Reflecting on the Wikipedia
A Story by Rob Wallover
Wikipedia. This is the future. This is the voice of the people. Making an article was quite an experience. As geeky as it sounds, it was pretty thrilling. To think that your article, that you took the time and effort to create, could be deleted at any moment is kind of exciting. To get the article topic that you can’t get over is a process. Since we were going for local things near the Athens County, I went through the Ohio University page on Wikipedia to see what they had, and what they didn’t. I tried going for something a little more notable than something in Athens that would just be deleted as soon as it was posted.
I saw that our beloved mascot, Rufus the Bobcat, was not among the included articles under the Ohio University page. I figured He was pretty popular, especially with the whole Ohio State incident. I also wanted to show a little OU pride and make an article for the bobcat. I went to Google for the start of the research. The first couple websites I found were Ohio University based, for example there was an Ohio Alumni website which had the history of Rufus the Bobcat. This was an awesome source but it wasn’t going to be enough for the Wikipedia article: one because it was only one source and two because it wasn’t an “unbiased” source.
I ran into that problem for a couple of my sources. They were based from the school itself, which was so very helpful when it came to the history of the mascot and other interesting facts, but when it came to being unbiased, they fell short. So I expanded my research to other subjects other than his history. I turned to the thing that is on everybody’s mind when someone mentions Rufus the Bobcat…the famous tackling of Brutus the Buckeye. I looked up interviews and news reports on ESPN.com about the aggressive encounter. It turned out that Ohio State wasn’t the first act of violence. During an Ohio vs. Buffalo game, Rufus taunted the bull with a red towel. The other mascot mistakenly played along with the mischievous bobcat. As the bull charged at the red towel, Rufus side stepped him and shoved the other mascot to the group. He then proceeded to jump on top of him and pretend to be riding the bull. This interaction went unnoticed because it wasn’t on national TV and it wasn’t against Ohio State. This gave me a chance to add in subtopics for the article. I was able to make a subtitle that was how Rufus came to be, the chances he had gone through, and the small history of violence. Actually writing up the article was kind of cool. The codes were sort of a pain to figure out but no pain, no gain. Once I got the ball rolling and had all the information that I thought was a solid background of sources, the article itself was pretty cool.
The next step was to take it into the drawing board. This was a nice turning point in the writing process. This helped me see what I needed to fix and how I could take the editors critiquing into consideration for the final article. The editor just said that I might need to get more “reliable sources” aka non-OU related websites. After reading that I found some other websites that talked about Rufus and they were not OU based. As previously stated, I found the ESPN articles that helped out with the non-biased sources.
The final step was sending it in for a review to see how it would hold up in the Wikipedia world. They rejected mine for having too many “biased” sources. I then decided to take to low road and ignore their opinions. That’s a beautiful thing about Wikipedia. You can just skip being critiqued if you think your subject matter is important enough to be seen regardless of the sources you used. The other beautiful thing about the system is that other people can decide to add on or take away from the article to help stay online. It’s really cool looking back on the article now to see how things have changed and how people are helping make the article more solid to stay on the website.
The traditional writing skills I have been talk over the years of my education has certainly helped me with the writing of the article. The tone of the article was probably for the most difficult part because; as you can see I like keeping things personable and low key. For the article I have to keep the tone neutral and straight factual. If you swayed too far one way or the other, you ended up sounding in favor of your article or treating the article as a roast. When I was told to keep the tone neutral, I couldn’t help but think of the article in Writing About Writing: “All Writing Is Autobiographical”. Donald Murray states, “…that, in a sense, all writing is autobiographical” (56). He talks about how we may not obviously put our voice in the writings but because of the way we researched or how we present the information, it makes the paper or article unique to us. Thus, we have our voice in the paper. It may not be our opinion, but we’re in the paper.
Placing this article into the public domain is almost a duty for someone who has put time and effort into finding out about a subject that interests them. If there’s information out there, see if you can add to it. The reason I say this is because it’s really good to see what other people think of your input. We can’t go through life thinking everything we do is perfect. We need reality checks once in a while. The side part about this is that it’s a two-sided coin. You can critique other people’s writings. This would not be critiquing to be mean, but to help the writer become better. This helps you help them revise the information they have presented. I’m reminded of the article “Tuning, Tying, and Training Texts: Metaphors for Revision” written by Barbara Tomlinson. She shows the reader the many ways one can revise their papers using interesting and entertaining metaphors. She’s listed so many options to treat revisions as, that’s there is something there for everyone. I found about two examples that really helped me. The first was the “refining ore” process. Tomlinson states, “James Dickery, when drawing an analogy between his writing process and refining ore, is actually describing a process of revision-as-reformulation: rather than focusing on the discovery of the “ore,” his material, he is concerned with attempts to transform that material into a more valuable commodity” (254). The other treated the paper as a painting. “I write first drafts with great speed but the older I get (a familiar observation, I know) I rewrite more and more…. I’m more an oil painter now. More deliberate. A good deal less certain. (1971, p. 337)” (257). Those two examples helped me when I went back through my article seeing if there were things I could revise.
Again, that’s the great thing about Wikipedia. You get to go back and revise it. Just like that. Or this. That quick. That’s amazing. With encyclopedias, you have to wait ‘til the next year’s copy to see what was changed. This new media of sharing information is just the thing this era of technology needs. I think this system works. You make an article with good information or it gets deleted. This way, only the accurate pieces of information stay in the public’s eye. While yes, they’re will be those people who mess with the articles and make them say nonsense, that’s part of the system. This tests the will of the social society to learn. If people want to learn they will change the article back to he most accurate thing it could be. This is the one. Wikipedia. Tell your friends.
Sources:
Writing About Writing:
--Murray, D. (1991). “All Writing Is Autobiographical.”
College Composition and Communication, 66-74.
--Tomlinson, B. (1988).
“Tuning, Typing, and Training Texts: Metaphors for Revision. “
Written Communication, 58-81.
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