Hello, Everyone:
We will devote most of Tuesday's class to a discussion of ethics and fallibility as we understand it, not simply to think about a list of rules or etiquette for navigating these things in public discourse, but to think more critically about what we expect from our readers and what we hope to achieve through our delivery of information in Wikipedia, versus in other mediums or venues. Overall, we'll be discussing the affordances and possibilities -- as well as the challenges and limitations -- of working with other people's words on the public expression of complex topics.
Near the beginning of class, I'll ask you to do some media analysis and blogging in groups to prepare for our whole-class discussion of Hood's interesting essay on "Editing Out Obscenity" and Winterowd's brief demonstration of "Beneficience" in rhetorical persuasion. I have also suggested a third perspective that might be useful for our discussion and for your blogging, and that is Gates's call for rhetorical learning experiences that help with "Integrating the American Mind." If you are blogging or responding prior to Tuesday's class, I highly recommend all three readings, since Gates's short essay may give us a more deeply philosophical reason for considering "beneficence" and "editing out obscenity" as persuasive concepts that extend beyond just writing in a single medium.
So, be prepared to talk and blog in class, and please also bring Style and When Words Collide, as we will be looking to them to help us differentiate between ethical stances on at least one issue regarding "public style."
Finally, please use this time to work diligently in your Wikipedia teams towards our April 4 deadline of having a fully fleshed-out version of your section of the article. As we discussed in class, there will be much negotiation and re-negotiation of content between sections, so it is important to draft your section as completely as you understand it, but also as clearly as you can. Ultimately, the finished article represents your informed presentation of the topic, not mine or anyone else's, and that presentation is what the Wikipedia community will decide to further take up.
Looking forward to our final weeks,
-Prof. Graban
In the readings from this week, we have synthesized the ideas on Wikipedia as it compares to relevance. This idea of relevance is also interesting because it is always changing. Wikipedia itself is always changing, being watched, and growing. We agree that it is not a weakness to see something that's not in its final 'finished product' state. It is an almost revolutionary idea in our technology -driven age to 'trust in the PROCESS.' Process is an all too important word because Wikipedia itself is a process. Readers can at any moment within this process play off of a piece and change it before its considered 'done.' Our current place in history should find this all too relevant.
ReplyDeleteThere is also this idea of shared responsibility that comes to light. Multiple authors around the world can be working on one piece which can cause contributors to feel disconnected from the responsibility/pressure that sometimes comes with creating and sharing an informative work. There is this battle between Wikipedia's creation of consequences and also NOT having to stand solely behind an opinion. The audience plays a larger/more active role in fixing the piece.
Lastly, and again, we have highlighted this concept of relevance - and the importance Wikipedia has to our specific time. There is a reason that students find Wikipedia and relevant and useful source. Therefore, it should be given the same attention by professors/teachers. It should not be written off just because it is not the old school idea of professional/a finished product. It affects the current academic culture whether it is used or not - thus making it relevant.
Joey, Katherine, Catalina:
ReplyDeleteHood p. 1 & 2
Page 1 Claims:
1. Hood claims that Wikipedia delivers pedagogy
2. Hood claims that pedagogy is a language that is familiar with those that are engaging with it (i.e students and teachers).
3. Hood claims that pedagogy is a focus on the process of editing rather than the focus on the end product due to its ever changing nature.
Page 2: Revision in Thinking
1. Claim: Wikipedia is a reliable source. Reasoning: Hood at first would not let her students cite Wikipedia in their research because she believed it to be unreliable. After she worked with the Wiki administrators she saw how seriously they took matters of obscenity and worked to fix it promptly.
2. Claim: Wikipedia is ubiquitous. Reasoning: Wikipedia is a medium that has become so popular and widely used that to ignore it in the classroom would be to ignore a useful tool for students.
3. Examples: Hood uses it herself and tells her students in her research courses to edit the entry that they use so that they are not just consumers of information they are also participants in the process.
Connections:
- In connection with Winterowd’s article and his idea of rhetoric of benefaction, Wikipedia can be considered an Agent-Beneficiary relationship because the information delivered allows for the audience to act in the case of an oblique-beneficiary, allowing both parties to benefit from the information given and the information edited from the public.
- Hood says WIkipedia's intention is to deliver pedagogy and as Winterowd puts it, we cannot fully interpret a sentence until we can supply an intention for it. Since we understand Wikipedia to be a vehicle of pedagogy, we understand its context and purpose.
In the section, “Explanation in Process,” Hood makes many claims about the editing process, and how editors should think. “The conservative nature of the Wikipedia project works against such partisanship.” With this claim, Hood believes that Wikipedia editors are consistently keeping to a minimalistic style, being suspicious of new information, while upholding the integrity of the original. Editing on Wikipedia involves making changes to articles, and thus being skeptical about certain information, while trusting in the original. Editing cannot function in the same linear fashion, but becomes a recycling of suspicion which both upholds the text at hand, while breaking it down. She also assumes that there might be discrepancy between the reading processes of finished [linear] texts, and unfinished [cyclical] texts. Some readers are not aware of the different process of Wikipedia. She also assumes that “one step forward and two steps back,” sometimes, can be progress. That in editing, time is the greatest factor to achieving a more precise readership. Wikipedia delivers pedagogy because it delivers errors. Students, when given the proper instruction by teachers, and taught how to analyze Wikipedia before they read it, can participate in the authorship of articles. When they encounter errors [and are aware of it] they can learn to edit critically.
