User:Mgeurts/Wikithoughts

Personal Reflections on my experiences with Wikipedia
Here is where I will reflect upon my experiences with Wikipedia as I create pages for my selected sculpture from List of public art at the Indiana Statehouse.

December 10, 2010
Assignment #6 & 7

The final touches on my articles have been made. I was able to obtain an abundant of information from the ISM mimsy article from my ISM contact. In the last two weeks I have been working on adding information and references to my articles and making them live. Now as the semester finished up, I am trying to add the final touches to my articles. I am currently waiting for the Evansville Rotary club historian to forward me the vast amount of information that he obtained from a meeting with the artist.

Overall I enjoyed my experience with WSPA. Although I had a difficult time at the beginning with the Wikipedia format, through the help of the WSPa pages I was able to catch on. Furthermore I felt accomplished when I was able to find information about the artwork that no one knew before. The fact that I was able to provide information about these artworks that would be possibly never be known was very rewarding. I would high recommend this project to other University's and to people who have any interest in saving public art. The great thing about the WSPA project is that it is open to anyone. Anyone who has an interest in this project can participate.

November 29, 2010
Assignment #5 This week's assignment including uploading photos to flickr (which I did the previous week), making our article live, and updating the List of public art at the Indiana Statehouse. The Bust of Robert D. Orr article is "up and running". I have made the article live and uploaded a main image as well. For this bust I only found 3 sources for material but they all seem to be relevant and hold great information. I am also waiting to hear back from the Rotary Club of Evansville, Indiana because they said they were going to be meeting with the artist today (29th) and would email me with any information they receive. The only issue I have come across for this article is how to reference the Indiana State Museum database information. The mimsy information is not readily available to the public, so I was not sure how to cite it.

As for the sculptures of liberty and oratory, they have been compiled onto one wikipedia article: User:Tricia Gilson/Indiana State House Rotunda Sculptures. The article is not yet live but I have emailed Tricia and hope to make it live soon. Unfortunately because it is not live the photos I have uploaded are tagged for non-free media use. However when the article is made live it should fix this problem.

November 22, 2010
Assignment #4 The assignment was about starting a sandbox for our works of art. I have the Bust of Robert D. Orr and the Liberty and Oratory sculptures in the rotunda. I used the WSPA template to help start my article for the Orr bust. The template already included a introduction, description, acquisition, and other informational sections that help keep all the WSPA articles in the same style. I began work on the Orr bust with the information that I obtained from the Mimsy database at the Indiana State Museum. The database included information about the materials it was made from, artist, and a short but detailed description of the bust. Currently I am unsure how to reference the information in the Wikipedia article because it is information from a museum database and not readily available to the public.

Before starting this article I, along with other students in my class, went to the Indiana Statehouse to observe, measure, and take photos of our particular sculptures. I found it difficult to take pictures of the Liberty and Oratory sculpture due their odd position in the rotunda. The sculptures are placed on the corners of the rotunda on the second floor. However the sculptures are fenced off and directly behind a column which makes it difficult to measure. However I was able to lean over the rail and measure the large limestone block that is next to the statue. From that I could estimate the height and width of the sculpture. Fortunately the ISM database information about the sculpture confirmed my measurements.

Luckily the Orr bust was more accessible. It was located across from the senate chambers on the 3rd floor rotunda. The day I went to observe my piece there was a large gathering of political figures. Surprisingly I found that people were leaving their coats, briefcases, and bags in the space where the bust resides. The photos I took of the bust clearly show bags and coats surrounding the piece. While I was investigating my piece with my professor Richard McCoy a gentlemen asked what we were up to. Richard and our class TA Lori, explained the WikiProject Wikipedia Saves Public Art project to the gentlemen as I continued my work. Richard help me to locate a foundry mark on the back of the piece. I am currently struggling how to find information about the foundry mark.

After my trip to the Indiana Statehouse I uploaded the pictures of my sculpture to Flickr and labeled them according to a certain set of tags. I will use these images for my wikipedia articles.

