

How I have overcome issues stated in the aforementioned
Of many of the issues I had encountered was the assumption that tasks had to be performed in a particular way, it was quite easy to assume that Wikipedia worked just like any other 'editor' or textual entry programme. However, I had quickly rectified the problems associated with this, by observing and looking at the editing skills of others, and analyzing how other Wikipedia pages were created. This allowed me to pick up valuable knowledge, alongside communications with peers which has served me well towards creating my own user page.

To conclude
I think that overall my contributions have spanned much of the particular article I was working on (with two other colleagues) because my allocated piece made up for the bulk of the article. Because of this I found the editing process time-consuming and somewhat difficult trying to acquire knowledge of 'how-to do something' and also producing something substantial.

Also, I think that in order to improve this article I would need to go back and look at the reference list and perhaps amend my resources to reflect a more predominant 'secondary' base of research, since much of it is deemed as 'primary', according to a recent editor's feedback (See: Huon's message). This is a piece of feedback which has allowed me to reconsider the way in which I may go about adding references/citations/footnotes in the future, in selecting quality over quantity of research.

Many of the sources from our article was considered to be of 'primary' material, as mentioned earlier, this is something that in hindsight as a group we would collectively improve by sourcing from secondary information. This is a prospect that myself and individual team members will discuss to perhaps further this article, enhancing validity and making all information verifiable.

Access to Sandbox
Please feel free to visit my sandbox page. /sandbox