Forays into Editing Wikipedia

I actually edited another Wikipedia article just a few days ago and I was excited to note that my edit is still there after two days! Since I have a bit of experience with HTML/CSS coding prior to this experience, for that editing I did on the 18th, I was able to figure out what I was doing based on what the coding did for other cited sources. Of course, any editing feels daunting so when I opened up the editor I got a little nervous about all the functions available but I powered through. Since the article I edited for this short assignment was actually my second attempt I felt a bit more comfortable navigating the controls.

Generally, when it comes to Wikipedia, I still feel generally positively about the information. I share Zittrain's optimism. Yes, I see how easy it is to edit it but I believe in the "lawless" order that seems to have been formed here. And I believe in the fact that Wikipedia has remained—if not the top—one of the top results in Google searches. Something about the format has created a trust among the readers and editors and users of Wikipedia. Yes, it is free to edit but as (Carra Leah) Hood explicitly explained in her article about Editing Out Obscenity in Wikipedia, there is absolutely a hierarchy in place; while users have freedom to add and take away whatever they want whenever and however they want, there are still administers and those who monitor pages. There is always a trail no matter how much people believe in internet anonymity. IP addresses allow virtually every single internet user to be held accountable if conduct is not followed. No, the internet is not total anarchy but it certainly is "lawless." It exists more on the plane of moral codes and social mores. And honestly, social mores are almost more binding than laws. We follow social mores in order to avoid embarrassment and ridicule. We try to do things that benefit us and do not harm others in these types of public, open, observable spaces.

But more importantly than all that, I feel comforted in the idea that if I made errors (which I'm certain I did) then someone will be along (shortly, most likely) to fix them. To edit what I've edited which was also probably edited. And people can feel comfort in posting articles, safe in the knowledge that most likely, somewhere along the way others will edit the article and make it better. I feel comfort in the fact that nothing I do on Wikipedia has to be a final draft. I can contribute and cause others to feel motivated to contribute and in this way there is a connection and a community of mutual benefits. And it's incredibly interesting that I don't have to know anything about a subject to contribute. I'd never even heard of machine translation (though I use the function on a regular basis through GoogleTranslate) before Wikipedia directing its users to pages that "need help." I bring to the table my own set of expertise—in this case, it is editing. With our class Wikipedia page it will be editing and also everything we know about public sphere writing. And that's incredible to me. It's exactly a sense of accomplishment.

Response to Daniella Abinum's Post

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Response to Ashley Natareno's Post on Wikipedia

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Wikipedia Exploration

I looked up "ethnocentric" and was redirected to "Ethnocentrism." It seemed to be on point with our readings. Next, I looked up "pandering." This led to two different pages suggested: one was "pandering (politics)" and the other was "procuring (prostitution)," which I found interesting that the two of them were closely enough related that they came up next to each other. The definition of political pandering seemed to be on point with our reading. Next, I looked up "partisan" which gave me the general "partisan (political)" and then an incredibly long list of pandering in reference to something to do with World War Two as well as music. The "partisan (political)" page was rather barren and directed off to different pages. From there, I clicked on "polarization (politics)" and got a more in-depth description that tended to be American-centric, referencing our two-party system and our congress. The introduction to the page briefly mentions that it can be something other than political but it doesn't go much further than that. Next, I looked up "citizen critic" and found that there was no such page. I think that is a bit of a travesty and is a term that should, in fact, be included. Next, I looked up "primary certitude," another page that has yet to be added that I do believe could use its own page. Next, I looked up "false analogy" and got a pretty good article that also linked to "list of fallacies" and a page called "apples and oranges" which was a good break down of the American idiom that is basically a false analogy example. Next, "paradox" that led to a very informative article that I think was very well rounded. Next, I looked up "rhetoric," a term often misused in the media. However, the article was well-written and seemed to be on point with what I have learned as an EWM major. It was a long article and as the subject is difficult to pin down I felt it was appropriate in length. From there, I looked up "audience," since this term is equally difficult to pin down and comprehend. As far as I could tell, this article was also quite lengthy and rounded-out. Next, I looked up "citizen" which redirected to "citizenship." This page took the term quite literally and related it to laws and countries, linking to the page for "nationality." Citizenship is generally acknowledged as having full rights within a municipality/state/country/nation/etc.  Next, I looked up "enthymeme" and found a page that was a bit short but also had links to logical fallacies which I found appropriate. And finally, I looked up "bias." As I suspected, the page was mostly made up of explanations of the "negative" type of bias, refusal to acknowledge the other side or the fact that something could even have a bias.

