User:Daifawei/Report

COM 482

Fawei Dai (David)

A Reflective Essay on Wikipedia Assignment

During the article evaluation, I got to learn a lot about Wikipedia. This systematic and comprehensive knowledge encyclopedia is indeed enlightening and educative. There is a wide range of topics and fields in Wikipedia. Generally, the audience can search for anything that interests them in this platform. Moreover, Wikipedia is open for the audience to edit the content timely. That is, the content of each topic is constantly renewed and improved as time goes by. In short, Wikipedia is popular all over the world for its usefulness and brevity.

The article I selected for this assignment is about a restaurant called Bianyifang. For one thing, I’m interested in Chinese cuisine, and I feel like introducing traditional Chinese dish Peking duck to more people. For another, I realized that the current Wikipedia about Bianyifang is not complete with inadequate information provided. Plus, the introductory lead needs improving. It’s rather short, and the main point is not included. After careful consideration, I decided to focus on this topic. So, I began by searching for relevant resources and spent much time looking through them. In the process of reading resources, I took notes and made some summaries about the content of the resources. Then I listed the sections that I would like to cover on this topic. I added some other headings, including the origin of the name, history, branches, and Peking duck. Moreover, I found some relevant images online. Also, I put two pictures that I have taken by myself, which enriches the content and improves the readability for the audience.

When it comes to my edits for the topic, I did add some new information to it so that it is now more complete with comparatively more details. I have covered more sections under this topic. And I did serious research about the relevant information so that I could provide authentic and useful content. I believe there was a valuable addition to the article as I referred to many pertinent resources that might be of great help for me to edit the Wikipedia. Plus, I chose some vivid and useful images so that the readers could understand the topic better. Compared to the earlier versions, I made some changes to the organization of the sections under the topic. I selected some essential points pertinent to the topic so the audience could further know about Bianyifang. Plus, I referred to several resources and drew more references to my Wikipedia. With more detailed information and vivid images, the current version appears to be more complete.

As for peer review, I did review some of my peers’ assignment. I looked through their articles and made some detailed evaluation. I offered my own suggestions on how to improve their work. For instance, for one of my peers’ work, I told him to adjust the paragraphs into shorter ones so that they appear to be more readable to the audience. Also, I recommended that he should add more images and references, particularly the former factors, which are essential for Wikipedia. I also benefited a lot from my peers since they gave me many valuable suggestions on how to improve my article. They suggested that I should adjust the tone and pay attention to the references to avoid close similarities to the original resources. With the suggestions, I decided to better my article so that it could be more organized and useful. This process is indeed rewarding for me as I could exercise my critical thinking and have my article polished. As regards the feedback from other Wikipedia editors, some mentioned that I should consider cutting down some content so that the paragraphs would not be over-represented. I simplified some complicated sentences to make them briefer and more prominent. And my instructor told me that I should focus more on originality and delete content that is less pertinent to the topic. So, I reviewed my article and decided to improve it following these tips. I rewrote the content based on my personal understanding and removed some irrelevant information.

I did learn a lot from contributing to Wikipedia. In the process of editing Wikipedia, I got to realize that it’s of great importance to make the information as practical as possible so that the audience can better acquire relevant knowledge through Wikipedia. Plus, it requires patience and caution to edit a good Wikipedia as it could be continuously updated to be better. Thus, to make my Wikipedia more convincing and useful, I took a lot of advice from my peers. With their help, I got to improve my article step by step. Compared to other assignments I’ve done in the past, Wikipedia is a more comprehensive work that requires the ability to search for relevant information and re-arrange them through writing. To edit a fine Wikipedia is not easy as it calls for cautious organization and effective writing. As Wikipedia is a platform that conveys ideas and information, a series of related resources are needed to support the content. Besides, there is a comparatively fixed format for Wikipedia, including a brief introductory paragraph to the topic along with subtitles for further explanations and a list of references.

Wikipedia can be used to improve public understanding of my topic by looking through the information I have previously edited. This process of helping them acquire more knowledge about the topic I focus on. Apart from that, they can even be inspired while reading Wikipedia as there is some other related information that they might be interested in. For instance, there are some external links and the references in the end. The audience may switch to study the topic via these extra resources further. It is quite important as the primary goal of Wikipedia is to share information with the public and elicit thinking and researching. In this information-centered society, people need to acquire the information they need quickly. Wikipedia is a bridge of knowledge connecting the audience so that they can share their ideas and thoughts timely and effectively.