When first hearing about the assignment we were instructed to do for this course, I was a little bit confused about how the logistics of the assignment were going to help ninety students research and rewritea whole Wikipedia article. The years prior to this class we were instructed in school to not use Wikipedia pages as research articles and for factual information, after completing this assignment and fully developing an understanding of what Wikipedia is, I can see both sides to this argument.
Beginning this assignment, one of the most difficult part about this assignment was trying to find an article I was somewhat interested in while it also being a ‘stub’ within Wikipedia’s requirements. After some deep soul-searching and hours of clicking Wikipedia’s ‘random article’ button, I finally found SOBxRBE among the list of Hip-Hop/Rap stubs. As I navigated my way to this page, I was shocked (yet excited) to see the lack of information on this page. In short, SOBxRBE is a musical rap group stemming out of Vallejo, California that is filling in the niche category of ‘Bay Area’ music. After selecting this article, I was informed another one of my classmates had also identified this as an article she would be rewriting as well, therefore we were presented with the opportunity to co-edit the page together. This was a really good way for us both to understand the rules and guidelines around Wikipedia. We were able to bounce ideas off of each other about ways to reword certain things to get rid of biases or perceived tones as well as formatting and how we wanted to restructure the article. Overall, Betty and I were able to contribute a lot to the page together, and improve it better than if just one of us was reworking it. We added a stronger lead to the article, a section about their upcoming music career, biographies for each of the members and a lot of updated discography information. Overall, enhancing the article ten-fold, however, we definitely would not have been able to make the changes we did without the Wiki.Edu resource and the knowledge taken away from that source.
Wiki.Edu was a great way for students or new users to become familiar with all the features and rules that come along with editing an article. Personally, it helped me in the beginning stages of navigation to the correct pages I needed to be using. One of the most helpful features for me in the beginning was the way Wiki.Edu linked my Sandbox article on my dashboard to my actual Sandbox draft on the Wikipedia site itself, as well as the peer review pages. In the beginning of the editing process I was having a hard time navigating between the two sites, but this feature made it manageable. Wiki.Edu also helped me a lot understand how to format the page using the ‘Source’ mode, as I had absolutely no idea about how to code in the slightest before this. With the Wiki.Edu modules to help beginners like me understand, I was able to learn how to format using code but also was able to see the option for visual editing which was much more my pace. The Timeline feature was also very helpful in keeping students on track with what needed to be done each week, and learning important steps, week by week, rather than overloading new users with abundances of information. The Timeline feature can be linked with Design Claim 14 from our textbook as it states, “Coupling goals with specific deadlines leads to increases in contributions as the deadline approaches”. As the timeline feature sets deadlines for us as students to complete by certain dates, it enhances students’ likeliness to complete them and go try the new knowledge out on Wikipedia in their own sandbox. One critique I can think of while using Wiki.Edu is the overload of “extra-ness” on this cite. There was a lot of tabs that were not useful for me and created clutter in my eyes such as the ‘Activity’ tab and ‘Uploads’ tab. I was not able to develop and understanding of the point for these tabs as I never once navigated myself there. Another critique I have for Wiki.Edu is their way of informing users if a task is complete or not for that week’s given modules. It made it very confusing for students to know whether they fully completed the task or if it was still something they needed to start. Simply stating that better terminology for these tasks would be beneficial for Wiki.Edu users. One last critique that I could name for Wiki.Edu is the lack of interactive-ness new users receive, as stated in Design Claim 15, “Goals have greater effect when people receive frequent feedback about their performance with respect to the goals” when completing these weekly tasks through Wiki.Edu, students are less likely to complete these goals/tasks as they are not receiving any feedback on the work they are doing. If Wiki.Edu made a feature for when completing tasks and asks their students to show their knowledge in for example, a sandbox that will receive feedback, these goals would have higher effect on users and would be more likely to take modules seriously rather than just skipping through to get it done.
If Wiki.Edu had not been given to me as an option to use while editing alongside of a Wikipedia article, I most likely would have not followed through with editing an article. As Wiki.Edu made it very manageable for new users to create edits through Wikipedia and allowed them to understand the norms and guidelines associated with contributing to such a large network.