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Final Group Report for the Cheshire Cat Page

Team Members: User: Isabella.krell, User: Hkm24, User: Abbysonn and User: Carolynella

Contributions to The Cheshire Cat Article

To begin, we chose to re-organize the entire page. This consisted of removing unnecessary spaces, which improved the aesthetic of the page. We then re-structured the headings and subheadings to create a better flow for the article, and make it easier to read and navigate. We decided to structure the article using a reverse pyramid structure, with the most general information at the top. First, we introduce the character's origins, then its adaptation in Lewis Carroll's story, followed by the Cheshire Cat's roles in various movies and TV shows, and so on. We then went through the text of the article to make sure all internal links were present, such as Lewis Carroll, Tim Burton, and Disney, to ensure that readers could explore the character background more thoroughly. Finally, we added comparison charts as well as images to improve the physical appearance of the page.
- In our comparison chart, we included the three most famous representations of the Cheshire Cat: Disney's 1950 movie, Disney's 1991 TV Show, and Tim Burton's (for Disney) 2010 movie. In that, we included the Screen Media Adaptation, it's Distribution Medium (whether film or TV show), the Cheshire Cat's appearance and behavior in each production, and an image of the cat.
We chose to beef up the section on Disney's adaptation of the Cheshire Cat in the 1951 "Alice in Wonderland" because that is seems to be the most widely proliferated rendition of the character. We felt this was necessary because this seems to be the most popular rendition. In the Disney section, we added quotes and other distinguishable characteristics unique to the 1951 adaption.
Through our research, we found that "Cheshire Cat" is often used as a metaphor to describe several scientific phenomena. There was no science section when we began editing, so we added a sub-heading.
User: Protonk gave us feedback throughout the editing process. We debated whether to structure the page in paragraph form or in bullets/lists. We decided to structure the page in bullets, so readers have an easier time navigating the article. We took User: Protonk's advice, and added short introductions to each of the subheadings to help with organization.

Evolution of The Article

When we first came across the Cheshire Cat page, there was a solid base of information for us to jump off from. However, the overall organization and structure of the page was a bit of a mess. We noted that some sections were more developed than others, and decided to focus the majority of our efforts in to fleshing out the small sections, restructuring the page, and adding some images/figures to create a more professional look. We posted our plans for a design overhaul to the article's Talk page, and pretty immediately received feedback from User: Protonk. He was happy we had decided to edit this page. We began doing research, and found many scholarly articles that reference the Cheshire Cat in various scientific fields. The page did not have a section on science, so we added one. We also noted that there were many sub-headings that talked about each adaptation of the character. We decide to add a table that breaks down each adaptation of the Cheshire Cat character. We thought this was the best way to structure these sections so readers could easily compare each rendition of the character. Finally, we completely restructured the article. We reorganized sub-headings, and moved around some the content so there was a more consistent flow. Throughout the editing process, User: Protonk would check up on us and give us advice about our edits. We also considered feedback we received from our Professor, TAs, and classmates.

Process of Familiarizing Ourselves with Wikipedia

A lot of what we learned about Wikipedia came from what was discussed in class. We each practiced editing our Sandbox. Also, the "Show preview" option was helpful to check up on our work as we were editing. We had to make sure we were drawing from reliable sources as we were adding content. We had some help from Wikipedia users when we were finding sources initially. Everything else, we learned by reading how-tos and the pamphlets we were given in class.

One aspect of the editing process that we had a problem with was that we could not live edit the pages all at once. In the past, when we have worked on group projects, Google Drive was the tool we used collaboration, which allows for multi-user simultaneous editing. We eventually got tired of getting "Edit Conflict" notifications and decided to meet in person and make edits to each section as group. It would have been much easier if we could all edit at once, but it would make tracking the page's edit history more difficult.

One Wikipedia norm that we struggled with throughout our project was avoiding making too many small edits to the article. In order for the edit history to be clear and readable, it is best to avoid making too many minor edits in a row. In order to avoid this, we began by editing sections of the articles in our own personal sandboxes. However, since our group all worked on the page simultaneously, it became confusing to remember what had been updated in the talk page v/s the article.

Another Wikipedia norm we struggled with keeping other Wikipedians in the loop about our thought processes and work. Typically, Wikipedia editors discuss their thoughts on talk pages, but in our situation, the four members of our group were able to talk in person and over text and email. In order to keep the other Wikipedians up to date with our thought process, we would post long paragraph-like updates with our progress and plans for future work. In future projects, we should aim to provide more frequent and shorter edits rather than long one once a week.