For the article I analyzed I(entitled "Queen's Building, Wolverhampton"), there were only two sources—one was a print book and the other was a Wikipedia stub that linked to an online database which I found difficult to navigate or find out any information about where they get their information. A Google search of the same name as the database (The National Heritage List for England) took me to an entirely different webpage than what was linked on the Wikipedia stub. Since the source that seemed to be drawn most heavily from was the book (entitled Britain's Historic Railway Buildings: A Gazetteer of Structures) that I do not have access to it is difficult for me to fact-check the information and I was unable to really navigate the website listed. A search of the website returned with only internet and image searches. So, I was unable to verify any information off that website as well. I think the book is potentially reliable, based on the fact that the edition and page numbers of a specific book are listed but I do not find the website even usable, much less reliable.

Wikipedia is actually much more reliable than many high school teachers might have us believe—it is rather well regulated and monitored, with programs in place to look for fictitious/libelous information. However, some pages will be more or less rounded then others, given time and much room for debate and edits. The longer a page has been around, the more likely it is to be mostly free of bias and rather neutral. Yes, it is open to all citizens with internet access but there are only certain types of people who will edit pages (those who believe they know information pertinent to particular pages). However, all pages (except those that are specifically monitored by Wikipedia staff), are completely transparent; they will list when they were originally posted, by whom they were posted, and who has had any part in editing the pages and what his/her/their contributions may have been. Thus, it is possible to track exactly what has been done to individual pages as well as the constraints on information verifiability—the sources must be specific, listed extensively, and be a third-party source. If things are not well-sourced, it will be apparent to staff and promptly removed. Wikipedia does not abide by poorly sourced information. Of course, no matter what type of media you are interacting with, there will always be a bias—always. Human beings created the content, it has a bias. However, the more eyes look at a page, the more people who edit or tweak wording the more likely it is to have less of a bias. That is the idea behind Wikipedia. It is still more likely to have a white, male, upper class bias because almost all media does and those are the people most likely to e able to access the information and want to edit it, but the idea is that it has much less of a bias than a traditional print encyclopedia. Donald Lazere, in chapter five of his book Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy: A Critical Citizens Guide, speaks extensively about bias. He says that every viewpoint is and isn't biased. How does that make sense? Well, we try to keep things as "nonpartisan" as possible, but no matter who we are we carry our identity in our experiences and our experiences shape our opinions. I am a twenty-something, white, female. I am shaped by this. I am shaped by my privilege as a white person and my discrimination as a female and as a "young person" with "no job experience." I will tend to vote democratic and I will write like a liberal person. Lazere explains that you are more likely to be seen as reliable if you acknowledge your own bias: "You will never convince someone who doesn't already agree with you if you stack the deck by presenting only arguments in support of your own position…" (Lazere 129).

Wikipedia is the epitome of "our public discourse" as Edward Corbett and Rosa Eberly discuss in their book The Elements of Reasoning.  We are all citizens of the public, this shared space. We have the right and ability to participate and in that way we have the responsibility to come into it in a responsible way. There will never be a singular experience but we have the ability to share it, come to an understanding with hope and the possibility of change. This is the nature of a "citizen critic." We can help discuss and change things if we come at it with the ability to change ourselves and hear others. That's exactly what Wikipedia gives us the ability to do. We can read, disagree, edit, and be edited ourselves. Wikipedia is the symbol our freedom.

Response to Emily's Post on Remediation

Here is the link to the post and my response to Emily's post on remediation

Editing Analysis of Short Assignment 3

To start the editing process, the first step, of course, is to read the article and try to get a sense of the message the author is going for. This is a bit difficult since it seems that the message at the beginning is not the same message as what we wind up with at the end. From this, I critiqued the ending, adding a comment about how to make the article more consistent with the rest of the article. It seems to have a tense change (not in the grammatical sense) in the sense that it shifts from a critique of present and immediate to a projected future (the potential Hilary Clinton presidential campaign) because the author perceives this future as a "positive example" of how to shift the behavior. As mentioned by David Kaufer, when it comes to policy changes it is important to find positive comparisons that have whatever desired effect(s) the author wants. In this case, though, the "positive comparison" is not one that has actually happened. It is all purely speculation.

