User:Xinchi M/analysis

This subpage contains a reflection article about my personal experiences of creating/developing a Wikipedia page and how they are related to the semester’s coursework.

Wikipedia Page: To Live (novel)

Finding the Topic

In this class, our very first assignment is to complete Wikipedia Essentials and Editing Basics tutorials, which takes about an hour in total. The user interface of the tutorials is clean and nicely designed, and forms of exams are used to enhance the understanding of the contents. Furthermore, after completion, users would have already established their accounts and have actually performed a couple of “edits” on a simulated Wikipedia page. I think this tutorial feature is very helpful and important for newcomers to get a taste of being a new Wikipedian. Personally, I’m not aware before this class that everyone can edit/add contents and pages on Wikipedia. After completing the tutorials, I was surprised that people only need to learn a few techniques to make a personal change of information that located on a large and established public domain. I also like the fact that on the top of Wikipedia homepage, it was clearly stated that Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that any one can edit. According to Kraut and Resnick, identifying and highlighting a community's purpose and successes at achieving the purpose would help imporve members' normative commitments (2011, p. 103).

For the next step, the whole class needs to find one topic they want to write about or add content to. We are provided with links to Requested Articles on Wikipedia and a personalized lists of articles that need improvement by our university staff members. We can also choose a topic of interest/skills of ourselves. According to Kraut and Resnick, making the list of needed contributions accessible can improve the chance that community members will provide them (2011, p. 26). Personally, I find it time-consuming and a bit challenging to create a new page/add on existing page of personal interests and skills since Wikipedia has already been a well-established public domain for a long period of time. At first, I tried to add something both in the field of my major and my interest: television and film production. However, almost all the well-known and widespread media programs have already been developed into a relatively “perfect article.” I then start to look up media programs from other cultures that I’m familiar with on Wikipedia, which include well-known programs within South Korea, Japan and Mainland China. To my surprise, most of these nationally famous programs already have developed pages in English, and a large percentage of them are just as “complete” as the pages of successful American programs. For example, a Japanese anime show that has only become well known for less than a year already has its lengthy English Wikipedia page. I realized it would be harder to find a topic of interest on Wikipedia since most worthy topics have already been covered. However, I think people are more motivated about and devoted to topics they actually care about and have previous knowledge with. After another couple of searches in the field of classic Chinese novels, I find the page of 1993 novel To Live. Before I started to further develop the page, it had a good introduction paragraph and an accurate summary of the story, but other sections are less organized and some important aspects of the novel had not been mentioned: Special:Permalink/570047040. Furthermore, the page had a template on top indicating the article did not have enough valid citations for verification, based on the fact that the reference section only contained one source (the the book itself). I choose to improve this article because this book, aside from being one of the most influential and critically acclaimed Chinese classic novels, has significant historical and cultural value in terms of understanding/studying Chinese society. I also happened to read this book twice in mandarin and had a good understanding of the story’s historical background. It is argued that people is more willing to contribute in an online group whey they consider their contribution can be unique (Kraut & Resnick, 2011, p. 64). Because of my previous knowledge and experience with this book, I consider myself as competent to develop this specific topic and is motivated to do so.

Improving the Article

Once the topic had been chosen, I started to search for valid resources and studies about this book in English language, however, little could be found through Google. Then I found due to the book’s age, even through the Chinese search engine (Baidu), only a few academically valid resources can be found. Though there is an established online encyclopedia about the novel in mandarin, most of its links to outside resources have become invalid or expired. On the Chinese page, I found a list of book reviews from more than five major newspapers and journal magazines of the United States including The Washington Post and Time magazine. The website failed to provide links/references to the original resources, which was not too surprising consider the age of the novel. After a couple different failed attempts to search the original resources of these reviews, I decided to not address them since it was also inappropriate to translate the reviews back to English by myself. I did translate and use some contents from the Chinese encyclopedia to add on my page, including the significant rewards the book had received globally, its cultural implications and its from of rhetoric within Chinese society and literature. Through the university library database, I did then find a few scholar articles discussing the book and its influence.

After choosing the topic, the class was suggested to find and learn from Wikipedia articles with related topics. I used the page of a well-known Japanese novel Norwegian Wood as my guide. From this article, I learned both the sense of structure fro a novel and what content I should include. After comparing the two articles, I decided to add both the section of “Film Adaption” and “Introduction of Main Characters” on the page of To Live. I was also able to find academically book reviews from the novel’s website on Amazon (the reviews are retrieved from the front cover of the book’s hardcopy). The reviews were mostly written by Chinese scholars but were well translated. As assigned, we first created a summary version of our article in our sandbox subpages and then as we keep “growing” them, we can move the articles from subpages to the main space. In my case, since the novel already had a page, I first named the article To Live novel By Yu Hua and moved it into the real website. After a couple days, I found that the pages of new and old articles had already merged into the same page together under the name of To Live (novel) by Wikipedia Special:Permalink/745512051.

To be honest, I was a little offended by the first edit the new page had received. A user undid all the changes I had made and turned the article back to what it was, with the comment stating that I should not use Amazon reviews for the novel, especially since all the reviews are positive. I got irritated by the user’s edit not because I disagreed with the comment, but he or she should have changed the reviews section rather than undo everything. A performance feedback can only enhance motivations for users if it is perceived as sincere (Kraut & Resnick, 2011, p. 49). In this case, since the Wikipedian didn't even bother to spend a couple more seconds to delete the specific section, I did not consider his/her feedback as sincere. I got worried until I realized I could just undo the user’s edit myself. However, I did get rid of the Amazon reviews since I didn’t want the user to come back and start an “edit war.” Another problem I encountered with was how to put pictures of the novel’s cover on the page without violating the copyrights. The professor suggested I take photos of the book by myself and upload them. I found pictures of the book’s English cover and Chinese cover on my laptop and used iPhone to take the photos Special:Permalink/747826506. Shortly after the upload, a Wikipedian deleted the photos due to reason of copyright violation. I then tried to retrieve a similar cover photo from a legitimate book review website in Spanish and linked it as the resource, and so far the photo still remains on the page. Besides these changes, small edits were also made by several Wikipedians to improve the article’s overall grammar and language. I did eventually put the Amazon reviews back on and labeled it as “editorial reviews”. Just recently, a Wikipedia administrator deleted my section of “Quotes” and commented that it violated copyright. However, the administrator also deleted a large portion of editorial reviews and some general introduction without explaining further (before the edit: Special:Permalink/751077129). I think she/he must consider the deleted information as redundant or unnecessary. I found out that an administrator’s edit cannot be undone, but I did try to add some content back. In this case, I did not specifically feel offended by the administrator's edit, which supported the argument that people would be more likely to comply with requests from users with higher status (Kraut & Resnick, 2011, p. 33).

Conclusion

Overall, I enjoyed the experience of contributing to a Wikipedia page and to the community. I am also amazed by the fact that in the contemporary society, Wikipedia can become so organized and established as a successful public domain without any profit being involved.

References

Kraut, R. E., & Resnick, P. (2011). Building successful online communities: Evidence-based social design. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.