Our Wikipedia Project group consists of Maggie Wong, Tiffany Wong, Linda He, and Kathy Xu, and we edited the Spam (food) article. This is our group report.
Our contributions to the article included expanding the content, adding more sources, reorganizing the structure of the article, adding relevant images and tables, and creating inline links to related Wikipedia pages. In terms of expanding the content, we drew from relevant sources we found and existing references on the page. We specifically expanded on the history of Spam; its usage in the United States and its territories, the United Kingdom, and various Asian countries; and its place in popular culture.
We reorganized the structure of the article by merging the ‘Name’ section into the ‘History’ section and then moving the latter right after the article introduction in order to make the article format similar to other food articles; we also moved content related to history from the ‘International usage’ section to the ‘History’ section. We also moved the ‘Spam celebrations’ section from the ‘International usage’ section to a new section we created called ‘In popular culture’. The ‘Nutritional data’ section and ‘Varieties’ section were moved to the bottom of the article.
We added two images, one depicting Spam being cooked in a frying pan and another image depicting the nutritional label of Spam, but the former was ultimately deleted by SovalValtos from the page. We also added a table to better display the nutritional data of Spam. Throughout the article, we also added links to related Wikipedia pages.
We drew information for these changes by doing online searches with Google Scholar and Google News and within online journal databases such as JSTOR. After conversing with other Wikipedians early on in the project such as Howicus, Demiurge1000, and Fiddle Faddle from Teahouse, as well as BlueRasberry on the article talk page, we tried our best to narrow down our sources to only those that were both independent and reliable. We also looked at existing citations and references in the article to see what other information we could get from them. In addition, on the article talk page, Wikipedians such as NorthAmerica1000 proposed additional sources that we took a look at.
To gauge where our article stood in terms of the criteria for a B-Class article, we analyzed the state of the article at the end of this project by looking at the following:
- References - Inline citations were applied where necessary, and potentially controversial material and important facts were cited to the best of our knowledge with reliable sources. However, BlueRasberry pointed out that a few of our sources in the ‘In popular culture’ and ‘Celebrations’ sections seemed less reliable. Spam itself is not a topic common to scholarly material, so the use of news articles as references were used as support for some of the content. In terms of the References criteria, we do not believe the article can meet the criteria for a B-class article because of the inclusion of some sources whose reliability is open to interpretation.
- Scope of Article - The major topics regarding Spam (food) were discussed, in particular the ‘History’ section was created as suggested by another Wikipedian (JKeck) on the Talk page. At the moment, there is no mention of any obvious omissions or inaccuracies as conveyed through the talk page. Certain topics can be still be expanded in the ‘International usage’ section, namely the UK section, although reliable and independent sources may be hard to find due to the niche nature of the article. In terms of the Scope criteria, we do believe the article meets B-class article standards.
- Structure - The current structure of the article is very indicative of other Class B articles listed within the Wikiproject Food and Drink. For instance, like the Gingerbread house and Hollandaise sauce pages, the Spam page begins with a brief description of the product and then starts off with the ‘History’ section. Right after, the article then discusses its usage, then references to it in popular culture, and so forth. The material within each section is now more clearly defined, and this is largely due in part to the reorganization of the information within the ‘International usage’ section that was moved to its own ‘History’ section. In terms of the Structure criteria, we believe that the article meets B-Class standards.
- Readability/Voice - Overall, there are no complaints of major grammatical issues and the article flows reasonably well. The article meets B-Class standards in terms of this criteria.
- Supporting Material (Pictures, Tables, etc.) - The pictures we added aid in the understanding of the article. The picture of the label under Nutritional data provides information on what the actual label of the 60% Less Sodium container looks like. The table provides nutritional information for just the Original Spam product in a more readable format. In terms of Supporting Material criteria, we believe the article meets B-Class standards.
- Appropriately Understandable - Information was added to target a broad audience. Information presented in the ‘International usage’ section brings forth cultural aspects related to Spam from various backgrounds. No technical background is assumed. More scientific terms such as Vitamins and Minerals, were linked to their respective Wikipedia pages in order for the reader to obtain a better understanding of the material presented. In terms of Understandability, we believe that the article fits B-Class criteria.
