Learning WikiCode goes well with this course and with the other course I am taking in which we’re learning HTML!

I definitely see a major drop-off in quality and depth of coverage from the more fleshed out, sourced, and developed articles like Digital Preservation, to the more sparse Community archives article. At first I was looking at it on an iPad, but now that I look at it on a larger desktop computer screen, its lack of depth really stands out among the other articles. I like the ideas on the Talk page about what’s missing and how to improve this article; it just seems like nobody has implemented them yet, so this could be a good place from which to start.

Overall I’m very impressed with Wikipedia, from the suggestions on how to make articles better, to the many suggested sources, to the relative civility on most of the Talk pages. A lot of the Talk pages are debates about semantics, but this is important for an encyclopedia.

As a former professional editor, I did find some grammatical issues, such as where the Data curation page reads: “Data curation is typically user initiated and maintains metadata rather than the database itself.” I think it should read: “The user, rather than the database itself, typically initiates data curation and maintains metadata.”

I’m also still learning what qualifies as a subjective value judgment on Wikipedia. For example, on the Digital Preservation page, the line “It is a difficult and critical process because the remaining selected records will shape researchers’ understanding of that body of records, or fonds” seems true, but I probably would have left out the first part and just written “The remaining selected records will shape researchers’ understanding of that body or records, or fonds.”

Interestingly, as I write this post, the blog is underlining curation as a word it does not recognize!

The assignment to evaluate the quality of Wikipedia articles was a useful exercise in critical literacy: assessing what is useful information and assessing structures of presenting information so the reader can ingest it readily.

I reviewed the Oral History article, and while intending to have a global overview, I felt was fairly U.S./American-focused. Some entries read like they had been translated without much clean up, and there was a notable amount of promotional language—some text not even relevant to the topic (i.e. how a list-serve works).

At present, this article is a mash-up of individual entries, lacking cohesion, and could use some housekeeping work: copyediting, proofreading, evaluating the entries to find common themes/subtopics to shape out a better overall structure, moving general information out of country/area-specific sections to shape a richer overview section, and collapsing sections (i.e. combining the nine “Oral history organizations” under “See also” section to the “Organizations” section where only 2 are listed). Surprisingly, there are no audio clips available to listen to.

Personally, I use Wikipedia as a jumping off point for basic overviews; professionally, Wikipedia is a resource for finding images with fair use or non-copyright licenses. I find that most articles I encounter are well-formed, generally well-written, and offer some audio/visual materials. Reviewing an article in need of work highlights how I can take for granted work and effort it takes to make a solid, comprehensible, and useful article. On my Wikiblog that I use for class, I detailed out suggested edits, which is a pretty hardy list. It would be worthwhile to do, but I don’t think they could all be done in just a few weeks as some suggestions require input from others, and a more comprehensive understanding of oral history in specific places.

I am a new Wikipedia editor and so far I have been impressed with how the site operates from the inside. There is clearly a well-defined culture and rules, contrary to what is sometimes portrayed in pop culture. It does not have to be a poor source of information; it can be a great starting point for a larger project, or a way to gain surface level knowledge on a wide variety of topics.

I was not aware of Wikicode before, and I find it interesting that it exists. As someone who is new to officially learning about programming this semester, I would rather not have to learn yet another language, but it is what it is. I would be curious to know how it came to be.

As far as the digital curation and preservation articles, it seems like some have received more attention than others. There is definitely room for improvement, like with the “community archives” article, for example. It is woefully lite on content; compared to “digital preservation” it looks like a footnote.

It is easier to evaluate a “worse” article like “community archives” because it is shorter and lighter. To go through an article like “digital preservation” and check all of its footnotes and references for plagiarism, for example, seems like it would be very time consuming. Based on its length and complexity, my initial impression is that people more knowledgeable about the subject have already spent some time on it and that my talents could probably contribute to the community more by adding to a weaker article.

My first reaction to the quality of some of the articles was puzzlement over the quality classification of some of them. For example, the Digital Preservation article seemed to have few content gaps. There are certainly some sections that could expand upon their particular topic, but I felt like the page overall had a pretty complete outline to adequately explain to the layperson what digital preservation was about. Yet the article was labeled as Start-class, the same quality label that was applied to the Digital Curation article, which I found very wanting in detail and completeness. I think the Digital Curation article could benefit from an explanation of the core concepts/activities of digital curation, as well as an explanation of how it differs in definition from digital preservation. I also feel like the Approaches section of the article is awkwardly implemented and seemingly random in what is included there.

The Digital Preservation WikiProject seems like a wonderful way to coordinate the efforts of multiple volunteers. And personally, I think that effort appears to have paid off specifically for the Digital Preservation article. Though it doesn’t look to me like there has been a great deal of recent activity on their stated goal of addressing shortcomings in related topic articles, as evidenced by the quality of articles such as the Digital Curation and Digital Asset Management articles. I think the Open Tasks section of the Digital Preservation WikiProject could be turned into a more specific list of articles for volunteers to address. That might help refocus efforts on filling the knowledge gaps that still exist in related topic articles.

On an academic level, the process of evaluating an article seems relatively straightforward. On a personal level I must admit I’m less fond of the old-school web forum style discussion areas. Users seem to regularly get snippy and pompous. Several years ago I stopped patronizing such forums in my personal life for that very reason, so this part of Wikipedia is an exercise in patience.