Assignment 1 Submissions

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• Name: David Jodoin

My Wikipedia work was focused on contribution to the wiki page on VoIP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_Internet_Protocol. I selected this wiki as I have done a significant amount of work related to next generation voice networks and have designed and developed solutions in this industry. My edits were primarily NPOV edits to the Fax handling section of the wiki and the discussion of T.38 faxing over UDP vs. IP vs. analog. I selected this section as I found the section needed citations for some of the statements made by prior authors. I specifically added a couple of references and re-edited some of the language to be less opinionated and more factual from an objective point of view.

Specifically I found some of the language to be somewhat whimsical as the author attempted to act as an authority on the topic, yet I found some of the statements made were either anecdotal in nature and not backed by any rigorous research. In addition, statements were made which belied the authors biases toward the topic and sounded immature; making me wonder how old the person was who wrote it.

I experimented with my entries to see if something comes up on my watch-list for this topic by in some cases deleting entire sentences of prior writers statements in favor of my own. I also used an online shopping mart as one reference to see if the reference itself would be disallowed due to it being commercial in nature. I am anxious to see the result of these two edits. Of course when providing citations in other areas that needed it, I relied on actual RFCs or academic based definitions for factual representation.

The neutral point of view (NPOV) stance within Wikipedia is a critical component of creating trusted information. There will always be opinions that will be expressed or reflected by various authors, however, with peer review combined with NPOV the information that at first may seem opinionated can indeed be of value in helping guide the NPOV results of follow on editors. Without the threat of having your submission removed due to non NPOV content, I would think Wikipedia would revert into an endless see of contradictions, rants and rave with authors in chaotic conflict never progressing toward a useful result.

For instance, I could easily state that T.38 faxing is by no means a true replacement for traditional fax over copper lines, and my opinion is universally shared by those who use it or implement it. However, in doing so, I am not exposing the underlying problem in that T.38 faxing is a means to accommodate legacy fax machines using a transmission standard that is long out of date. In fact I could go on to say that an entirely new era of technology needs to be developed that answers the call to solve the same problem that faxing does, but in a different way. But due to the enormous amounts of these machines which exist in the marketplace, that is an evolutionary transformation that will only be slowed by our continued attempts of keeping a dying technology alive. If we continue to support faxing in general, we might as well revive the 8track tape or the laser disc.

I wonder what kind of discussions would ensue if I posted that on the wiki. Maybe I will if I don't get comments on what edits I did post.

--Lunatixcoder 15:47, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

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• Liz Davis - Response to Assignment 1

I chose to focus on the Wikipedia rule of "Neutral Point of View." I edited the article on Creative Commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons. This article included a banner requesting that the lead section be expanded. According to Wikipedia the lead of an article should both introduce and summarize the content of the article. I expanded on one of the paragraphs and added an additional paragraph introducing and summarizing the article below.

In the process of expanding the lead, I focused on ensuring that all of my information was referenced with verifiable sources. I used the book "The Public Domain" by James Boyle as one of my sources and the Creative Commons website as the other source. I tried to keep my own opinions and experiences, except where I could back those up with external sources, out of the article. However, I did push the limits a bit with these two sentences, "An easy to understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons License. This simplicity distinguishes Creative Commons from an all rights reserved copyright." I was curious to see if another editor might find these statements too opinionated and thus not from a "Neutral Point of View."

At the time of writing this, there have been no significant changes to my revisions. Someone did go in and hack the page briefly by adding the line "hossein esmaili is a good." One minute later this line was removed. There have been some very minor changes to my page since my edit, fixes to my spacing, but no content has been changed or edited. I'm not sure if I should assume from this that my edits were acceptable or that no one has taken the time to look it over and make any substantial changes. Also, the banner requesting revision to the lead is still there. I'm not sure who takes that down, or how that will be affected by the changes that I made to the introduction.

