Wikipedia Reflection

While working on the Wikipedia project, I did my best to incorporate the most information I could into my section. As I was writing about Literacy in the classroom, and being a former education major, I felt I had a strong knowledge base of how classrooms work and how multimodality needs to be incorporated into the classrooms. I worked to present the information I found through Gunther Kress' book Literacy in the New Media Age to present clear information on the changes of the classroom and the incorporation of technology.

While working on the editing process, I just worked through my section making sure that my writing was clear. I wanted the information to be simple, not containing any unknown terminology. Wikipedia is for all people and I wanted my writing to be understandable by everyone, not just a specific audience. I went through my section, defining any unknown terms, and clarifying any vague concepts. Finally, I just focused on the grammar and punctuation, making sure my presentation was acceptable.

Throughout the writing and editing process, I did struggle in writing for a general audience. Most of the writing I do is for classroom assignments and for a teacher, who has a background information on my topic. Writing for an audience that doesn't know about multimodality meant that I could leave no vague terms or not explain a concept.

Mostly I did enjoy the writing process. I think I learned more about how to focus my writing to a general audience rather than a specific one. I think that my section of the wikipedia article is clear and coherent.

Editing Analysis: April O'Neil of Teenange Mutant Ninja Turtles

When editing the April O'Neil article, my goal was to eliminate incorrent grammar and superfluous wording, among other things. The article is pretty poorly written, but still provided good information. Large chunks were written in passive voice, adding unnecessary wording and creating extremely awkward sentences. I did my best to rephrase them, while still keeping the same meaning in the sentences. I stuck with Bazerman's rules of intertextuality, trying to put the article in to clear understandable words. Some of the sections were very "professionally" written, like someone writing a research paper, while other parts were lax in grammar, punctuation, and cohesion. I did my best to fix most of them.

Other areas of the section were too over simplified. April O'Neil's relationship with Casey Jones and her job  as a reporter were key plot lines to various incarnation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Sections about her and Jones' relationship were glossed over, usually only a few sentences, while details of her job as a reporter were minute details or not expanded upon.

In fixing and/or pointing out these errors I hope I clarified what was confusing and removed the poor grammar and passive voice from most of the article. I think the article has good potential but with its poor writing, I don't think it will  appeal to most people.

Wikipedia Comparison

Part I

In comparing the biographies of Marshall McLuhan and Michelle Citron, I noticed very clear differences. In McLuhan's biography, there was more information. about McLuhan himself, as well as his published works. After the brief biography, his life is then categorized by his books, when they were published, and what they were about. The page was a complete timeline of information from his birth to his death, and it covered the main points and achievements of McLuhan's life. In contrast, Michelle Citron's page was much shorter, and not complete. Citron's biography was brief, her "early years" section only two lines, and her "career" section only two paragraphs. While there was key information in these paragraphs, I feel that there could definitely be more to them. The rest of her page is separated into various graphs, listing her filmography--only a partial list-- and section on her published books. There was also no picture, so I don't even know what she looks like. The page feels incomplete. There must be more than two sentences worth about her early years, there must be more information about her career. When compared to McLuhan's page, Citron's falls very short, offering meager amounts of information where there could be more.

When comparing a Wikipedia article to a Stanford Encyclopedia article, I found myself in a similar situation to when comparing Citron and McLuhan. While the the Wiki article has good information about Sedgwick--his life, works, and small facts about him-- The Stanford article is much more in depth. The stanford article covers his life, his religious upbringing and philosophies, as well as his political views, workings, and more. Each section is long, containing multiple paragraphs about various parts of his life and work.

Part II
The featured article I chose, about the beagle, is very long, providing information of the history, varieties, and descriptions of the dog as a breed. When comparing it to the FA criteria, it falls well within the boundaries. The article is from a neutral point of view, offering no opinions or original research. The history seems well researched, going back to the 18th century. The information is categorized in a clear manner, and there is no awkward jumping from one time to another. The lead is clear, concise and well written, the article has pictures and multiple hyper links to other pages, and summarizes clearly, without unnecessary tangents. Overall I think the article is complete, follows the FA criteria to a T, and is well written.

This or That? A Comparison of Wikipedia articles

The two articles I chose to examine were both related to public discourse, but as far apart as possible from each other in terms of completion and quality. 

