User:Vixwint/sandbox

Hello, testing out format in my sandbox :D

2/10/20

Not entirely sure where to start the blog so I will use my sandbox for now. Prior to this my only experience with a Wikipedia page in terms of editing was that the Student Tech Collaborative at Yale as a similar Wiki-style website for all our tech solutions and on that page we each created wiki profile pages of ourselves.

From the training modules, I learned that quite a lot goes into verifying and regulating the types of edits on Wikipedia, which seems to quell the concerns many of my high school teachers had in that people could write absolutely anything on Wikipedia. I always had faith Wikipedia was a reliable source for information :D. When I first saw the syllabus for this class the Wikipedia assignment seemed a bit daunting, but learning about the elements of Wikipedia and how it functions is proving to be an interesting plus to taking this class. Truth be told, one of my life goals it to qualify for a Wikipedia page. Now I have a better understanding in terms of the level of "notability" I need to one day have a page of my own. Looking forward to engaging with this Wikipedia assignment further! Signing off for now! Vicky out ✌️.

2/17/20

Hi, I technically missed this week but I had to get emergency gallbladder surgery, so I think I had a valid excuse. On that note, I was able to catch up on the Wikipedia assignments for the most part. Reading through articles however, it is seems that even ones I would normally consider decently thorough articles are capable of still having relatively low Wikipedia scores in evaluation. I wonder if Wikipedia is able to somehow know how much information there is out there on a topic, because what if an article is technically sparse but still technically also includes all the information available? Like in regards to Athenian democracy. I worry that if I do choose this as an article, it will simply turn out that there is simply not that much information out there in the world, but lack of information wouldn't necessarily undermine the notability or importance of Athenian democracy which is why it would still merit an article in the end.

2/24/20

My concerns still hold. Hopefully when conducting research, I will be able to find troves of information on Athenian democracy. It's moments like these I wish we could find the lost library of Alexandria, that would surely have a lot of helpful information for this assignment.

3/3/20

I think I am focusing on Athenian democracy over the other option I also selected: Sortition. As I look for sources, I find it a bit difficult to locate lots of primary sources, possibly because of how dated the topic is. There are some sources like National Geographic that seem to meet the mark of being significant enough to be a source, but the information itself is rather general I think. I will have to do more research and see what I can find. The actual sources list for the article is rather sparse, so perhaps Yale's library will have access to more books that would be available online.

=Update= I just added to the article! There was a whole paragraph without sources, so I started by citing one of the sentences. It feels so good to contribute! I hope I don't get judged by the internet as I work on the article... on the talk page there was one person who had some suggested edits and they weren't lovingly received.. There was a bit of confusion and ultimately I don't think the person's suggestions were taken. Hopefully that doesn't happen to me! :D

3/10/20

Rather than rewrite the entire article as I would feel bad to essentially undo a bunch of peoples work, I am going to focus on which aspects I can contribute more to. Potentially either the historical timeline or perhaps going more in depth for the constitution. Currently there is a diagram that effectively shows the duties of the three sections but besides that there does not seem to be a written section or any hyper link to the classical Athenian constitution, despite the wikipedia page existing. I think an interesting aspect when working on a Wikipedia article is the collaborative aspect to it, although you aren't all working on it at the same time. Really, there is nothing protecting your work from being entirely re-edited by someone else if they can fundamentally make the work better. Does that in a sense make the work you've done on the article pointless then?

3/17/20

Athens had multiple constitutions over the years but the article doesn't really clearly delineate that. Although much more research will need to be done to grasp my own understanding of the different constitutions. Also, the courts section is called the courts instead of the term dikasteria that was used at the time. Might also expand on this portion, or at least add the name.

3/24

I found an interesting book that looks in to the race and citizenship aspect of Athenian democracy. Another note, I failed to consider the fact that while I would work on this project, other random people would also be contributing to the article as they see fit... Most of my work has been on a google doc draft before adding it to the actual document but during this time someone else as re-evaluated the article and I believe it got bumped up from a C-status to a B-status? Which is now making me question how much more information has been added and where places still need work...

3/31

Moved my edits to the article. Additions included Solon's constitutional reforms on Draco's original legal code, and structuring a class system. I also added some hyperlinks to help readers leap to other articles with some more explanations of certain topics I mention.

4/7

Began writing draft of Citizenship section from Susan Lape's book, to help outline some of the means by which Athenians gained citizenship and the importance of being one of the privileged to have citizenship in Athenian democracy. Realized that something left of the article I can include is how women were left out of Athenian Democracy.

4/14

Feeling better about the project now that I have means are writing sizable amounts on citizenship and Athenian democracy as well as just cleaning up some other areas/providing more context on the whole history of constitutional revisions. I also included a media photo of the papyrus that held the Constitution of Athenians that was compiled by Aristotle and possible his students. Personally, I'm almost certain his students were involved, but there are conflicting sources on whether it was Aristotle or even not Aristotle and just one of his students. I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of his students and Aristotle just took the credit.<.<

4/21

I've found that I am more productive writing in a word doc and later moving everything to Wikipedia, rather than writing directly into Wikipedia. Probably because I am more used to the Microsoft Word interface than Wikipedia's interface, although I do love it's citing system, much better than running everything through Easybib like I do for my papers. I think at times the Wikipedia interface may be a bit slow, but that may just be my computer or my wifi, which is another reason I prefer Microsoft Word for drafting and editing.

4/28

Still drafting the Women's section and Citizen's section. I definitely procrastinated on this project more than I should have, but I blame doing online school during a global pandemic in conjunction with my own personal procrastination problems :D.

5/5

Last day (night? morning?) to finish things up for the drafttt. Everything has been entered into the article and I am now working on the reflection paper and presentationnnn. Sleep is for the weak when you have instant coffee and plans to make a lox and cream cheese bagel before class :D. Excited to be done with the project but overall a great learning experience and if I ever feel compelled, I may work on developing other Wikipedia articles in the future! A few weeks ago, the Yale Precision Marching Band faced a critic on our Wikipedia article, so I may harness the skills I've gained from this assignment to help remedy the qualms the critic had.