Next, I started back at the beginning and went through looking for all the references I believed to be too "high context" or a bit tone-deaf when it comes to the subject matter at hand. The problem I see with this article is that the issue of the Michael Brown shooting is not frivolous or light and I don't believe it to be a good backdrop for an article complaining about too much media coverage. At least, if the author was dead set on this particular focal point than they needed to give it the gravity it deserves underneath the criticism of potentially reprehensible media behavior. To this end, calling Ferguson a "Woodstock" even if that is the way the media treated it seems disrespectful (looking at the guidelines mentioned in Working With Words' chapter “Sexism/Racism/Other -Isms”). I suggested a removal of this particular term.

Then I began to look for things that seemed enthymematic and I found it surprisingly easy to find in an article as short as this. The author was not concise with their meanings yet made several statements that jumped to conclusions (looking at the guidelines about Cohesion and Coherence in Style).

The seventh or eighth paragraph is where the article starts to lose its focus and starts to shift into an argument that doesn't really help the author formulate a solution or argument for a solution. He starts to give positive examples, as Kaufer talks about, but he does not use them as qualifiers since they don't further his argument. There does not seem a point in bringing up positive examples of "national conversation" unless he does something with the examples, which he does not. He simply states, this person does it well at this point in time and this person does it well later while the first person starts to slack. This also does not seem to have much relevance to his point about media specifically being the source of the problem here.

It seems that the author is particularly bothered by "24 hour news" and their need to fill time and space with whatever they can and they have become sloppy—honestly just showing up and watching. However, he does not propose a policy shift or any kind of solution and that becomes a problem when it comes to an article about policy changes. He brings up Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton as presidential candidates and points out that their behavior and strategies are similar to those used by the media but he does nothing further with these examples. It would be a perfectly acceptable shift in subject if it was brought back around to the subject of the media (perhaps if he suggested these figures were responsible for changing the behavior or modeling the behavior so as to influence the media). Instead, he just ends it an almost-conclusion, and almost-there statement about solutions that he himself can't seem to make a solution out of. 

Science Blog Link

Here is a link to my science blog

The Greyness in White Papers

The most surprising thing about this particular public piece of information is that it was paid for and sponsored. Not to say that this particularly indicates fraud but as Jill Walker Rettburg states in her book Blogging, on page 98, "commercial blogging…is the field where the temptation to create fake blogging personas is the strongest." Yet, this article was not published "commercially." It is the type of literature that shows up in business spheres. Another surprising thing, at first glance, was the table of contents. It makes sense within a document produced that has so much information packed into one space, but it was surprising how linear and formal the information appears to be presented.
In the white paper article "Illegal to Be Homeless: The Criminalization of Homelessness in the United States," the objective is clearly stated  and the purpose for its existence is obvious; the document seeks to present itself as a sort of guide to the legality of homelessness, stating "The following report will document that people experiencing homelessness are subject to basic violations of their civil rights through the unconstitutional application of laws, arbitrary police practices and discriminatory public regulations." The authors seek to present that the issue is widespread and not just a local issue that requires immediate attention.
The reason this particular document does not feel familiar is because it is a document focused on legal issues but it is not produced by a team a lawyers—it is funded and produced by people who appear to have a vested interest in the problem. Where this blurs between "journalism" and other types of public discourse is that "a journalist is presumed to be outside the action…", according to Rettberg on page 104 of her book. This document was very clearly not produced by someone who is outside the action. In fact, many involved directly work with the homeless—the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, just to name a couple.
This document is taking several different occurrences and synthesizing them, correlating them and giving them an outcome. Criminalization of homelessness is caused by discriminatory public practices, racism, and the housing-income gap. It seeks to be rational and tries to avoid being enthymematic in regards to their claims staked. Often times, this is the kind of article that would be used as the basis for changes made in public policy, a document not really produced for public consumption but still available to the public eye. That indicates transparency and an attempt at authenticity.
These types of reports don't seek to say they are an expert on a particular field but they do attempt to build an argument based on germane evidence and studies done by others, building an implicit and explicit argument based entirely on facts. It tries to maintain its formal tone but yet it wants to be an authority, the backbone for many arguments to come.