Overall, the article seems to fit the majority of B-Class criteria, but other Wikipedia users like BlueRasberry have pointed out the inclusion of potentially weak references and sources. Given that content and its support is the largest part of a Wikipedia article, we believe that moving forward, editors will need to address the controversial reliability of these sources to be fully sure that the article can be considered B-Class. Specifically looking at the ‘In popular culture’ section, we had trouble finding scholarly articles for the content in this section and instead drew from newspaper archives, especially since many of the celebrations are local events.
At the start of the project, the Spam (food) page was listed as a C-Class article of high importance in the Wikiproject Food and Drink but a B-Class article of low importance in the WikiProject Hawaii. On the article’s talk page, there was a slow amount of activity with the last major activity occurring around 2011. A more recent addition to the talk page in August 2014 called for an expansion of the content, particularly regarding Spam’s history, by user JKeck, which prompted us to choose the article. Looking at the actual article’s edit history, we could see that the page had been continuously edited even though activity on the talk page was limited.
The initial state of the article was divided into major sections including Name, Nutritional data, Varieties, and International usage. Within the ‘Nutritional data’ section, Spam’s nutrition information was presented in a paragraph format. Under ‘International usage’, subsections included United State and Territories, United Kingdom, Asia, and Spam Celebrations. The ‘International usage’ section contained historical information related to Spam as well as brief content describing its relevance to certain areas of the world.
Changes to the Spam (food) page were made periodically. Significant changes to the article were made weekly from September 11 to October 16. During Week 1, we proposed changes on the talk page and reached out to other Wikipedia editors. During Week 2, we cited sources on the talk page and what information we would take from them, and continued reaching out and replying to other editors. During Week 3, we made our first actual edits to the article. We also replied to editors we had previously been contacting, in addition to new editors to the page who came to leave feedback. During Week 4, we made our final major changes including reorganization, added information, and added citation of sources. We also replied to new and recurring editors to continue our communication with them.
How the current version of the article is different from the initial state of the article is described as follows. We reorganized Spam to expand on existing content and took inspiration from existing GA-class Wikipedia food articles such as Hot Chocolate and Gumbo. These articles gave us an idea of what kind of information, and what level of detail, we should include on Spam (food). We also specifically looked at Cheese and KitKat to better understand how to organize the structure of our article. For example, those articles put nutritional data and varieties at the bottom of their articles, so we modeled ours off of that. We also expanded the introduction, ‘International usage’, ‘In popular culture’, and ‘Varieties’ sections. We also added a ‘History’ and ‘Nutritional data’ section, along with corresponding images that complemented the content, such as a picture of Spam’s nutritional label. We also focused on making the existing content more readable to users; for example, we presented the nutritional data in table-format, and distinguished ‘History’ elements from ‘International usage’ elements.
In addition to these revisions, our idea of what a good Wikipedia article looks like evolved throughout the project. Correspondingly, we changed the way we edited. In “Follow the (Slash) dot: effects of feedback on new members in an online community”, Lampe et al. cites that new users believe they can detect good comments on Slashdot, but that everyone’s opinion of what constitutes “good” can vary. Similarly, we thought we knew which edits we would need to make to improve the Spam (food) article, but as we interacted with Wikipedia editors, we realized that our preconceptions were not correct. Specifically, we realized that there are specific requirements for a B-class article (see above), that concise and neutral wording is important in conveying facts, and that Wikipedia articles are straightforward and fact-based rather than scholarly research articles.
There were numerous factors that contributed to how the article evolved. During the first week we did not receive as much feedback from other Wikipedians, thus our contributions were more minor. They included simple rewordings, grammatical changes, and the like. During this stage, more research was accumulated in order to find proper sources. As the weeks progressed and more activity was present on the Talk pages, we provided more detailed edits. With more interest in the article from other Wikipedia users, we also saw more editing and contributions from other people and not just us.
For policies, we needed to familiarize ourselves with Wikipedia’s policies through the student orientation and through interacting on Wikipedia. We learned Wikipedia’s core principles, policies on editing, and nuances such as the use of reliable sources and media. In terms of technical aspects, we needed to learn Wiki mark-up language, formatting, referencing, and citation customs.
We learned the various rules of Wikipedia through different means. For instance, the student tutorial and in-class demonstrations were helpful in seeing first-hand how to edit, format, reference, and upload content. Furthermore, we found more resources throughout the process of editing whenever we needed additional guidance. We found existing resources such as the Wikipedia editing cheatsheet and citation templates that proved useful throughout the process. In addition, we interacted in Teahouse with other users, particularly about the reliability of sources and the various Wikiprojects. For more specific topics such as the creation of a table format for nutritional information we looked to examples such as the table presented on the Nutrition facts label page.
