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Post by emma on Jul 13, 2011 16:54:05 GMT -5
[/center] [/b] [li]Visit Wikipedia and find an entry you feel qualified to write about. Register (with an anonymous name of your choice such as the one you use for our wiki), and participate in the authorship process by editing your selected entry. [/li][li] What's the process like? Is it consistent with Poe's description? [/li][li] In what ways is Wikipedia like Slashdot? What systems of feedback are needed for Wikipedia's success? Apply Steven Johnson's ideas in "Listening to Feedback" to Poe's discussion of collaborative knowledge. Feel free to use your experience with wikis in your response. [/li][/ul] The process of editing wiki was so easy. There was barely anything I had to do besides type in the information and click save. It is very surprising to me that Wikipedia contains so much useful information even though anyone can get on and change it, delete it, and do whatever they want with it. It seems consistent with Poe’s description; anyone with access to a computer can edit it. And if you find false information or something useless, you can easily edit it. After viewing Wikipedia I found many links and discussions about Wikipedia. On the left hand side, there are links to contact Wikipedia, and see the community portal for Wikipedia. I find it very interesting and helpful they can explain exactly what is needed, and specific sites that need more information and editing. Just like Johnson’s ideas, there are specific guidelines to be followed for the site. They are easily accessible as well. I think Wikipedia is an awesome site with all things considered, I hope it is able to keep running so well.
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Post by emma on Jul 13, 2011 16:57:42 GMT -5
Is there anyway to edit what you have already posted? By "wiki" i meant Wikipedia.
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Post by Anna11Banana on Jul 13, 2011 19:14:58 GMT -5
The hardest thing to do when editing Wikipedia was thinking of a subject that needed editing. The website made it very easy to set up an account, revise the page, and then save the changes. I was surprised at how simple the process was. Knowing that whatever information you put on the site becomes somewhat credible to audiences is kind of liberating. Like Poe discuses, I can see where it is hard for the site to achieve as much credibility as Britannica. But the factor of ease is definitely there. The balance between giving the user freedom and them abusing it is a fine line. Overall, I think those who put information on the site are qualified to give it. I'd never seen the main page before, but the features were really cool. I just wonder about Wikipedia's copyright policies. Does anyone know more about them?
Just by looking at the page, you can tell this page is driven by the user. This is just how Johnson described a successful self-regulating online community. At the top of the wiki page, next to the account name, it lists things like "my talk" and "my preferences." These aspects make it apparent that the site thrives off of user interaction. Like "Slashdot" wiki is built off of how much the users puts into the site. Feedback is necessary for both sites. The wiki is reliant on the feedback to make the information it puts out there as accurate as possible. The site also needs feedback to keep the information from becoming biased. Like Johnson stated in his article, it is a struggle with balancing the power between the negative and positive feedback.
@emma I agree that it is surprising that most of the information is surprisingly factual even though anyone can edit the site. If your question was about how to edit your post on this wiki I'm not sure if you can.
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Post by foresquared on Jul 13, 2011 19:24:46 GMT -5
Editing a Wikipedia page of my choice was probably one of the easiest edits I have ever done. As Poe indicated, a page can be edited "All in under five minutes, and at no cost" (Poe, 276). I feel that Wikipedia is like Slashdot in the way of collaborative knowledge. As Wikipedia counts on other members to correct mistakes and add to the overall information, Slashdot has users with high karma rank various comments. In each method, the users develops and focuses on the highest quality information simply by contributing. The community as a whole captures what they feel is "truthful" or "accurate" information simply via consensus. Poe and Johnson develop the same idea of interconnectedness in different ways; Wikipedia through ways of editing the final product until it is accepted by the entire community, and Slashdot through ways of adding a series of "mind-stimulating" comments. A hidden path of transformation versus a visible path, respectively. What I thought was really interesting was that when I registered with Wikipedia, on the bottom of the page I wished to edit, there was a comment that said, "You can help Wikipedia by expanding it." It made me feel that all of my comments were welcome, it was almost encouraging, which is also a great way to stimulate more minds, really exhibiting the idea of "collaborate knowledge."
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Post by foresquared on Jul 13, 2011 19:29:44 GMT -5
@ Anna11Banana
I also struggled to find a Wikipedia page that needed editing. Through series of constant feedbacks, users continually edit the information of Wikipedia pages until the the information is elaborate upon, and accurate. Due to the large amount of users covering a wide array of topics being discussed on the site, the older a page is, the less editing takes place (as far as I can tell).
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Post by Ava Nova on Jul 13, 2011 19:43:08 GMT -5
Hat tip to Emma for getting this thread started! foresquared, you would be shocked at how much information you know about something! Try editing a page for something that seems obscure, like information about your hometown, or a company someone in your family works for that lacks a page or has a stub. Good luck everyone!
