Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/Cornell University/Online Communities (Fall 2013)/Vogue (magazine)

Contributions to the Article

The main goals we had in significantly improving the Vogue (magazine) page were to expand and reorganize the Media, Style and Influence and History sections as well as reorganizing the Style and Influence sections.The Media section was merged with the Voguepedia section, as it was thought that would be more appropriate for the latter to be filed under the former. Technological, Economic and Political subsections were added under the Style and Influence section to better differentiate the content that had already been added. In the interest of organization, subheadings delineating certain eras of Vogue's history were added to the History section. Additionally, the Other Editions section was merged with the Editor-in-Chief Information section by creating a single table titled “Edition Information” that provided the information in a cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing way. Haley was assigned the task of formatting the Wikipedia page, so all the above structural edits were hers.

Paul was assigned to expanding and reworking the History section, and, in doing so, added content on, specifically, the early days of the magazine, the era in which Anna Wintour was editor-in-chief and the magazine in its current form. Subheadings were added differentiating between the Early Days of the magazine, the bringing in of Conde Nast, the "decline" era of the magazine from the 20's through the 70's, the Wintour Era and Vogue Now. Additionally, sections of the existing section that talked about Anna Wintour in detail without directly related to the magazine were eliminated and some sentences were edited to maintain a neutral tone. New references from both books and websites were added to support added content and to complement existing content that was marked as needing citation.

In expanding the Media section, Emilyn, who was assigned with overhauling it, added content to all of the subheadings under it, those being Documentaries, Video Channel, Books and Voguepedia. For documentaries, the existing section only described “The September Issue,” which was released in 2009. There was no mention of the 2012 documentary “In Vogue: The Editor’s Eye,” so Emilyn looked at its HBO documentary page and added information on the director, synopsis, and significance to the article. For books, she looked up all of the previous books that have been published by Vogue on Amazon.com and added them. Also, she added information on the newly launched video channel in conjunction with Conde Nast’s new initiative under Conde Nast Entertainment.

We believe that these additions to the article are important, because they demonstrate to readers Vogue’s efforts to become a multi-platform lifestyle brand. Vogue is no longer just a monthly magazine. Viewers interact with the brand via social media, videos, books and events such as the Met Gala and Fashion Night Out. Vogue is increasingly becoming a “way of life.” On the same token, Emilyn decided to add another sub-section to the “Style and Influence” section entitled “Social.” In this sub-section, she added information about the Met Ball. There is already a Met Ball Wikipedia page, but we thought that it was important to mention it and give a short description so that readers would be aware of this event that Vogue hosts annually and is inherently part of the Vogue brand. Emilyn also provided an internal link to the page for if readers want to get more details on it. This way, the information on the Met Ball adds to the page without overwhelming it with unnecessary information.

In addition to reformatting the Style and Influence section, Haley added information on Vogue’s relationship with Google Glasses to the newly added Political section, drawing primarily from news articles as sources throughout.

While editing the Vogue (magazine) page, we tried to keep the tone neutral not just to be in compliance with Wikipedia’s editing guidelines, but also in order to maintain a consistent voice throughout the article. Additionally, when it was noticed that sentences in the existing article showed a bias for or against the magazine, they were amended appropriately or, if they were not integral to the article, taken out entirely. We focused primarily on adding facts and avoided opinions and biases. While adding information to the various sections, we provided both internal and external links so that readers could go directly to the source if they so desired. By adding these links, readers are able to access photos and videos with ease. We choose not to add multimedia to the article, because we thought it wouldn’t add any necessary value and create clutter.

We made sure only to include information from reliable sources. For example, Emilyn added references to existing content in the Documentary section, as someone had flagged it as in need of citations. Among the sources she used were the HBO documentary page, Refinery 29, NPR, Vogue.com and Amazon Books for a list of books published by Vogue. Refinery 29 and NPR are trusted media sources, because the information they print has been fact checked for accuracy. In addition, when finding sources to reference for a portion of the History section that was marked as needing citations, he used an academic site, as, in order for academic papers to be published, they must undergo a rigorous peer-review process. By directly referencing primary sources like HBO and Vogue.com, we can be certain that the information we provide is accurate.

We believe that we have improved the article substantially by reorganizing it in a way that is more comprehensible and easier to navigate. For example, the work done to renovate the Edition information made the information provided cleaner and much less redundant than it was before. In addition, we believe that the expansion in content of the Style and Influence, History, and Media sections is sufficient to upgrade the article to the B level. In updating the article with information on Vogue’s video channel, documentary, recent work with other brands and recent history, we have kept the article current and a good representation of the brand at this current moment, which we believe is important in creating a quality article. With all these improvements in mind, we believe that the the article is ready to move up to the B class.