Lampe et al. suggests that new users can be dissuaded by information overload. We experienced this through the sandbox tutorials, which were lengthy and detailed, especially for our first introduction into Wiki markup language. The amount of new information introduced so quickly prevented us from learning as thoroughly as we could have. In addition, the Wikipedia tutorial that was provided to us was too shallow and did not give us an accurate idea of the scope that editing could take, especially the interactions with other users, which further added to the daunting nature of Wikipedia in the beginning.
Reeves and Sherwood, in “Five design challenges for human computation”, explore the design considerations that should be taken into account to encourage the success of the systems. In this light, the talk pages were conducive to collaboration with more experienced Wikipedia editors. Both BlueRasberry and NorthAmerica1000 proved to be a very helpful contacts. These Wikipedia editors stood out as people we interacted with who made us feel very welcome to the community of Wikipedia editors. Specifically, both provided guidance through constructive criticism of our edit proposal. NorthAmerica1000 also further provided additional sources to look at, some of which we were able to incorporate in to the article; when we thanked him for his efforts, he remained responsive and encouraging. BlueRasberry was also very helpful as he gave us a detailed explanation of Wikipedia ratings and provided constructive criticism and encouragement about our edits. Furthermore, he provided specific and concrete praise that highlighted the uniqueness of our edits. For instance when we reorganized the ‘History’ section, BlueRasberry specifically states how “all of these were needed improvements...grasped that odd historical stories are best grouped together in a ‘History’ section rather than named individually.” This demonstrates the Goal Setting Theory and the findings of Beenen et al. presented in “Using Social Psychology to motivate Contributions to Online Communities”. By giving us specific goals such as pointing our group specifically to the Gumbo page as a model page, BlueRasberry greatly impacted our further edits and motivated our future contributions. We continued to look through various articles of the same quality in order to improve our own page.
Ian also left us additional feedback on our talk page thanking us for our contributions and offering a couple of suggestions as well. We had a very positive experience interacting with these users who were willing to work with us as new editors to help us learn the ropes to better improve the article, offering understanding and encouragement in addition to useful feedback. This is similar to Morgan et al.’s study, “Tea & Sympathy: crafting positive new user experiences on Wikipedia” which discussed how early outreach and the support of other members of the community plays a significant role in welcoming newcomers, which was applicable to our experience on Wikipedia as new editors. When NorthAmerica1000 and BlueRasberry first provided feedback on our proposal, we felt supported by them, and also felt personally welcomed by NorthAmerica1000 when he left welcome messages on our individual user talk pages. NorthAmerica1000 also jumped into a discussion with SovalValtos to help defend us in terms of clarifying our intentions for researching sources, which reassured us by making us feel supported by other Wikipedians.
We also interacted with other users through the Teahouse when Kathy posted a question. Morgan et al.’s study specifically discusses the Teahouse. In our experience, the Teahouse provided a safe space that welcomed new users. We were more inclined to post our first questions on the Teahouse, because we knew we would not be judged. In this specific environment, old members take extra care in welcoming the new members of Wikipedia. Also, when we first visited the Teahouse we saw another post from a new member. This further encouraged us to communicate on the Teahouse. From these early interactions with other users, we felt integrated into the Wikipedia community by responding to their feedback and integrating their advice into our work. However, later on we felt distanced from the community and more on our own as we received less feedback (possibly because they were busy).
At the very end of our editing process, BlueRasberry thanked us using the ‘thank’ function on Wikipedia for our response to his feedback. This is an interesting function that reminded us of Yee et al.’s study which emphasized how social norms in real life translate into the virtual environment as well: thanking people is a social norm, and Wikipedia providing a function to do so is a reflection of how this social norm is actually built into the online community.