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Post by elm318 on Jul 13, 2011 19:50:15 GMT -5
Editing a Wikipedia page took me less than 5 minutes. I was surprised at how easy it was for me to do. I like that some of the pages such as religions are locked so people can't badmouth and discriminate. Editing Wikipedia is like Poe's description because he wanted it to be very open and free which is exactly what it is. Poe continued to talk about openness and Wikipedia is very open in the sense that anyone can post almost anything, even though it may get deleted at some point. Wikipedia is similar to Slashdot in the sense that the people reading the information are the people that are editing the information. The two sites are different because Slashdot is more of a blog and people can post stories where Wikipedia is a website of facts. Because Wikipedia is a website of facts it relies heavily on the feedback system. In order to make sure that Wikipedia has accurate and up to date information there has to constant feedback systems.
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Post by Ben Yedwabnik on Jul 13, 2011 19:54:38 GMT -5
I found that just thinking of a topic to edit was the most difficult aspect of the assignment. I did however, think of 2 possible topics that already had the information that i wanted to add so that was the other problem i encountered. Just broadening the view of my topic was what helped me in finally being able to edit a wiki page.
I find that the way Slashdot and Wikipedia are similar is that they are both driven by visitors to the site who keep adding information to the "community" that is those websites. However i feel that they are different in many aspects because Slashdot seems to be more blogging and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that can be used very easily to find information on almost any topic. Sites like Wikipedia and Slashdot are basically ran by what Johnson calls a self-regulating online community. Those sites need the reviews and posts of online visitors to keep the balance and essentially, the equilibrium of those sites. In my experience, i noticed that nobody had mentioned that Joe Pa had achieved a great milestone last year with the football team, which i think if very important, to the Penn State football wiki page. His 400th win with the team should be noted and i believe that such a milestone should be associated with the page because it basically only strengthens our reputation and positive things that we are known for.
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Post by Ben Yedwabnik on Jul 13, 2011 19:57:14 GMT -5
@ Erica
I agree with how easy it is to edit the wiki. It took no time at all, once i found what i wanted to edit, to actually edit the wiki.
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wzsun
New Member
Posts: 6
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Post by wzsun on Jul 13, 2011 20:17:40 GMT -5
@ben I can not agree more with you that Wikipedia is more of a encyclopedia and so it isn't driven by feedback and doesn't create as much of a discussion between individuals like Slashdot. Because Slashdot is like blogging it creates much more lively discussions between the users.
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Post by sdematteo on Jul 13, 2011 20:49:16 GMT -5
Changing the text written in a Wikipedia article gives a person a sense of purpose by allowing them to contribute to the overall knowledge of that subject. It doesn’t matter if you are only changing the article’s spelling and grammatical errors or actually adding fundamental pieces of knowledge into the article; by actively involving yourself in these processes you are proving Poe’s article right. The people who take the time to correct or add supplemental information to these articles show the overall good intentions of the community to provide solid, educated information that is readily available to the public. Wikipedia is similar to Slashdot in the way that it is fully self-reliant on the users to produce the contents of the site. In sites such as these, it is up to the community to eliminate the garbage, either by editing the articles in the case of Wikipedia or by giving poor ratings to a purposeless comment on Slashdot. Wikipedia’s success can only be attributed to negative feedback. Changes are made, and when these changes are not acceptable to the community, the cycle continues until a community consensus is reached. This negative feedback produces quality information that is agreed among the community to be “common knowledge.”
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Post by mrschreck on Jul 13, 2011 21:06:46 GMT -5
The authorship process was a lot easier than I thought it would be when I read the assignment. You just had to register which took two seconds and then go to the page that you wanted to edit and press the edit button. The language wikipedians use to keep the format standard was a little complicated but with the help of the help page I figured everything out. I thought the process was consistent with Poe's description because it was pretty easy and sort of fun to know the I personally have added to Wikipedia. Wikipedia and Slashdot are similar in the fact that they both depend on their users to regulate the site and to keep it running. Both sites depend on the users for making sure the information is relevant and interesting to the users. For Wikipedia to be successful their has to be many users adding content along with different users managing the content and editing it so that it is all correct. It also needs to have the users respect the site enough that they don't destroy it using the power they have. To gather collaborative knowledge their has to be a lot of feedback going on so that people will share what they know with everyone to form a larger knowledge base.
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Post by emma on Jul 13, 2011 21:09:10 GMT -5
I struggled with something to edit as well, I resorted to information about my hometown actually like Ava Nova said.
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Post by mrschreck on Jul 13, 2011 21:11:24 GMT -5
elm318I agree that the process of editing Wikipedia is so easy! So much easier that I had originally thought it would be. Also I think that it is really interesting that pages such as religions are blocked which I never would have thought but makes a lot of sense considering the things hateful people may write.
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Post by sdematteo on Jul 13, 2011 21:13:14 GMT -5
@ Ben Yedwabnik I agree with your view of these sites as being “driven by visitors to the site who keep adding information to the ‘community’ that is those websites.” The only reason these sites are successful is because of the sense of community that the users feel when contributing to them. The users are what make the sites successful.
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