User:Thaonguyen050300/Report

For the Wikipedia project, I did choose the ‘Corporate Design’ article to edit. I did have a great experience getting to know the process of joining in the

Wikipedia community and of editing an article the first time.

To be honest, I was pretty apprehensive when reading about the project for the first time because the tasks seem challenging, and I was not quite confident

with my writing skills in order to edit someone’s previous paper. However, as I walked through task by task my professor had listed out in the syllabus, I felt

the editing quite approachable and possible. Additionally, the instructions laid out for the entire six weeks are clear and doable for me to understand the

‘norms of Wikipedia’ and some major principles when first joining the community. I really appreciate having those, which are baby steps I need to make so

that I would not feel the project to be overwhelming.

Also, thanks to my professor Nate’s help by going through the topics in the Stub section, I found some interesting options to start with. This step really

reminded me of the concept of ‘intrinsic motivation’ he talked about in the first lecture. ‘Corporate design’ was a subject I was curious about and would love to

dive deep into it through various secondary sources. It made contributing to the article, and to Wikipedia in general ‘more intrinsically interesting’ because the

topic alone engaged me in researching and taking the project seriously. Or else, I would find it very daunting and stressful. So, I really recommend everyone

to start off picking a topic that they have interest in and go by the instructions about the norms of Wikipedia, and everyone should be fine.

In particular, I learnt more about different rules and norms as a new member of the community. At first, there’s a lot of things I was afraid to make mistakes on

or miss out on because I was new to all the available information. The sandbox section and the visual editing mode were great and easy-to-follow tools.

Sandbox was a safe space for me to begin jotting down my first adjustments for the article. Talking about ‘norms’, Wikipedia did a great job in providing first-

hand the directives for its members about what and how they should join the community, and create a respectful and organized space/community for

everyone to be in. Without the directives and rules, I and other people would feel lost and unfocused, and not understand how to even start our editing well.

Specifically, I love how we always need to leave comments on the Talk page after we did something to a previous editing. It’s a way to show respect for every

article’s author. The message in the first week’s video ‘Be Bold’ really moved me by the energy of the community. ‘Go for it’ is very effective advice for new

members. It sounds like the Nike slogan, ‘Just do it’. Besides, the criteria on ‘neutrality’ is a crucial point that I did pay careful attention about. Usually, when I

write, I am always on the path of writing from my narrative and sometimes adding on my feelings to the words. Yet, when editing for the article, I practiced not

to put my opinions in the article and to invest the time in collecting relevant information from reliable sources and in noting down verifiable statements and

facts. This activity helps me in getting used to formal writing.

Furthermore, the Peer Review activity was a helpful exercise for both my classmates and me, who are all Wikipedia contributors. It’s an awesome time for me

to learn from my classmates on their papers’ strengths and need-to-improve parts. Another advantage is that I could have peer feedback on my current

editing, so that I could reassess my writing and improve on the things I have not yet covered thoroughly. For evidence, Nate and two classmates pointed out

to me some words I should remove to avoid reader confusion as well as the references part I need to include more in order to have a balanced add-in details

to the attached sources. The template section on Wikipedia gave me useful questions as resources to get started with.

About my article contributions, the current version of the article is longer and has coherent subheadings that expand on the key terms/subjects from the big

topic of Corporate Design. The earlier version defines corporate design solely as a term for the visual elements - letterheads, logo, typeface, etc. of a

corporate identity. Nevertheless, corporate design should comprise two parts : corporate strategy (all about corporate culture, vision & mission, brand identity,

story, objectives) and visual branding (more specific with design techniques, detailed insights on the visual identity development). Also, I expect to give the

article a more well-organized look and images to help depict broad terms better.

On the other hand, as a new member of Wikipedia, I found that the image and media uploading part complicated, and the task could be ameliorated. The

instructions on this were okay, and I figured out how to get the images uploaded on CC (Creative Commons) and then to the article. The task requires a lot of

captions input as well as image verification before uploading them. It would be more efficient if we could upload it directly from the CC page without needing

to do separate transferring works for image access.

Lastly, about the overall experience with this Wikipedia project, I can now feel how difficult it is to really make a contribution to Wikipedia, especially for

articles that are already marked as C-class, or beyond. Yet, it’s great that there’s still a welcoming space for newcomers who can choose to contribute in Stub

classes on the topics they are interested in editing. This project is a new experience to me. It’s familiar yet challenging at the same time. Because in previous

projects, I researched and wrote papers but I am aware that these papers would not get published and will be safe since only the professors could see and

grade them. However, editing and moving out the draft to the article are way fresh exercises for me. I feel like writing a newspaper and getting ready for it to

be aired to the public. I would definitely recommend my friends to take this class, or even join in the Wikipedia community to really learn more about how they

could actually contribute to the site and connect with other people across the globe in a certain descriptive topic.

In a final remark, the Wikipedia assignment did change my perspective on how information is constructed, adjusted and shared to the online communities. I

always thought whatever was written on Wikipedia was the absolute truth, but actually not. Realizing about Wikipedia did make me think about today’s

information landscape, which is no longer that definitely 100% right, but constantly changing and distinctive because of different viewpoints and contexts of

contributors. That’s why online information is wide open and free access to the public than ever before, but it’s more misleading and unverified sometimes.