While working on
the Wikipedia page, I realized a few things. Firstly, editing and creating a
Wikipedia page requires more attention to detail and caution than I had
originally envisioned. Secondly, working in a ‘sandbox’ space that is
constantly updated and changed presented new challenge. For instance, at one
point, I went to insert a link to author Ridolfo at the beginning of the Public
Sphere Writing and Audience section, only to find that it had been removed. It
was very interesting for me to see Rhetorical Velocity in action, particularly,
I noticed when I was reading through some of the other sections as we were
instructed to do in class that several sentences and sections had to be changed
once read through the lens of another student, as they were interpreted
differently by the proto-audience (us). It was also challenging, in a larger
context, to keep in mind the future audience of this page.
While us students,
who are (or should be by now!) experts at this particular subject and all the
sub-theories contained within, can look at this page and not need further
explanation on the concept of, say, exigence, an ordinary person who is working
their way through Wikipedia for any reason won’t immediately understand the
concepts. Like, Ridolfo and Rife state, I had to think about my potential
audience and the ways that the information we have presented can be
interpreted.
Also, I was
struck by just how many things needed references, or even links to other pages.
My individual task was to go through the article and make sure that the
internal and external links were formatted correctly, and that things that should
be linked (like names of theorists, central ideas, and entities such as
Facebook and National Geographic) were linked properly. I thought of Weibe’s
essay on plagiarism, and how even the misattribution of a quote or idea can be
considered a violation of ethics. With that in mind, I think the whole class
was striving to make sure that we did not violate Wikipedia’s
Community Guidelines. The most difficult part of this task was learning to do
my edits section by section, as I tend to focus too much on the work as a
whole. More than once, my edits were stymied by an ‘edit conflict’, meaning I
had to go back and try and merge the edits, which can be pretty grueling.