On the other hand, our interactions with SovalValtos were discouraging. Both Lessig and Dibbell addressed regulating behavior by highlighting the danger in ambiguous regulation online. In terms of Wikipedia, editors are encouraged to regulate each other freely. But SovalValtos’s personal method of regulating our content proved counterproductive. He first cautioned us to use reliable sources when we posted our initial edit proposal. However, he followed this comment by making one of our proposed edits on the Spam (food) article using an unreliable source we had initially proposed. Our following interactions with him proved inefficient, as we tried reaching out to him on his personal talk page to ask about his specific edits, but he avoided cooperating with us. At this time, another user also commented on our post on SovalValtos’ page: “Please remember ladies that nobody owns the page. Discuss on the article talk page.” We felt that this was uncalled for, because we had simultaneously been interacting with other users on the article talk page as well as personal interactions through user talk pages, so we responded with a careful explanation of our intentions. SovalValtos continued to make edits to the article on his own without giving us constructive feedback on our edits, so it was hard to understand what his intentions were, and we did not know how to efficiently collaborate with him on the article. We did our best to communicate our opinions through our responses to and questions about his comments and edits, though they sometimes went unanswered. Ultimately, we felt like SovalValtos was picking on us without effectively communicating with us. He didn’t take the time to make his criticism constructive or specific enough for us to understand how to address the issue. However, his contributions towards the end of our project were more helpful as he began to communicate with us more clearly through his edit summaries and by posting on the article talk page.
Throughout the course of this project, we did feel part of a community. But surprisingly, we did not feel a part of the Wikipedia editing community; instead, we felt a part of our INFO 3460 Spam group’s community. We did not feel that we belonged in a Wikipedia editing community, because we felt that the editors did not form a cohesive community. Editors are different in their editing styles and interactions with others. For example, NorthAmerica1000 cooperated positively through copious constructive criticism, additional sources to look at, and constant responsiveness. His talk page reflects his habits of positive interactions through numerous friendly posts from other editors. On the other hand, SovalValtos was very negative. He provided unconstructive criticism, and did not seem forgiving of the fact that we are students new to editing Wikipedia. His talk page shows evidence of previous editing wars as well as arguments with other editors about his edits, which often consisted of taking away others’ content that he didn’t find reliable or relevant. Furthermore, some Wikipedians did not interact with us at all, despite our attempts to reach out to them. Interestingly JKeck, who had originally been the last user to post on the Talk page of the article had not responded to our communication at all.
Despite not feeling a part of the Wikipedia editing community, we did feel a part of our small class group’s community. Our editing process consisted of collaborating simultaneously on a GoogleDoc, then posting the final changes to Wikipedia. This manifests our community-based group work.
Within our group, we also each had different perceptions of community membership. Tiffany felt a part of the general Wikipedia community (including readers) since we contributed to a Wikipedia article. Although we were not a part of the editing community, we did contribute to an article, and tried incorporating ourselves into the Wikipedia community. However, Linda and Maggie did not feel a part of the general Wikipedia community, since our contribution was too short, and was required for class. Linda felt that because we were working in a group and essentially contributing to the article as one editor compared to the other individual editors that we encountered, it was hard feeling like we as individual group members were part of the Wikipedia community; it felt more like our collective group was part of the Spam editing community but as individual members we were not. Maggie felt like our Wikipedia community was mainly comprised of our project group, with occasional feedback from other users, but no other users continuously collaborating with us. Although we received constructive feedback on our proposal, the subsequent responses were sporadic and it did not feel as though the users were actively involved with us throughout the entire process. In fact, with SovalValtos making edits on his own without communicating his intentions or opinions on our proposal, it almost felt as though we were competing against him, and never felt like we were working on the article together as a community until the very end when he began to communicate more clearly. Interestingly, this whole experience made Kathy feel like she belonged to a subset of the Wikipedia community, consisting of our project group and the Wikipedia users that did provide consistent positive feedback along the way. To Kathy, in a way, NorthAmerica1000 felt like an honorary member of the project group; for instance, this user provided additional citable sources after we had proposed our own and asked for feedback.
In terms of the content, the breakdown was as follows:
- Linda looked up and proposed sources on the talk page, communicated edits on the talk page, added inline citations, contributed to international usage (Japan, Philippines) content, and edited and uploaded photos.
- Kathy looked up and proposed sources, communicated edits, added citations, rearranged the structure and moved the ‘History’ section, rearranged and added information into more appropriate sections (‘History’, ‘International usage’, ‘Popular culture’), and reformatted nutritional information into a table.
- Maggie looked up sources, rearranged the structure of the article and merged the ‘Name’ section with the ‘History’ section, created and contributed to the ‘Popular culture’ section, consolidated international usage for South Korea, added inline citations, and fixed grammatical errors and typos throughout the course of the project.
- Tiffany looked up sources, made the bibliography, added citations where needed, expanded the content in international usage for the UK, Hong Kong, and Israel, added ‘Popular culture’ offshoots, and added the ingredients of Spam.