The Slice On Blogging and Why This is The Most Important Post on the Blog Right Now

Often times, a blog is started for personal reasons—built out of personal experiences or just a general interest and/or need to comment on a certain topic. According to Carolyn R. Miller Dawn Shepherd in their article "Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog," "They are addressed to everyone and at the same time to no one." Of course, there can be specific blogs for specific topics that may only specifically appeal to a certain group of people but it is absolutely a fact that the genre was created around the desire to be witness. The viewers, purveyors, and the general audience that has propelled the blog into popular usage are "mediated voyeurs" and the consumed media is steeped in the immediate. We want secrets and juicy details—we want those sneaky pictures or videos and we want to be treated to the "authentic." We craved "… glimpses that seem more real because they are secret…" On top of this, blogs seem to be the closest way to get close to someone without having to personally interact with them but it also has the "… hope for connection, for community, and at the same time a more traditional voyeuristic enjoyment of stealth and the possibility of a glimpse of unguarded authenticity." Certainly, we are interested because there are people out there that want us to be interested, "voyeurism could not have become such a common preoccupation of our times without willing objects." They bring attention to themselves and allow their actions be mediated and appropriated and remediated and made real through media coverage and people's reactions to them. Our voyeurism is encouraged.

The other element of immediacy in blogs is the time function. It stacks oldest to newest, making that new, fresh content the most important thing. Sure, you can go back and look at older content but the most important thing is to stay on top of breaking news, breaking feelings, breaking interactions. It makes it real, just as Miller and Shepard insist "the reverse chronological organization of the blog [is] a feature that reinforces the impression that the content is true, or real."

Glamorizing Science

As far as websites go, there isn't really any limitation to the amount of space a journalist might have to explain scientific theories to the depths that they deserve, but the particular genre of scientific writing and "accommodation writing," as Jeanne Fahnestock calls it, stemmed from almost an entirely print medium; most of these types of articles used to be found in magazines like the Scientific American and Science, both of which have now switched to online publications. While in the past, as both of the analyzed sources (Jeanne Fahnestock in "Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts" and M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer in chapter 4 of their book Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America) have indicated, there were limitations of space; thusly, it was imperative that a journalist get the most pertinent information in their article as concisely as possible without completely fabricating the results or findings of the scientists they are quoting. However, there is still the problem of, as the Killingsworth-Palmer chapter states "if a particular source proves to be more willing about sharing information or to have a more interesting slant on a particular story, journalists may consciously or unconsciously privilege that source and thereby betray their own objectivity." On page 135. As a journalist, the constraints placed on their product are far more vast and limiting than those of the scientist writing for their peer group. Journalists have to make things interesting.
 However, with the age of digital media, while space is virtually unlimited, we still have the problem of engaging a non-scientific audience. This generally means having to have an interesting title and subtitle to get a potential reader to click on the article in the first place. As Killingsworth and Palmer say on page 134 of their book, "for a story to be considered 'news,' it must tell readers something they don't already know, something they haven't already heard or become accustomed to." This has to mean that topics don't often get revisited if small discoveries that slightly alter the outcome (at least in the eyes of the general public) even if the small discoveries actually drastically alter the meaning to the scientific community. If something seems to be curing cancer, to the journalists and general public that something cures cancer whether or not it causes other complications.
 The end goal of most journalism seems not to be to complicate things (as most scientific endeavors seek to do) but rather to simplify them—the author's job, as Fahnestock describes on page 281 of her article is to "glamorize." She states "[…] glamorizing is the (accommodating) writer's purpose throughout the accommodation, part of his heavy task of bringing a deliberately dry research report into the realm interesting journalism." The author wants to be recognized, they want to make a splash in the world of journalism and propel themselves forward to fame. This is how you get a writer like Jonah Lehrer. His audience trusted him because he wrote things that sounded interesting and as long as there was some scientific jargon and "cited" sources then obviously the reader is educating and bettering themselves.
 Educating and bettering ourselves is a large mass appeal of some of these well-known science (and non-science publications) give us as readers. There is a certain prestige in reading a particular publication on a regular basis. So, then, of course, we want to take things at face value. "We are pattern seeking primates," as Dr. Michael Shermer says in his TED talk "Why Do We Believe in Unbelievable Things?". We have something called association learning and our default state is to believe. So, if a journalist knows that if something is attention-grabbing enough that people will default believe their article and the only obstacle is writing style and rhetoric, why not omit a few words and make it interesting?