I think the rule of "Neutral Point of View" is essential to the effectiveness of Wikipedia as a source. Editors should strive to be objective when adding content to Wikipedia. There are other venues for subjectivity. Consumers of information on Wikipedia are looking for unbiased, referenced general information about a variety of topics. The NPV helps ensure a fair and balanced representation of information.

For the most part the Neutral Point of View can only help maintain Wikipedia as a reliable source of information. Any encyclopedia reader would hope to find un-opinionated resources on wikipedia. However, neutral can be difficult to pin down. Even encyclopedias can appear biased when you look back on an entry. For example an article on the Women's movement written in 1950, might seem biased to someone reading it today. This rule could harm the community if it is viewed as too restrictive and thus prevents people from adding information. These rules definitely slowed me down in making changes. However, that is not necessarily a bad thing.

--Lizbdavis 20:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

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Mike Barker: Mike's Response To Assignment 1.

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Rohit Chopra | Assignment 1 [[1]]

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• Erin Golden: Assignment 1

I decided to begin with Wikipedia's "No Original Research" policy, which quickly led into Verifiability: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability, as a response to my longstanding perception of Wikipedia as unreliable and the particular challenge I found in becoming a Wikipedia editor. My past experience has largely involved my own analyses of literary texts, so it was both refreshing and daunting that the site officially did not want my, or anyone else's, un-self-published opinion. Wikipedia treats articles on living persons even more stringently under No Original Research to avoid libel or otherwise giving offense, so I selected http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Flewelling (as user Edolen), regarding a living author whose work I enjoy and with whom I have had considerable contact through the years.

I first discovered a very brief entry with two banners at the top proclaiming the need for additional citations. When I looked at the "discussion" section of the page the only things present were the same two banners. The article included only two citations: one link to another author's review of Ms. Flewelling's work, and another to a blog post by Ms. Flewelling projecting the date of her next book release, with no references for any biographical information. The biography section included one broken internal link (to Ms. Flewelling's husband, who does not have his own Wiki article), and some information I either didn't recognize or thought was not specific enough (e.g. Ms. Flewelling is not officially listed as faculty on the University of Redlands website, although she does conduct lectures and workshops at the school). I changed the section to be more in accord with Ms. Flewelling's official website and cited it. Trying not to run afoul of the Wiki ownership and edit warring guidelines I left structure and phrasing alone where I could, to edit instead of completely re-write. I also added numerous citations to the Writings section, including convention appearances, praise from other authors, and a film update, and expanded the note on queer themes to reflect heightened reader and scholarly interest.

I was not as thorough in reworking and adding to the article as I would have liked in order to comply with No Original Research. For instance, I know Ms. Flewelling was a guest of honour at every ConBust (a science fiction convention) since its inception in 2003 because I personally arranged her original appearance and have met with her there every following year; however, the official Smith College-hosted website for the convention only mentioned 2009-10 when I visited it, so I was unable to present the full history. Neither did I include a fuller picture of Ms. Flewelling's family and religious life, her feelings about her books and readers' responses to them, her thoughts on queer issues in and outside her work, or her stances on academic treatment of "genre fiction" or e-book piracy, all of which would add greatly to a biographical piece and can be found (and cited) throughout her contributions to her Yahoo! group and her blog because of the Wiki restriction on "using the subject as a self-published source." I was already uncomfortable with the number of outside reviews I could only find as pages on her official website, including an author-given exerpt from a yet-to-be-released scholastic anthology and a short piece from a relatively obscure magazine I could not locate in print. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Reliable_sources, Wikipedia limits using the subject's self-publications but bans all such other sources: "Never use self-published books, zines, websites, forums, blogs or tweets as sources for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject . . . Posts left by readers are never acceptable as sources"; therefore I did not use reviews from various fan sites or Amazon reader reviews. I found small exerpts from reccomendations by non-self-published authors on the Random House page for purchasing one of the books (cited in article) and on the printed novels themselves, but I was unable to locate the full reviews.