The Contribution Process

The Media section of the article was a very small section before Emilyn started editing it. Under Media, there was only a Documentaries section, and under the Documentaries section, as mentioned before, there was only half of the content that is currently in the section (the first paragraph on “The September Issue”). Emilyn started making changes to the Media section before October 1st, the first Wikipedia check in. During this time, she started adding to the Documentaries sub-section, including content on the new Vogue documentary. Then, she added references to the existing Documentaries section, addressing the “Citation needed” flag it received. Once that was done, we decided as a group to move the Voguepedia section under the Media section.

Over the next week, Emilyn added two subheadings, Books and Video Channel, to the Media section. She added links to relevant external and internal pages in the article to ensure that readers could click on it to go to either a primary source or an internal page for more information. She then added the Social section, motivated by a comment by another Wikipedian on the Vogue (magazine) talk page that suggested that a section on charity should be added. The Met Ball seemed appropriate, because the profit garnered from the event went toward maintenance of Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The History section was spare and disorganized before Paul started working on it. The description of the first sixty years of the magazine took up a small portion of the section compared to the amount of information put in about current editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, much of which focused on her personal and professional life rather than her contribution and effect on the magazine. To better organize all this content, Paul first added subheadings for the eras of Vogue that seemed most salient; the early years, the years in which Conde Nast took over, the about 50 years of stagnation, the Wintour years and the magazine's present. Then, Paul added content to the Early Years section, fixing the error an error in the original article that the magazine was founded in 1894 instead of the correct year of 1892, and then going into more detail of who Vogue's founder intended to reach with his publication and what was featured in its spreads.

Paul then used famous Vogue fashion editor Grace Coddington's memoir to add in relevant information about the formative years in which Wintour began her tenure as editor-in-chief. Paul also made some significant changes to this subsection by deleting a few paragraphs of information that described Anna Wintour's personal life and status as a pop culture symbol, information that would be much better suited for the Anna Wintour Wikipedia page. He made sure that internal links within the subsection were present so that users could go and elaborate on that information, should they choose to. Additionally, Paul edited the subsection to make sure that it remained neutral and then added information from the Conde Nast media kit to the Vogue Now section. And last, Paul added a citation to a sentence in the 1920's through 1970's section that had been marked as needing a citation.

The aspect of the article which first struck Haley was its organization. When performing the intial read through, it was difficult to locate certain information as well as to determine what sections were weak, except by looking at length. This lead her to take up the roll of “Technology Expert” as she felt that taking the time to restructure the article, which would require a healthy dose of wikicode, would be a great benefit for future readers and editors. There was a concern on the talk page by user Politizer as to the format of the existing Editors-in-Chief section and whether it was arbitrary. As such, her first project was to merge both the circulation and editors-in-chief tables into one concise location. Haley then sought to subdivide some of the articles such as Media and Style and Influence which each contained a breadth of information. That accomplished, she focused the rest of her attention on building content within the Style and Influence section. In this edit, there was some debate as to the circulation of the magazine, whether avaliable numbers were national or international, and as of what date. Haley had published an edit to the Style and Influence section before the issue was fully clarified. Thankfully, user Soulparadox was able to identify the correct information and adjust the tone to “the publication claims to reach 11 million readers in the US and 12.5 million internationally”. They performed this without comment, though Haley thanked them and received a pleasant and supportive message back following the edit. It was exciting to have someone proofread and improve our work in a very humble way.

Interactions with Others

The majority of our interactions were with our assigned TA Nitesh, Professor Leshed and each other. Emilyn updated her activity in editing the page by posting on our University Project post to the Talk page in hopes of receiving response from others surveying the page, which was a convenient and effective way for her and the rest of the group to keep track of her work. Additionally, it was a simple way for other Wikipedians to follow the changes that were being made to the article and comment and give suggestions accordingly. Interactions with Nitesh and Prof. Leshed on the Vogue (magazine) talk page were useful in guiding us along. For example, both Prof. Leshed and Nitesh commented that we need to make our sources clearer. Thus, we have explained the sources that we used in the article in this report, distinguishing between the websites and books that were used. We reached out to the Wikipedian who had suggested that a charity section be added by posting to on their talk page(user: Cajoiner), but we did not receive a response. Cajoiner’s last activity was in 2009, so he was of questionable prolificacy. So, while Cajoiner’s comments were helpful in prompting us to add to the Style and Influence section we were not able to receive his feedback on it. A comment was also left under the Circulation of Vogue section of the Vogue (magazine) talk page to thank the Wikipedian who pointed out that the circulation of Vogue is incorrect in the article. Without his or her help, we probably would not have noticed the error. Unfortunately, the circulation post was unsigned, so there was little chance we would hear back. This interaction, like the one with Cajoiner, was beneficial in bringing up issues to address in our editing of the article, but also not as beneficial as it could have been, as they never responded to our changes.