Community Experience

As the purpose of this project was to immerse ourselves an online community to understand how its users interact, our group appropriately finished the project with a secure understanding of Wikipedia's norms for participation and interactive process of content creation.

We did a great job of interacting with each other through the article's talk page, helping us understand what our individual roles and goals would be for this assignment. We also were very fortunate to have another Wikipedia user Protonk interact with us so many times and give us such helpful advice. We are able to discuss potential new sections with him as well as understand what a good page layout looks like in the Wikipedia setting, since he has been working with this community for a while. Overall, leaving messages and suggestions on own article's talk page was very conducive to receiving feedback and initiating interactions throughout the project.

On another hand, it was hard to keep contact with other users outside of the Cheshire Cat article's talk page. User: Carolynella reached out to a user called HairyDan, but the user never responded to her. User: Hkm24 reached out to the following WikiProjects: Cats, Cheshire, and Fictional Characters, and also heard back from no one. User: Isabella.krell reached out to user DavidWBrooks because he was part of one of the WikiProjects related to the Cheshire Cat but again, did not hear back from him. While the lack of response from these user bases were initially disappointing, it did not deter us from making strong progress throughout the assignment. Between the four of us as well as our mentor figures (class instructors, classmates, Protonk), we were extremely productive.

What was odd, was that the rate of response for activity that did not directly call upon another user for assistance was extremely fast. For example, when two of our group members uploaded pictures from Google Images (labeled for noncommercial reuse) onto the Wikipedia Commons, and embedded the images within the article, they were almost immediately flagged as copyright violations and removed from the article. While we found these changes just, the speed with which they were made was surprising. Similarly, when our group met to make final edits on October 5th, a user named WikkanWitch was very quick to reverse some edits made by User: Hkm24 and User: Carolynella, because she has been following the talk page and obviously received notification that we had made adjustments to the format and content of the article. Again, while we understood her changes and appreciated them, we were impressed and appreciative of the rate at which she responded to our activity. These two experiences truly proved to us how a collaborative working space like Wikipedia's backend can be very supportive if all involved parties are respectful and attentive to other users' contributions.

Hkm24 (talk) 20:37, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Breakdown of Group Members' Work

Talk Page: From beginning to end, all four of us proposed new content and found sources to support new content's relevance and significance. (Together we found 10 new sources to add to the article.) We also took time to respond to users who were commenting on our page, such as IshtiaqueAhmedCornell; Protonk; our classmates im257, Jordan_Wech, abs296, KathyQX94; and LeshedInstructor. Most importantly, we collectively discussed, in depth, each suggestion proposed by feedback providers. While not all suggestions were put into place within our article, the insight behind each suggestion (i.e. opinion that organizational flow can be improved through paragraph-form copy) was directly used to modify the article's content for maximal readability and informativeness.
- Hkm24 did an awesome job of responding to many users and explaining all of our edits in depth, Abbysonn spoke to Protonk a couple of times about how to improve certain parts of the article, Carolynella responded to IshtiaqueAhmedCornell comment regarding the inclusion of Disney-exclusive content and made those edits where appropriate on the article page. She also contacted IshtiaqueAhmedCornell and LeshedInstructor to ask about a questionably-sourced reference that would prove beneficial to our page because of its origins (the article is published on behalf of a community closely-related to Cheshire County.) Isabella.krell also spoke to Protonk, as well as organized the structure of the Talk Page to detail each members' contributions, and lay out the sections regarding "Sources we plan on using, and for what" and the "References" section.
Structure/Organization of Cheshire Cat article: Isabella.krell removed all of the blank spaces from the page as well as added links to other Wikipedia articles throughout the entire article. Hkm24 was responsible for re-organizing the different sections of the page (creating new sections, re-naming sections, etc.), and tweaking the content within to provide introductory transitions within each sub-section. Abbysonn took part in the writing of some of these introductory sentences.
Inclusion of Charts and Images: Hkm24 spearheaded the creation of the Cross-Film Comparison Chart and the rest of the group was responsible for making appropriate text and image edits.
Science section: Since our group noticed from the beginning that the article was missing a science section, all four of us were responsible for finding appropriate science articles. Abbysonn, Hkm24 and Isabella.krell took up the job of writing out the section.
Group Meeting: We met as a group on October 05, 2014 to make final edits to the Cheshire Cat article and to incorporate piece of feedback and advice given to us. All edits were vocalized as a team, but often times one person made the edits on Wikipedia for convenience purposes.