A.dodd55

November 2011

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to David Walker (abolitionist) with this edit, did not appear to be constructive, and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Wknight94 ^talk 04:14, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Re: David Walker

Regarding the edits to David Walker (abolitionist), it's difficult to say which ones are yours since there were several other anonymous users there. The only one I see from this account is this one. First, we don't put disclaimers on articles. Like ever. Especially at the top of the article. That's a big no-no. Also, the article should not sound like a lecture. Don't use "we" and "you". The sentence, "In order to develop a better understanding of David Walker's intellect you must first read The Appeal and then investigate for yourself the meanings behind his work through other scholarly articles and journals" is very nonstandard.

That said, the actual content in the one paragraph sounds reasonable enough. I'm happy to work with you and give your edits closer attention than I did last night. If you look at my contributions, I've been spending a lot of time making rapid-fire reverts to "poop" and "tyler is gay" edits throughout the system - including stupid edits like this one to the David Walker article itself. I apologize that I didn't give your edits better consideration. Go ahead and re-do your edit - without the disclaimer and without the lecture tone please - and I will make any other modifications I see fit.

Thanks for your patience. It can be difficult to pick out the constructive people in the middle of a babbling mob! Wknight94 ^talk 15:06, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your quick response. I am not very well versed in Wikipedia so I apologize for my formatting simplicity. The changes I made to the David Walker page was a requirement for my English 1010 class at UConn. We are analyzing Wikipedia in a very complex way in order to write an academic paper on our findings. We first looked at the research done by Wikipedia contributors and what statements they were making. Based on our findings and own research through scholarly articles on the subject we produced a theory about Wikipedia. After our theory was done we were charged to "punk" Wikipedia by messing with the site in a constructive or destructive way. We basically had to do something to the site. Once this "punking" was done we needed to see how long it took Wikipedia to fix our changes or what they even did with our changes. This was done in a way to supplement our research. What I have found is that you, meaning Wikipedia editors, focus most on major formatting changes in every site and not on small hard to detect changes, which makes sense. I just wanted to make sure I explained myself. Your response to me thoroughly helped with my own findings on Wikipedia, thank you.

That's not a particularly original idea. See Reliability of Wikipedia. Wknight94 ^talk 18:17, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Re: Original Idea

What do you believe is not an original idea? My theory? Or our assignment? A.dodd55 (talk) 19:16, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't know. If you're really going to add useful content to David Walker (abolitionist), feel free. If you're doing yet another test of the Wikipedia system in general, please reconsider. We are volunteers here using our valuable time to enhance and maintain a valuable Internet resource, not to be unwitting guinea pigs for college studies. Wknight94 ^talk 20:04, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Re: Guinea Pigs

No. I am not planning on messing with the site again. I apologize for whatever unrest I gave you. I appreciate that you volunteer your time for a site with the purpose of providing free information to all. This was a one time assignment and we are not planning on doing it again. However, I am willing to share my paper with you, or with the Wikimedia company, in order for you to see what we found out or think about Wikipedia. Other than that, all I will do is add constructive comments from now on. On behalf of my class I apologize for the trouble. A.dodd55 (talk) 20:37, 2 November 2011 (UTC)