The Rhetorical Situation of Climate Change and Our Responses To It

In the Scientific American article "The Green Apple: How Can Cities Adapt to Climate Change?" (what a mouthful) by David Biello, the most obvious and surface exigence is climate change. However, underneath of this, we have the exigences of the author "see[ing] a need to change reality and […] that the change may be effected through rhetorical discourse," as defined by Keith Grant-Davies on page 265 of his article "Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents." There is a continuing conversation surrounding the climate change exigence—which is continually debated as an actual exigence—and that conversation makes up another exigence, as well as the rhetorical situation, and several of the things addressed (see: the hyperlinks included within the article itself) within the "The Green Apple…" article form the intertextuality of the article.  According to Julia Kristeva, as quoted by Frank D'Angelo on page 33 of his " The Rhetoric of Intertextuality", "any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another." Biello is referring to previous articles hosted on the same sight, scientific panels that have already taken place in New York City, and professors or scholars who have already had a say in the discourse.
A large portion of the climate change discourse comes from scientists and experts who are warning a general public—those of us who may not exactly allow ourselves to believe scientists on the first go-round—of weather that is going to start effecting us whether or not we believe in climate change. Many are warning of storms that are capable of shutting down entire large cities, like New York City and Chicago, and it will happen continually as the climate changes.
At this point, it is worth noting that this article was written in 2010, and since then, New York City and the surrounding area has suffered another major hurricane (Hurricane Sandy) with mass flooding and power outages and deaths. Yet, there is still resistance to an effort to stem the tide, so to speak. This is why an author like Biello would see the need to write a science article for laymen in an accessible publication such as Scientific American. The thing is, climate change isn't quite so complicated as we might like to think—it is mostly a result carbon dioxide, "the primary greenhouse gas causing climate change", as Biello says. The solutions to these problems, completely altering our accustomed ways of life, are where we find trouble.
On top of these storms, we are running into increasing problems with drinking water. Fracking and natural gas drilling contaminate water sources that are already dwindling. As well as the national problem of (as the buzzwords suggest) our "crumbling infrastructure" that cause preventable injury and death. Biello quotes a man named Steven Cohen, who advised Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the PlaNYC effort as saying "You're looking at a city that could have its infrastructure compromised for periods of time by these climate change impacts…" in reference to New York City, but the take away and purposeful use of this quote is that this is a national and global problem that ought to be one of our top priorities.
Another exigence within this discourse is that these innovations referred to in the article—solar panel roofs, green roofs, etc—are, in large part, stemming from New York City—the country's largest and most trend-setting metropolis. When we, as a nation and—to a lesser extent—the world, see New York City doing these things, it's worth pointing out because it has the potential to change opinions and behavior simply by existing in New York City. Only problem is that this kind of information rarely, if ever, makes it onto mainstream news stations. We're supposed to see these efforts and believe that our towns ought to be making similar moves. The author believed that perhaps some of his readers could feel persuaded or even like they could receive some instruction (as D'Angelo talks about on page 44 of his article "The Rhetoric of Intertextuality") from the example NYC has set. The problem then, is convincing American cities that alternative energy and energy-reducing technologies are a worthwhile investment. According to Cohen, as quoted by Biello, "New York City is already the most energy-efficient place in America…" but he also believes it to have the potential for more. While some people may protest that it is easier for a city with such a small people per square mile area, the author still saw it as his job to implicitly let his readership know that it is possible to make these changes elsewhere.
The author wants to illustrate that New York City is trying to make these precautions and resilience measures are part of their city standards and that for cities/states that regularly experience natural disasters (Florida and hurricanes, for example) ought to also be coding these precautions into their infrastructure as well. Another exigence, as far as example goes, is the fact that New York City is technically a coastal town with kilometers and kilometers of coast line—they want to prevent property damage as much as any other town and ought to take similar precautions since 39%of the population is living in coastal areas (that only make up 10% of the US'stotal landmass).
D'Angelo says, on page 33 of " The Rhetoric of Intertextuality",  "every text is in a dialogical relationship with other texts…" This article is just one piece in a giant, never-ending puzzle that is the discourse on our modern climate change. Since its publication, there have been countless other articles that have completely ignored this one, made vague references to this one, or even directly quoted/based their argument off of this one. Similarly, it is likely that Biello has written some sort of follow up or counterpoint article to this one since he continues to write articles for Scientific American.

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