The most notable interaction occurred between Haley Conover and Yunshui 雲‍水. Haley had copied the ‘’Vogue’’ article in its entirety to her Sandbox in order to make notes and begin exploring edits. Shortly after, she received a Nomination for Speedy Deletion by a Wikipedian due to plagiarism and copyright infringement followed by actual deletion and a terse admonishment by Yunshui. This was strange, as she had not added any content to the article which needed to be sourced, meaning any copyright error was within the actual article, and it was assumed that the Sandbox was a safe place to develop content without the fear of stepping on anyones toes. Haley relayed this to Yunshui’s talk page. Yunshui was gracious enough to research the conflict, and found out that the google book which had the matching content (here) was essentially copied and pasted from Wikipedia. Yunshui shared this revelation and did one better by posting this treat to her page:

A cupcake for you!

As an apology for making your work here more difficult today than it should have been. Yunshui 雲‍水 22:59, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Though the original conflict was frustrating, Yunshui’s response was thorough, eager, apologetic and thoughtful. He also alerted Haley that it’s good form to link sandboxes to the original article in order to reduce confusion in the future. Though this interaction originally prevented Haley from using the her sandbox page to contribute to the Vogue (magazine) page, the result of the interaction ended up benefiting the article overall. Additionally, Yunshui’s suggestion to link to the original article when working in the Sandbox was a helpful tip that benefited us by providing us with information that would perhaps prevent us from having similar interactions in the future.

During this process, Haley had reached out through the teahouse as well as to user JMathewson (WMF)in an attempt to discover if she was infact misusing the sandbox application. The latter responded after the worst of the storm had passed, and helped to smooth over the final wrinkles of doubt related to Haley’s approach to the project.

We definitely felt a sense of community while working on this project. Preece (2000) defines an online community as “a group of people who interact in a virtual environment,” and Wikipedia definitely qualifies under these criteria. We interacted with other students in our class, the professor, TAs and each other within a virtual environment. Preece also defines an online community as “having a purpose, and [is] supported by technology, and [is] guided by norms and policies.” Our community had and continues to have a purpose -- to improve the articles on Wikipedia -- and we needed computers and Internet access to fulfill that purpose. While only a small part of the posts we made to other Wikipedians were responded to within the time frame, we interacted with other users online enough for our work to be considered a quintessential online community experience.

Our experience in working on the Vogue (magazine) page also reflected the concepts we learned in class involving community norms. Much like Professor Leshed’s interaction with a user over hemispheric bias, we appeared to be violating the norm of one of the Five Pillars of Wikipedia when Yunshui accused Haley of copyright infringement. Ultimately, though, Yunshui would prove to violate the rule of Wikipedia that there are no rules, and quickly rectified in a timely and courteous fashion, so that the norms in our corner of the site had returned to equilibrium. These rules on copyright are explicitly stated in Wikipedia’s rules, but the unspoken norm of courteousness was kept in this case so that no great disruption ultimately occurred with this interaction.

Who Did What

We decided very early on that Paul would be in charge of the History section, Emilyn would be in charge of the Media section and Haley would be the designated “Technology expert,” working on formatting of the Wikipedia page behind the scenes. Throughout the project, we stuck to these roles. While working on the article, Haley also added content to the Style and Influence section as well as the Edition information section. We explore specifics of what each group member did in the above Contributions to the Article and Contribution Process sections.

After our initial meeting to assign roles to each person, we communicated primarily through email. We posted updates on our work on the article to the Vogue (magazine) talk page to let our TA, other Wikipedians and each other know the progress on the changes we were making. We collaborated on this report via a Google Doc as we found it to be easier to edit and add content than publishing an unfinished product on a public Wikipedia page. We found that email was the most convenient and immediate way to communicate with each other when it came to issues that were time sensitive. We found that it would be a bit more complicated to leave each other messages on the talk page and wait for a response, as we were much more likely to check our email and respond then to go onto the Talk page of either our user pages, the Vogue (magazine) page or the course page. Also, given the somewhat unreliable track record we had in reaching out to other Wikipedians via Talk pages, we were wary to use the same method in handling something as important as the nitty gritty of our editing work.

We found it very difficult to navigate the technology aspect of Wikipedia initially. This was largely due to the fact that we were unfamiliar with the Wikipedia’s programming language. For example, how we had some issues figuring out how to link to link to a user or add sub-sections. These symbols were very confusing to us at first, and we had to get used to them before we could edit the articles. Thankfully, we anticipated this to be an issue early on and designated Haley as the “Technology Expert.” Haley experimented with and learned Wikipedia’s launguage, then taught it to Emilyn and Paul. Thus, with Haley’s help and practice, we slowly became more and more proficient with Wikipedia’s programming language. It also took a little bit of time to get the hang of navigating between the talk pages, sandbox and article page. Our work on this project was a learning experience on multiple fronts, and we are now much more confident in editing Wikipedia than we were before.

Loudcitysong (talk) 04:15, 10 October 2013 (UTC)