Almost for got to post this because I was so excited that finals were officially over for me. My wikipedia entry was on Aurel Aldea, a Romanian general that led a national resistance to the communist regimes right after World War II. Although the entry does not have too much on it I found that a lot of changes were made as soon as I posted it. Most of them were to make the order and layout more like other wikipedia articles which were necessary since this was my first time posting. The majority of edits came from a single wiki user, but later on a couple more people added some additional information and sources to the post. After about 4 days; however, there were no new additions to my entry. Overall I would say that the assignment went well and that my addition to wikipedia has been successful. It was pretty interesting to see the way changes are made and how the different users contribute.
Wiki from Keegan
December 14th, 2007Wikipedia reflection Jim Hamilton
December 14th, 2007I originally chose ‘Goulash Communism’ as my topic for the Wikipedia assignment on 13 September 2007 because I found it humorous. It was brief and lacking sources so I elaborated using course books and cited them in Wikipedia’s format. It seemed like a good entry, not much attention paid to it yet accurate and connected to other topics.
My entry is changed the same night. A phrase moves from its awkward position at the bottom to the top where it seems just as awkward. Nothing much happens for a month, though the entry is linked in a new language with a paragraph of an entry. On 14 October 2007 the awkward phrases are reorganized into a paragraph though the quotation is obviously in need of citation. Descriptor paragraphs are added near the beginning and end, broadly describing Hungary and the recent Hungarian experience. All these additions are deleted the next day, for generalizing about the topic and having erroneous information. Eight hours later the delete is undone with the addition of a source. One grammatical edit on the 23rd of October and another on the 28th of November.
The experience of this assignment has broadened my concept of where information is accessible and how it should be scrutinized. What I found most interesting is that my work still makes up the bulk of the entry, yet it doesn’t read familiar because of all the additions. Sentences were added and grammar restructured so that my work is no longer solely my own. It seems like a rapid progression of published work, free and open to all yet receiving less attention to varying degrees.
Wikipedia Assignment – Colleen
December 14th, 2007My wikipedia entry did not exist before I included a section on the history, production and variety of Croatian wine within an article on Croatian cuisine. I picked this topic because I work at a wine store, and we receieved a shipment of wine from Croatia, and it was not terrible. Since September, my portion of the article has not been deleted or modified once. I chose to add this article in the first place because no information on wikipedia existed on this subject – which also might explain why it has not been edited at all. However, I am rather disappointed, as I was hoping someone could add information to the article, especially since there was very little information out there on the subject to begin with. Once I wrote the entry and posted it, I was actually quite worried it was going to get deleted, but so far, this has not been the case.
This assignment made me a little skeptical about the validity of information on wikipedia. First of all, some of the information I included was not from a text book or on-line source, but from the information a wine specialist gave me over the phone. I happen to trust this individual’s knowledge a great deal, but for all I know, he could have been feeding me outdated information, or made it all up. Fortunately, I later found some sources that backed up his claims so I could reference the information, but it made me wonder how many articles – if they go unchecked or unedited like mine – actually contain fact or just random guesses. Due to the apparent unpopularity of my article, I am curious to know, had I not found any sources to cite, would my entry still exist? It is worrisome to think that had all my information been wrong, it would still be out there for anyone to use as a research tool. As a result, I still think primary sources are the best way to go in terms of research, and this assignment only confirmed this belief. Previously, I did not realize how easy it was to go into almost any article and change the content.
Another point that was brought to my attention during this assignment: it is almost imposible to tell the qualifications of a publisher on any given article. Meaning, for all I know, a 14 year-old could edit or change an entry with no qualifications or knowledge to do so. Althought it seems as if editors are relatively efficient in correcting wrong information or deleting entires, some – like mine – do not attract such attention. So a bit of skeptisicm still remains on my part. Despite this, I still think wikipedia is a relatively useful source for very basic research information or background information on certain subjects, and it should not be entirely discredited as a research tool. However, whenever I do use wikipedia – especially after I realized how easy it is for anyone to change an article at any time - it is very important to back up information with another source.
Wikipedia entry
December 13th, 2007When looking for a topic to add to under Wikipedia, I initially was at a loss as to what I could contribute. Under the revolution of 1989 topic, everything seemed to be there. It seemed to have all the major occurrences of that period, but as I looked closely I found a few details that were missing under Poland. There was no explanation of the results of the negotiations between the democratic opposition and the Polish government. So I looked for information about the reforms and wrote about the change in the legislative body and said that the presidential powers were expanded. So far there have not been any changes to what I wrote or additions to what I wrote. Overall, it was pretty easy to contribute to the online encyclopedia. I guess that’s what makes it popular. Unfortunately, the ease with which you can add information makes it more likely for incorrect facts to be submitted online. If the details are not looked at closely, something incorrect could be overlooked. So, even though the Wikipedia encyclopedia is more democratic, that is what could make it unreliable.
In Class Presentation, ‘Poland & Martial Law.’