November 10, 2010
Assignment #3 For this week I tackled editing articles by added new information and references. First I compared the Cloud Gate article, which was a feature article, with an article about the Flying Dragon (Calder), a Chicago based sculpture. The Cloud Gate was well put together, with several headings, sufficient information, and seventy different references. The article addresses design, construction, themes, and reception. Each section contains paragraphs of relevant information and is reference throughout. Furthermore the article contains several images including images of the sculpture and maps.

The Flying Dragon (Calder) article contains much less material and only includes one image. In this case there are only three notes contained within this article and had no sections made. The article touches on the artist, the materials of the sculptures, as well as other pieces that the artist is known for. There are three tags that I found to be be very good references. Two of the tags were from the Chicago Art Institute and third was from artnet which made the information very reliable. On a scale from 1 to 10 I would rank this article a 8. I trust this material because it came from reliable sources, like the Chicago Art Institute, however due to the lack of information it makes the article less reliable because of there are not many references or contributions from other users or sources.

For the Flying Dragon (Calder) article I created the heading "Stabiles" and added additional information about the artist's work with the Flying dragon stabile. I added that "Completed in 1975, the Flying Dragon is thought to be the final stabile that Calder personally created. He died artist died less than a year later at the age of seventy-eight." I also created a second heading, "acquisition", in which I stated that "A gift of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney L. Port made this acquisition possible." I found this information from a online pdf file and I referenced it with in the article.

After updating the article I noticed that my citations were not on the reference list. After reading through the previous code, I realized that you must put on both sides of your reference for it to appear on the reference list. Now I know how to cite on wikipedia as well as create a reference list in the article.

November 4, 2010
Assignment #1 & #2 Up to this point I have successfully created my own userpage complete with section headings, an about me section, and a section about my interests. I also discovered Userboxes and decided to add a few additional userboxes on my page to give it a bit more personality. Furthermore I was even able to add a picture onto my userpage, its a bit big but I'm looking into learning how to make a thumbnail image with a caption. At first the Wikipedia code and language seemed a bit confusing but after helpful instructions and use of the Cheatsheet I found it easy to add images and even links. Typically the best way to learn is to practice hands-on techniques. I have playing around with headings, images, styles, and other editing techniques for creating wikipedia pages. ( ♠♦¤Also symbols! ♥♦₪)

This week our class was instructed to go to the Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis Public Art Collection page and look at 12 different sculptures on the IUPUI campus and read the articles about them. Reading the articles helped me understand how I should go about constructing my own Wikipedia page about my own sculptures.the basic structure of the page should include a introduction area where I discuss the name of the object, artist name, location, and other basic information. Second I need to include a detailed description of the object such as color, size, materials, weight, and describe what it looks like. Next I need to include acquisition information such as when it was created, when it was acquired, why, how, and other relevant information about its acquisition. Third I will include artist information such as name, biographical information, influences, and other information that is related to the sculpture. Lastly I will have a section on documentation. Here I will include information about the WikiProject Wikipedia Saves Public Art and other documentation information. I will also include a image of the sculpture with a caption that includes the basic information (name, size, location, artists, materials, etc)

One of the better articles examples that I liked was the about the DNA Tower located at the Morris Mills Atrium of the VanNuys Medical Science Building at IUPUI. I liked that the image was attached to the article because there were some articles that did not have an image so it made it hard to understand the description. Like the other articles the page included description, acquisition, artist information, and documentation. However this articles had additional information that I felt would be good to place into my article, if I can provide the sources. In this article the page includes additional information about the artist which include related works and gives a short description of them as well.

Some of the articles did not have as much information as the DNA tower. Procession of Ants (Bowen) was an article page that did not have acquisition or documentation about the piece. One possible reason could be that the information does not exist. The possibility of not finding all of the information about my pieces that I would like is something that I must keep in mind when researching my sculpture.

Searching wikipedia and reading articles about the previous class's work helps me envision how I want my page to include. In future reflections I will be talking about my experiences with the resources provided by WSPA/Resources as I create my page.