Wikipedia: The much-maligned fount of information that we have been warned to avoid since our days in high school. In my opinion, the negative reputation surrounding it is largely unwarranted. I found the process of creating a new Wiki page to be a fantastic window into the world of social and collaborative writing: a world that I have had little to no exposure to.
In choosing my article, I first attempted to think of things I was interested in that were not already apart of Wikipedia in some capacity. This was an immensely difficult task, as most anything one can think of is already archived in Wikipedia in some capacity. Even after I had some semblance of a list, I had to consider whether I could contribute substantially to any of these subjects. And thus my list diminished further. Then I decided to approach from a different angle: I could peruse the list of requested articles on Wikipedia for topics that were interesting to me. After several investigations and “trial-runs” I settled upon the Slim Phatty: a stripped down and relatively simple synthesizer made by Moog. I scoured the Internet for information, and soon found my work was cut out for me. Being a new piece of hardware it was challenging to find many unbiased sources and references. I mainly had to settle for articles displaying the technical specifications for the hardware. After wringing my sources dry, I was left with about 200 to 300 words short of the requirements. I decided the best way to remedy the situation would be to create another, shorter article to augment my lacking word-requirement. Using a method similar to how I found the Slim Phatty, I chose another digital instrument. This instrument was a synthesizer in the shape of a guitar: the Misa Kitara. With this, I was able to easily bulk out my overall word length with ease by using templates I had already established in my Slim Phatty article.
Typical though this process may have been, it was often times an excursion into unconventional writing practice. Before I even wrote my articles, I examined existing articles that related heavily to the ones I wanted to write. For example, I read pages on synthesizers when brainstorming for my own synthesizer articles. In doing so, I picked up on the type of language and even structure I should use to approach them. A piece by James Porter from our textbook Writing About Writing comes to mind. In it, Porter makes the case that all writing is “intertextual”. In other words, all writing is made up of bits and pieces borrowed from a variety of sources to which the writer is exposed. The writer then assembles these borrowed pieces to create their own unique work (Porter). This is very true to my experience, for I wished to sound as professional and as credible as possible, and as such, opted to use similar formats and phrasing to the existing pages I had examined. This included how I presented the information, as well as the use of tables and “info-boxes” to display technical information for the electronics. A distinction should be made between this process and overtly copying work that has already been created. The driving point behind intertextuality is that while you may borrow bits of other writings, you incorporate and contextualize them in ways unique to you and your message.
As I mentioned above, writing for Wikipedia necessitates a completely unbiased tone. Obviously Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which brings with it distinct connotations for the type of writing and tone that should be used. This was especially tricky, as every writing and work of a writer has his or her own personal bias and tone to it; a point made by Donald Murray in his article All Writing is Autobiography (Murray). Murray describes at length how unique and personal any work by a writer is to the writer in question. Thus, a new obstacle had been created. Thankfully, the remedy was simply to be mindful of the style and tone of my work, and to sound as “encyclopedic” as possible.
When it comes to writing, even the most informal of work is multifaceted, with at least some degree of review and rewriting occurring. The method for authoring Wikipedia pages is an intensely multifaceted process on several levels. As with any writing, you must first have a draft of sorts to work from. Then, you must proceed through the Wiki article creation wizard. Most people will also work from their personal “user space” to see what the article will look like before submission. After a lengthy session of toil and work refining your page, making sure citations are correctly in place is the last step. You must incorporate your sources and citations to make it a legitimate article, as your page won’t stand up to scrutiny if proper sources aren’t in place. All of this finally culminates in the submitting of the article, which opens it up to the public for review from editors on the website; any one of whom may shoot down your piece and have it removed from the published pages of Wikipedia. Looking through an articles history page can divulge a wealth of insight into the creation of an article. This is a profound luxury that isn’t available in many (if any) forms of writing. This can benefit other writers/editors, as it allows for one to examine the “life” of an article and see how far it has progressed and evolved since its inception: creating writing that is so dynamic, that it is essentially alive. I say this, as articles never stop being edited. Some of the oldest articles on Wikipedia have edits numbering in the tens of thousands and spanning up to a decade of time. As we saw in class, the page for Shakespeare has been edited an inordinate number of times and as early as 2001.
What do I have to say after authoring two Wiki pages? I stand by my comment at the beginning of this paper. Wikipedia is undeniably a fountain of information that can (and has already) put an infinite amount of knowledge at the fingertips of any whom would choose to investigate its many articles and pages. Some question the credibility of a knowledgebase operated by anyone and everyone. To that point, I recall Joseph M. Williams’ article The Phenomenology of Error, which discusses the nature of error as social construct. Here, he essentially argues in favor of the validity of language usage that a rigid interpretation of a language may consider “incorrect”, stating that they are the products of society and almost a higher (and acceptable) form of slang (Williams). Not only that, but Wiki pages are kept open for constant and perpetual revision; allowing for the accumulation of additional knowledge by means of new pages and new revisions to existing pages. This gives it, and similarly socially geared websites, a major edge when compared to more traditional sources of information. That people can contribute new pages, and countless others may come behind them and polish their fledgling article to a professional sheen is simply remarkable.
Murray, Donald. "All Writing is Autobiographical." Writing About Writing. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2011. 57-65. Print.
Porter, James. "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community." Writing About Writing. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2011. 87-96. Print.
Williams, Joseph M. "The Phenomenology of Error." Writing About Writing. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2011. 38-54. Print.
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