December 13th, 2007I wanted to tackle Martial Law from a different angle and I hope my presentation helped to demonstrate that while Solidarity’s role in the implementation of Martial Law is something that we as a class are familiar with, the Soviet role in the crisis required further examination. This is very important to me because after learning about Gen. Woijeich Jaruzelski’s background and the incredible amount of suffering that he’s endured and still does due to eye and back injuries he suffered during his deportation to Siberia, that anyone could think that he would welcome a Soviet invasion. What irks me is that a large amount of the research I performed on Soviet Military doctrine and positions relevant to NATO simply didn’t fit into the research paper like I’d hoped it would. This cut down dramatically on the number of citations that would’ve otherwise been included, and thus reduced the quality of my writing.
I felt it necessary to include visual aids in my presentation while delivering the material in a context that would keep the attention of the class. While my choice of vocabulary might be viewed as less than scholarly, the ability to recognize and connect with an audience takes precedence if the message is to be understood. I enjoyed the questions asked about my sources and at the same time I offer apologies for my answers as they could’ve been more helpful. I will fine tune any other presentations to include a complete list of my sources, which in this case numbered close to 20, but with only around 7-8 actually used in the final draft of my research paper.
Wikipedia Follow-up
December 13th, 2007At the beginning of this semester it was my intention to focus on East Germany. I’ve always held a degree of fascination with the nation, much the same as I have with North Korea. However, since one no longer exists and the other views the United States as it’s arch-enemy I’m left to view both nations the same way a single man might view a married woman through a combination of curiosity and visual imagery which gives the perception of looking at ‘forbidden fruit.’ My fascination with East Germany stems from the quick change in governing structures and the extreme ends of the political spectrum at which both forms of rule lie. Moving so quickly from Nazi rule to the brutal Stalinist form of Communist dictatorship must have been a difficult transition, and that transition and how ordinary East German’s dealt with it along with the rise of the Stasi and the militarization of the border separating East from West Germany were all topics that caught my attention as potential Wikipedia entries.
A crucial part of the decision making process involved checking to see what information on East Germany had already been posted, looking for topics that up until that point had not been written about at all, and then merely selecting one to begin from scratch with. The decision to start a Wikipedia entry from scratch appealed to me because I wanted to have complete control over what would be written from the outset. With that in mind I began researching all Wikipedia entries on East Germany and for quite sometime found myself wondering if I should perhaps select a different topic to research. Shortly after beginning that very train of thought I came across a list of names of high ranking East German government officials, the positions that they had held and the various years that they had served in those offices. The vast majority of names had functioning links to other pages dedicated to each individual. One of the few exceptions was next to the East German Defense Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, both of which certainly appeared to be important positions. The name of that official, whom I might add is still alive, is Heinz Kessler.
After searching for various sources for information on Mr. Kessler, I can understand why his name had no functioning link or additional information. There’s simply not much information available on the man. The vast majority of information that I included in my article was found in a briefing that was read aloud over radio-free Europe. This included a brief biography on Mr. Kessler, positions he’d held in the East German government, and the date he took over as the GDR/NVA Defense Minister. To date on my article I’ve only had one real issue with any of the 15 edits that have occurred. That being one gentleman who kept changing the spelling of Heinz Kessler into classical German which then caused the link between the main East German government page and my own to not function properly. However, I was able to convince said gentleman to submit to my point of view.
Wikipedia
December 13th, 2007The wikipedia assignment was pretty challenging but interesting. It was not an easy task finding who or what to write about, but the hardest part (at least for me) was actually writing it. I’m ok with computer basics, but wikipedia was really complicated and hard for me to understand. I spent days writing a simple paragraph. What I did learn, however, is if I could figure it out, anyone can. A little scary. My site had no edits the whole semester, but I checked out other sites and saw how frequently some were edited. Some of the edits were minute, but others were very damaging to the credibility of the information provided such as when dates were altered. I have used wikipedia in the past and was advised to check the sources that were used to create the site, but I never knew to check the history. This assignment made me more sceptical of wikipedia and even less likely to use it, even for entertainment purposes. This asignment was also interesting when considering what information to include on the site. Since I was the one creating a biography, I could decide to include or exclude information. I chose to include all of the information I found, but that may not always be the case.
Wikipedia Assignment
December 13th, 2007I think that the Wikipedia exercise was a good look at what can happen with an information source that can be added to and edited by anyone. This was my first experience with Wikipedia, and I am pleased to say that my article was taken down relatively quickly.
My article was on the Romanian Army’s involvement in the revolution of 1989. I chose this topic because it was the most change in such a small amount of time: the government was the most oppressive there and the people were the most broken. It might be a bit romantic, but I liked the idea of the people smashing their government and executing their leaders. Romania was the only country in which there was no political action taken before the revolution. Everything else I had read in Stokes’ book indicated that other countries had liberalization, internal, or external; Romania did not, and that was more interesting.
In my Wikipedia article, I wrote all the information I had, which was just a few paragraphs. All of the information was corroborated, but there was not much in the way of detail. When I did my research for the paper, I was able to find actual reasons for the rebellion of the soldiers: short conscription periods, de-professionalization, executions, purges, etc. Though I had included some of this information in the initial article, I didn’t have everything in the article.