ReplyDeleteWinterowd speaks about how to subtly diffuse intention, or the motive behind writing, by either including or not including performative verbs. “Performative verbs state intentions, and thus I like to call them “verbs of intention.” Winterowd is basically making a human-interest argument at the level of the sentence. A rhetoric of beneficence, when constructed with performative verbs, leaves some benefit, however tiny, to the agent of the sentence. Overall, it gives the language of a piece a sense of forward movement, and clear intentions. Using Winterowd’s principles might allow a Wikipedia article [and its editor] to state clearly their intentions. This rhetoric is a tool for making sentences, especially topic sentences, which open paragraphs, relate links between sections, or cite sources. Being performative in our writing will help our readers to follow our main idea, by clearly creating a relationship between the agent of the sentence and the verb.
Erik Reed
Brittany Stephens
Jordan Spina
Nick Pelton
Jenn, Danae, Chris
ReplyDeleteIn Hood's section on revision, she comments on allowing her students to use Wikipedia as a source in their research. They are required to cite the time, date, and version number due to the fact that Wikipedia is constantly changing and being edited. She also requires them to fact check and later revise the Wiki article based on their new findings and information. This supports her first claim that Wikipedia is more about the process rather than the end product. In the second section, we felt that she was making the assumption that as readers in the public sphere, we must be aware that the article has the potential to be fallible. We cant take everything that we read in this sphere at face value and must instead read and interpret with a sense of skepticism. A connection we made to Gates'and Hood's article was the idea of vandalism. Vandalism is the the defacement of public property hence any writer that intentionally uses slang, curse words, or infallible information is committing a public "crime" against Wikipedia and the international community of readers. Gates argues for writing in the public and global community of the internet; not allowing cultural or social bias to falsify or skew information.
Hood examines the process-oriented v. product-oriented differences between composing for Wikipedia and composing for the classroom. She enforces her earlier claim of process-oriented works by stating that the writing of Wikipedia “demonstrates comparable improvement over time.” The text is still in progress even if the version may appear to be final. What you may read today could be different than what you read a month from now, even if the article appears the same at face value.
ReplyDeleteRelating to Winterowd, intent plays a large role in the edits being made within Wikipedia. Winterowd says “we cannot fully interpret a sentence until we supply an intention for it” (598). Hood mentions Wikipedia neutral point of view and in a perfect world, edits would simply be made to strengthen this neutrality in an informative sphere. However, as we’ve seen in Hood’s entire essay, an edit could be made specifically for obscene purposes. Wikipedia also has rules for vandalism and other rules denote that edits aren’t meant to be taken personally. However, intent could make the different between whether or not an edit was made in earnest or it serves to undermine the previous editor. Separately, Winterowd says of sentences that they "can be extended to true rhetorical arguments" (598). These edits, however small in nature, can be linked to rhetorical situation or rhetorical choice. How sentences are constructed or revised coincides with intent and deliberation. This may or may not conflict with the neutral point of view of Wikipedia depending on the context.
Hood makes a rather bold claim about the collaborative process on Wikipedia, that the editors and collaborators come from “extremely diverse cultural and educational backgrounds.” As we’ve learned through our talks with Dr. Wadewitz, we know that the contributors to Wikipedia are mostly white males from a specific educational background. Though the pedagogy of Wikipedia may appear democratic, the demographical analysis may be quite the opposite. Gates says of colleges that they “are devoted to diversity” and that “people are genuinely upset when they fail to incorporate diversity” (343). This very same diversity is used as a selling point in Hood’s essay, but fails on the same level of historical studies in our education, in that most of our history is recounted and retold by white males of a particular background.
Amanda Diehl
Cassandra Hamilton
Assessment in Progress
ReplyDeleteHood mainly focuses on the transformation from final product-oriented writing process to one that is process-oriented. She goes into detail about how there is not an end to the writing process, but rather a moment in time when you see the document, that it is ever-changing. The process is a public conversation rather than something that has to be taken as truth. Readers are able to deny the truth of something and debate it amongst themselves and others in the act of reading. Reading is no longer simply consumption, it actively involves the audience to make sense of the subject. In this way, Wikipedia actively teaches its readers by conversing with them (rather than textbooks, which need that conversation to be taught). Mostly, Hood’s points out that the pedagogy put forth by wikipedia is nothing new... students and teachers alike have long been acquainted with the idea of audience and final products, but with wikipedia, there is a new, broader, concept of audience. A final product is now an event in time, and authorship is now a collection of citations. Now the reader does not simply consume, but is involved in the writing/editing process.
Winterowd speaks of intentionality, using assumption in performative language. For example he points out the ethics that are evident if a sentence is rhetorically intentional in speech and tone. However, the language of the articles is not requesting action from the audience- it teaches, but does not put forth an agenda.
Rachel Young and Stacey Cox
Austin Tillery, Anneleise, Morgan
ReplyDeleteBased on what we read and what we need to know for our Wikipedia project Hood emphasizes that you should focus on the process and delivery rather than the final polished product. Wiki-articles will continuously be edited causing them to never have a final polished product. Because the writing process in Wikipedia is a recursive task, you must focus more on the accuracy or inaccuracy of the information provided. The ongoing editing process goes hand in hand with what Hood explains about pedagogy, “Participating in the collaborative writing experience offered by wikis, therefore, ‘challenge[s] the very concept of authorship and readership’ (Miller 38)”
Hood’s article explains that process of editing (editing a wikipedia in this instance) is based in pedagogy. Learning the process of editing is just as, if not more, important as the final product. We thought that the Hood and Winterowd articles were not effective to read together. While they do not directly contradict each other, we came to the conclusion that Winterowd’s assumptions about intent and performative language do not apply to Wikipedia because wikipedia articles should be purely pedagogical. This brings of the questions of whether or not wikipedia and its editors have not intentions at all other than to teach. Does Wikipedia have an unbiased, un-persuasive rhetoric?
ReplyDeleteWikipedia Group 2