Wiki Lab 5

For my interdisciplinary studies class, I was asked to write a short reflection about my experience with Wiki. Here it is.

Reflection on Wiki

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias include information about everything known to man, especially online ones that have no size restrictions. As such, Wikipedia as a whole requires input from all of the traditional disciplines in order to be complete. In addition, each individual article can include every imaginable piece of information on a given subject. The articles themselves are inherently multidisciplinary, since the authors, with their wide variety of backgrounds and experiences, approach subjects from a variety of angles and include information in the articles that is drawn from their own areas of expertise. However, tying all these multifarious facts about a subject into a coherent article that is understandable by any given layperson requires interdisciplinary metathinking.

As a student, I am accustomed to writing for an audience (such as a professor) that already shares background knowledge of my topic. However, Wikipedia is open to the general public, including people who have never even heard of some of the subjects in the articles that they read. Therefore, the articles must be written for a very general audience without assuming familiarity with any related information—although having internal links to other Wikipedia articles that pertain to the subject at hand is very useful in keeping articles short, since each one does not have to reiterate the same background information included in others. Writing Wiki articles helped me learn to explain a subject while avoiding the use of excessive discipline-specific jargon, at least not without including some sort of definition of the vocabulary, either in the form of an in-text explanation or by including links.

Working on Wiki is also an exercise in learning to get along with other people from a bunch of different disciplines. Since most articles require input from many different disciplines, experts from each field who are working on an article are likely to have different visions of what information is relevant to the article, mostly based solely on the perspectives and approaches of their specific discipline(s). This can lead to clashes and edit wars. Interdisciplinarians can help to integrate these various visions so that all parties get along.

Of course, sometimes experts in a field that might be especially relevant to an article (at least in their opinions) are unwilling to listen to the opinions of non-experts. This represents a problem that interdisciplinary studies majors are likely to come across at some point in our careers, as we have discussed in class. Learning to get along with such people is less stressful and easier in a context, such as Wikipedia, that does not have any real bearing on our academic or professional lives (as could a similar conflict in the workplace). This way we can be prepared if we encounter such problematic situations in the “real world.” Naturally, these are skills that everyone should develop, not just interdisciplinarians, so they are applicable to other parts of life as well. (I have been fortunate enough not to encounter such difficult people as described above, but I have seen them on Talk: pages for articles to which I did not contribute, so they are out there.)

Before this project, I did not know that Wiki was not an authoritative reference source. Even though I knew not to trust everything I read on the Internet (although it is really hard to get over the cultural belief that writing creates truth—but that is a separate issue), the label “encyclopedia” led me to believe that Wikipedia was as trustworthy as any other reference source. Now I know that it is useful as a source of basic information on many subjects and as a starting point for research, but that it is not a source to be cited in a scholarly paper, for example.

However, I know that there are many people who still believe that Wiki is a fully reliable source of information, so I feel compelled to stop the spread of misinformation whenever I find it. I do not think I will ever be as active as many other Wikipedians (many of whom simply have way too much time on their hands), but I will probably continue editing articles when I have time.

Reflection on Reflection

As I read over your reflection of Wikipedia I have to commend you for not "knocking" Wiki like I feel I do in my relfection. I could argue that I had a considerably "worse" experience with Wiki than you, however, I think its good that you lay out the basics of what Wiki is, what it is used for, and how you appreciate it for what it is. I liked that you are proactive in the sense that you, "feel compelled to stop the spread of misinformation whenever I find it." Good job, although you might not have an uber amount of time on your hands like so many wikipedians, I think its cool that you're still up for helping to keep the information simple and accurate. Lvlnglafoftneatsteak

I agree about how it's very neat that there are links to other topics within the articles so that the articles do not have to be forever long. My favorite way to edit the Wiki was to choose random articles and unlink the red ones because red links are bad. Hooray! Mmmhmm! Marieprecious 00:16, 4 December 2006 (UTC)