A problem with my article is that there was a lot of information in the parent article; there was a lot of information about the revolution scattered about, but there was not much information about the army. I had the choice of either futilely changing the article many times to add minimal information, or making my own page with minimal information. I decided to make my own page and link it to the main page. My page was left alone for awhile until it was auto edited for tags, and my own few edits. Eventually, it was just deleted by an editor, with a comment on how it was *a mess*. I have to say that the concept of tagging and linking was confusing to me, I really detest coding, even as simple as the Wikipedia coding for linking; I know the concepts, but I’m not that good with the implementation.
My article was made with very little knowledge, other than the information that I got from Stokes, and by the time I had done more research, my article had been deleted. The peer reviewing system works just as well in Wikipedia as it does in the classroom, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is thought of as a more credible source given a bit more time. I think that in time, I might make another article on Wikipedia, but next time, I’ll start with more information, and attempt to be a bit more steadfast in my interest with my article. It might be interesting to write another article next semester, with my research done, and more valid assertions formed with support.
My Wiki Entry
December 13th, 2007I had rather a rough experience in my Wikipedia assignment. First of all, since it was the on-line encyclopedia website that anyone could write about anything, it was not easy to find topic that no one ever wrote before. After long search for the topic, I finally decided to write my entry about the movie called “Underground,” which is a movie about Yugoslavia Civil War. Since I could not offer too much information about this one particular movie alone, I decided to expand my topic to “films about Yugoslavia Civil War.” I hoped that once I start this entry with posting one movie, I thought someone else would post some other movies to expand my entry. It turned out that it was not kind of topic that many people would be interested on because I saw very few additions or edits on the history page section of my entry. Anyway, I tried to expand my entry every time I accessed into my entry, but I could not find much information as I hoped. And then, something truly strange has happened to my entry. As I typed in my topic into the Wikipedia website, I got a message that my entry was erased. What the message explained to me was that my topic does not have enough information to be listed as an independent topic. Besides, there was a separate entry about the movie “Underground” already existed somewhere which I did not realize before. I could fully understand why the webmaster decided to delete my entry, but what I could not understand was that why they waited about three months to take this kind of action? The website deleted my entry at the middle of November, so I was kind of wondering why they waited such a long period of time to take an action. Despite my rough experience with finding topic and my entry gets erased, I thought I experienced something very unique and valuable throughout this process. By some reason, it felt really good that what I wrote was on the internet. And, I realized that if I found a very interesting topic that many people might find interesting, maybe I could really expanded my entry through helps of strangers without I actually do all the researches. Maybe, I should try to find some topic that no one ever wrote before but really interesting one, which is really difficult to find these days. I remember watching “Underground” in the movie theater back in my native country. When I first saw this movie, it was really confusing and strange because I never heard of Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe before, and in my naïve perception, America was only the western country. So, it was really strange to learn about Eastern Europe and all those people’s sufferings since the WWII. I recently saw this movie again and since I had more understandings of Eastern European history because of this class, I could understand this movie better. I really recommend watching this movie despite the mixed opinions of critics about this movie. You might find little bit weird and awkward at the beginning of this movie, but I guess that was the way Eastern European history was written after the WWII.
Saeil
Wikipedia Entry of Imre Pozsgay
December 12th, 2007I wrote my wikipedia entry about Imre Pozsgay due to the sheer fact that he was Hungarian and I myself have Hungarian roots. Also because he seemed like an interesting character and I couldn’t really find anything else to write about that someone else in the class or wikipedia had written about. Pozsgay was an important man in Hungarian history and a key player in maintaining Hungarian Democracy. He was born in Hungarian and was part of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, a group that played a major part in Hungary’s path to democracy. He was one of the first major figures to recognize that the revolution was a popular uprising and not a counterrevolution. Pozsgay joined the HSWP after he got a degree in English from the Lenin Institute in Budapest. His calls for reform lead to a falling out with the party’s leader Janos Kadar and in turn Moved Pozsgay to head the chairman position of the party’s mass organization, the Patriotic Front. Kadar was soon removed from his Minister of State position and Pozsgay took his place right after in 1988. The Hungarian Socialists Party (formally known as the HSWP) announced Pozsgay as their Deputy President. However in 1991 Pozsgay split off from the HSP to form his own party called the National Democratic Alliance.
My initial wikipedia entry was kind of weak and didn’t fit the protocol of wikipedia entries. However I must have picked a person that sparked some interests in certain people’s lives because corrections, new citations and information, and correct grammar were edited in my paper. Individuals wrote about information about Imre Pozsgay that I didn’t even know about. However the initial phase of my entry on Imre Pozsgay must have faded quickly, because after the first day no one attempted to edit my entry.
What I learned from writing my article on Imre Pozsgay for Wikipedia while basically anyone can write a wikipedia article is that it is a lot harder than it looks and there are guidelines that need to be met. Citations are also crucial in writing an article, all your information should be cited to let the reader know the information is real and the articles, books, and journals cited could maybe even excite the reader into reading more about the subject at hand. I would have never thought I could write an entry for wikipedia, but thanks to this class I proved to myself I can and did something I wouldn’t ordinarily do.