So far no other user has edited my work, but the banners remain at the top of the main page. The discussion link now opens to a declaration that the article is a "stub": short and unfinished. I received a welcome note from a Wiki administrator after opening my account and editing the article, but no direct commentary on what I wrote. For an example of a more complete biographical article on a living person I visited the page for George R. R. Martin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._R._Martin), one of the writers I referenced in the Flewelling article. It was much longer and rounded-out, and the discussion page classified it as B-Class. Therefore I was surprised to check the page's references and see many of the citations were to Martin's self-published website, or to self-published fan sites. It made me question how seriously Wikipedia editors and administrators take the site's official policies, and whether my article would have received a higher rating had I been more liberal in my attributes. Ultimately, in my perspective, this places the reliability of Wikipedia articles, whether about living persons or other subjects, back in the dubious place from which I'd hoped this project would at least partially rescue it. I will continue to use the site, as a reader and sometime-editor, but I am disappointed it does not live up to its own credibility standards, which I believe will continue to hurt it in the public eye.

--Erin Golden 09:30, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

• Nathaniel Gill - Assignment 1

In doing this assignment I focused on the Wikipedia policy of [No Original Research] because like most people all you hear is that Wikipedia is an unreliable miasma of user edited information, gossip, and opinion. While this may be true, there are in fact citations that one should check as with any research. As is oft quoted "Caveat Emptor", which any intelligent person applies to more than just consumer goods. With that in mind I was fascinated by the number of articles that did not have citations attached, after clicking the link for a random article which was labeled as such I started doing some preliminary research online just to see if I could amalgamate some sources for one of these sad little articles. I was rather amused to find that the whole process was much more difficult than I thought. Firstly it's become infinitely harder to research anything on the web as there is a junk link, advertisement, and misdirection all over the place. This is a small stumbling block, but when one has a very set routine to approach the web as merely a user/consumer of information, it's odd to find yourself looking for more concrete information than simply locations/hours/services via Google. Also, having been out of practice with web editing, particularly using actual programming language. I have become complacent in push button web publishing so it was nice to have a refresher course on actually using my brain.

That being said I came across an entry on [Tazir, or Ta'zir] which is a concept in Islamic law. I read it, it was classified as a stub, and that it was. It's abbreviated entry was confusingly written and without sources. I did some low level googling and came up with a few sources to use to help flesh it out. I expanded and clarified the definition, inserting links to other related concepts and their source pages. There have been no follow up edits nor talk responses to my re-write and source submissions which is positive feedback in and of itself I suppose. Though it could also be that according to the log I'm the only one to stumble across the entry since 2006. I would have spent more time on the research and added more sources and such if I didn't keep losing myself in ADD-fueled internet tangents on a variety of related topics. That being said I feel like the Encyclopedia Britannica, Islamic Studies department at Oxford, and Comparative Law Studies pages are fairly decent level sources to cite. It all goes back to the principle of Wikipedia relying on verifiability for entries, not proof.

This reinforced my opinion that Wikipedia is a great tool for researchers looking for a starting point. As someone who has always been taught to not believe everything you read wiki is great for beginning a research project, wasting time, going on informational daydreams, etc. It's never going to be source material which it fairly states upfront. The problems as usual with systems, lie in operator error. Information is information, it exists, if you can verify it, grand, Wiki keeps the entry. As they say though, it's not for original research so you will never find unequivocal proof here, rather, you will find reporting of information that has been found and the citations to follow up with it as you see fit according to your needs and wants. As such I think this makes Wikipedia both incredibly benign, and horrifically dangerous. It's benign because of course the information exists out on the web for anyone to find if they just know where to look. Dangerous because one should never underestimate the ability of ignorant individuals to willfully misinterpret, or fear information. Stupidity is catching and easily transferred to soundbites and with the misdirection and constant stream of information from "news" sources harm can always be done with information. As always, Caveat Emptor. --nattyg 15:36, 9 February 2010 (UTC)