User:Djbrockman

New Media Assignment: Wikipedia article
Personal RF Safety Monitors



Operations and Information Management

GROUP: 8 - MBA Modular 2011 A

Dirk Brockman - 13845705

Philip Brockman - 13331434

Jaco Du Plessis - 12877689

Pierre Du Plooy - 11372710

Ludwig Gerstner - 13795228

William Howard – 14075555

Introduction
As a group we decided to write an article for the Wikipedia, rather than to upload a YouTube video or to create a Facebook group. The reason for this decision was because, in our opinion, we felt that Wikipedia adds more value from an educational point of view than the other two options. Another good reason was that the purpose of this assignment was to do something we have not done before and none of our group members have added a new article to Wikipedia, whereas most of us have used the other two options for this assignment.

Topic
The topic of your article is by far the most important part of the exercise. Wikipedia actually calls it the golden rule: “Articles require significant coverage, in reliable sources, that are independent of the subject.” If your topic does not meet this criterion, then you have to start looking for a new topic.

This Golden Rule was actually our articles biggest stumbling block. We though our topic was good, relevant and practical and that it will add value to Wikipedia, but the reviewers struggled to publish our article, because they thought it was not notable and does not belong in an encyclopaedia. This conundrum led us to one of our key learning’s about writing style.

Process
We started doing some research into what procedures to follow to get articles published in Wikipedia. The research indicated 3-4 main considerations for a successful article of which choosing a valid topic being by far the most important step. Other time consuming steps along the way to create a new article is; learning the Wikipedia syntax, learning how to use your references, adapting your writing style to an encyclopaedia format, reviewing and getting some feedback on your article.

Key Learning’s
Unless our YouTube video gone viral or we managed to get a profound comment from Nelson Mandela on our Facebook group, we would not have learned halve as much as we did by creating a Wikipedia article.

Some of our learning’s were things we thought we know, but in an encyclopaedia environment knew nothing about. Take for instance referencing; Wikipedia requires a good article to have verifiable references from reliable sources. Some of our references were cited during review as not verifiable, even though it was results from scientific studies. In Wikipedia’s point of view they did not have access to those results of the studies so they flagged the reference and revoked the article. On the other hand Wikipedia accepted some blogs and product websites as valid references, whereas from an academic point of view, these would not be seen as valid references. Our group also learned the value of the in line citation used by Wikipedia, because by using these you do not have to define every term you use. If someone reads your article and does not understand the term, they just follow the link of the in line citation to read more info about that term.

Another time consuming lesson that our group learned from Wikipedia is that in most of our daily routines we tend to write letters and document in an essay or story format, similar to the style of this document. Wikipedia does not allow articles in this format as it tends to be written from a certain point of view. Wikipedia only accepts encyclopaedia format writing from a neutral point of view. The writing style should also be brief and clear, without any ambiguity, jargon and unnecessary complex wording.

Arguably our biggest learning experience came after we fixed our references and corrected our writing style to an encyclopaedia format. We though we broke the camel’s back and that it is merely going through the motions for our article to be published, but then the reviewer rejected our article with the comment of our article is not notable for an encyclopaedia entry. This surprized our group at first, because why did they not say this during the first couple of revisions. But as we discussed the article at a group session, we came to realise that if a layman read our article he still would not have understood it properly. The root of our problem again was our writing style, we did not keep our article short and simple, instead we went into too much detail and used jargon and unnecessary complex wording.

Conclusions
Wikipedia almost seems to be a decent filter on all the internet gossip. It strains the internet from 98% of its rubbish and thus is a valuable tool to settle an office quibble between two colleagues regarding who won the 2011 IPL final between the Chennai Super Kings and the Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Wikipedia is not a library for academic research because of that last 2% of the internet spam that makes it onto the site. A quick search on Wikipedia about Wikipedia emphasized the fact that the purpose of Wikipedia is to be a free, collaborative internet encyclopaedia with a large database of unacademic content.

This assignment triggered a spark in our group to make an honest effort to contribute more to Wikipedia. We all have our own expertize and if we share it with other people via Wikipedia they might use some of those expertize, even if it is only to not make the same mistakes we did. If we can help just one person, then we contribute to making the world a better place.