The first article I chose was the page titled “Private Sphere.” As it is related to my class and my class research, I thought it might have some interesting information. However, the page only provided me two paragraphs of information on the private sphere. I have a brief definition of what the private sphere is, as well as an example, and an idea about the private sphere from a philosopher. Despite the little amount of information, it seemed fairly solid and there was no contradiction. Many of the words in the paragraphs were hyper linked to other wiki pages that were useful and could expand more on rhetorical spheres and unknown terms. The information all came from one source, a book by a man name Jürgen Habermas. As there was no information on the author, nor research from any other source, and possibility of this article being a reliable source were slim. However, Wikipedia did mark the article as incomplete so there is a chance for it to be finished and filled with more than one reliable source.

The second artcile I chose was a biography of Martin Heidigger, a philosopher and author. The page is extensive, providing information about Heidigger's early years, his books, his influences his philosophies on religion, and even his associations with Nazism in World War II. There are multiple photos with small bit of corroborating information below to support the information given in the article. Similar to the article on the private sphere, this page had many hyper-links to lead to other pages, and the information was solid and did not contradict itself. Unlike the first article, however, the page on Heidigger had a much more rounded set of sources. The information on the Wikipedia page came from over one hundred sources, many of which were journals, books by well accredited authors, and reliable web sites. The page seemed complete in its entirety and looked to be quite a reliable source of information.

 While Wikipedia does have some unreliable pages, there are others that can prove useful. I think the usefulness of a Wiki page depends entirely on its number of legitimate sources, such as known authors and journal publications.

Time in the News Media

Since the formation and defining of rhetoric, time has always played a crucial part in its creation. Time was used to define various types of speeches, such as epideictic speeches and reports, and is even used in measuring speech patterns. However, Killingsworth states that time in rhetoric is more than just determining what speech types to use, but also for determining what arguments to use and when.
Killingsworth mentions kairos and exigence, kairos being the use of the right argument, and exigence being the idea that topics become urgent at certain points in time. He says that the use of both is determined by the audience and speaker making the mutual decision that a certain moment is the right moment for urgency. I agree with Killingsworth's idea. Both the speaker and the audience must determine the correct moment for urgency, otherwise, there would be a failure in discourse. If the moment is not right, the audience might not find information important, or the speaker will be giving information already known to the audience. Without that mutual decision, there is no discourse.
Killingsworth states that news media use the appeal to time to create value in change. The audience wants to know what is new, thus presenting "news" with its name and purpose. The news is a 24/7 cycle, with new material being discovered and released by the seconds. Without the appeal to time, and what is "new" there is no exchange of information between the speaker and the audience.
From what I gathered at first reading Killingworth's portion on news and time, my first thought was that "without time, there is no news". I believe that in a way that is true. Information is released constantly, but without an appeal to time, there is no way to determine the old news from the new news on a wide scale. If there is no appeal to time, there is no constant need to know what has changed.

In Class Activity 12/14

Question 2:
In the New Yorker's article "Why Cheney and Boehner Don't Think that Obama is Brave", I believe there is a creation of simulated argument. The author presents arguments from both Boehner and Cheney about why Obama should not be in office, but there is no agreement in argument. Boehner and Cheney each have their own ideas. Also, there was no combative argument from members of the Democratic Party in the article. There is no defense for President Obama and therefore no actual argument, rather a statement of opinions from one biased party about another biased party.

Question 3:
Dick Cheney quite obviously violates the usage rule when he is quoted saying "I think the President’s performance, by my standards, in the international arena, the Middle East and so forth, is worse than many of my friends and colleagues deem his domestic policies.” His use of the phrase "by my standards" is vague, unclear, and biased through his opinion. There is no set standards listed to evaluate the performance of the President, so Cheney's use of "by my standards" is not only biased and vague, it is incomparable to anything that might be non-biased.

Question 4:
I don't believe the article I chose has any ideographs in the text. While it does have many key terms with which most of the audience would be familiar, there are no terms acting to inspire familiar association of the audience or that carries ideological assumptions.

Analysis of My Editing Process

While I was editing Fish's article, my first goal was to clear up any vagueness. Multiple times, Fish alludes to previous subjects, but with vague wording such as "this" and "it". I felt that this could lead to misunderstanding as defined by Kaufer. I thought that not specifying what Fish was refering to created a Level 1 misunderstanding. The reader would not properly understand the intended reference of certain statements. By changing wording to specify which previous argument Fish was trying to use, the content was clarified and easier to understand.
I also wanted to make sure Fish used proper grammar and punctuation. Multiple sentences began with conjunctions, sentences ended in prepositions, and unnecessary wording. Using Style's methods of grammar, I removed any improper grammar usage. I also removed any unnecessary pieces of information, such as Fish's descriptions of Maloney and Moore.