What to do…what to do…I had to really think about what interested me and what wasn’t known well enough at the same time. This wasn’t too easy for me since I like a lot of things that are pretty popular. Sure there’s an obscure band here, a different opinion there, but I wanted to write about something that has had a significant impact on my life. I tried to think of things locally here in Athens because I love this town and I look forward to coming back every year. So I looked into Ohio University on Wikipedia. To my amazement, they didn’t have an included article on our beloved mascot, Rufus. I gravitated towards making an article for, well the mascot, of this school and how Rufus has become Rufus.
Getting started was definitely a hard place to be. I wasn’t sure how I was going to start the article, so I decided to just check out some websites and see what they had written on the mascot. After seeing the history behind this fuzz-ball I saw how important he was to the community of Athens and Ohio University. I knew where I had to start. I had to start from the beginning. It was so cool reading about how the community voted and picked a mascot and a name. It showed that everyone cared about this ordeal a lot, and that help make this article even more fun to learn/write about.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t write the article like I’m writing this blog. I usually go for a more casual tone when writing papers, almost like I’m straight up talking to you. But for the article I had to stay a cold neutral party who just showed the facts to the reader. This was kind of difficult since it was my mascot I was writing about so I wanted to throw some school spirit into the mix of information but it would not have been the proper article etiquette.
I did have to go back in and make sure I was citing things correctly to show I wasn’t just copying and pasting. And when I used a quote I used the quotation marks and had the sources listed at the bottom of the page. I was happy I didn’t have to change too much about the article. I mostly changed around the pictures I was using and the names of the subtitles in the article.
Looking at the article when it was reviewed and shut down, made me feel like I hadn’t taken the time or given the amount of energy needed to make a good article, but when I heard that everyone else was having the same problem with their pages, I took it as a Wikipedia way of saying, it’s good but we don’t like the sources. I believe I had the right sources for the article however so I went ahead and published it anyway. I threw caution to the wind because I felt I had created a strong article and it was worth publishing.
Reading this blogpost I could right away tell you have a very casual tone and wondered what you thought about writing a wikipedia article in a neutral voice. I think Rufus was such a good idea to do an article on because Ohio University has such a rich history, we're a lot older than other colleges so I almost kind of feel like we're titled to it. I'm sure only giving the facts were sort of annoying, but the research part had to be fun! You probably now know more about our mascot than a lot of other students at OU.
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