In terms of the communication, the breakdown was as follows:
- Linda communicated edits on the talk page of the article, asked questions about the differences in standards between different WikiProjects in the Teahouse, asked questions about the reliability of sources in the Teahouse, and asked similar questions in the WikiProject Food and Drink. She specifically talked to DocKrin, BlueRasberry, and NorthAmerica1000.
- Kathy asked questions in the Teahouse about a range of issues we came across that we needed help with, communicated edits on the talk page of the article, and asked for guidance on the WikiProject Food and Drink. She specifically talked to Macrakis, NorthAmerica1000, and JKeck.
- Maggie communicated on the talk page of the article and helped us to maintain constant communication with NorthAmerica1000, BlueRasberry, and especially SovalValtos throughout the course of the project by responding to their feedback on the Spam (food) talk page as well as specifically through their personal user talk pages.
- Tiffany communicated on the talk page of the article and helped us to maintain constant communication with NorthAmerica1000, SovalValtos, and Ian (Wiki Ed) throughout the course of the project.
In terms of the technical aspect, we each marked up our own content and corrected each other’s mistakes and typos. We did the majority of our work on a Google Doc or in one of our member’s sandbox before transferring our edits to the actual article.
Our Wikipedia Project group consists of Maggie Wong, Tiffany Wong, Linda He, and Kathy Xu, and we edited the Spam (food) article. This is our group report.
Our contributions to the article included expanding the content, adding more sources, reorganizing the structure of the article, adding relevant images and tables, and creating inline links to related Wikipedia pages. In terms of expanding the content, we drew from relevant sources we found and existing references on the page. We specifically expanded on the history of Spam; its usage in the United States and its territories, the United Kingdom, and various Asian countries; and its place in popular culture.
We reorganized the structure of the article by merging the ‘Name’ section into the ‘History’ section and then moving the latter right after the article introduction in order to make the article format similar to other food articles; we also moved content related to history from the ‘International usage’ section to the ‘History’ section. We also moved the ‘Spam celebrations’ section from the ‘International usage’ section to a new section we created called ‘In popular culture’. The ‘Nutritional data’ section and ‘Varieties’ section were moved to the bottom of the article.
We added two images, one depicting Spam being cooked in a frying pan and another image depicting the nutritional label of Spam, but the former was ultimately deleted by SovalValtos from the page. We also added a table to better display the nutritional data of Spam. Throughout the article, we also added links to related Wikipedia pages.
We drew information for these changes by doing online searches with Google Scholar and Google News and within online journal databases such as JSTOR. After conversing with other Wikipedians early on in the project such as Howicus, Demiurge1000, and Fiddle Faddle from Teahouse, as well as BlueRasberry on the article talk page, we tried our best to narrow down our sources to only those that were both independent and reliable. We also looked at existing citations and references in the article to see what other information we could get from them. In addition, on the article talk page, Wikipedians such as NorthAmerica1000 proposed additional sources that we took a look at.
To gauge where our article stood in terms of the criteria for a B-Class article, we analyzed the state of the article at the end of this project by looking at the following:
- References - Inline citations were applied where necessary, and potentially controversial material and important facts were cited to the best of our knowledge with reliable sources. However, BlueRasberry pointed out that a few of our sources in the ‘In popular culture’ and ‘Celebrations’ sections seemed less reliable. Spam itself is not a topic common to scholarly material, so the use of news articles as references were used as support for some of the content. In terms of the References criteria, we do not believe the article can meet the criteria for a B-class article because of the inclusion of some sources whose reliability is open to interpretation.
- Scope of Article - The major topics regarding Spam (food) were discussed, in particular the ‘History’ section was created as suggested by another Wikipedian (JKeck) on the Talk page. At the moment, there is no mention of any obvious omissions or inaccuracies as conveyed through the talk page. Certain topics can be still be expanded in the ‘International usage’ section, namely the UK section, although reliable and independent sources may be hard to find due to the niche nature of the article. In terms of the Scope criteria, we do believe the article meets B-class article standards.
- Structure - The current structure of the article is very indicative of other Class B articles listed within the Wikiproject Food and Drink. For instance, like the Gingerbread house and Hollandaise sauce pages, the Spam page begins with a brief description of the product and then starts off with the ‘History’ section. Right after, the article then discusses its usage, then references to it in popular culture, and so forth. The material within each section is now more clearly defined, and this is largely due in part to the reorganization of the information within the ‘International usage’ section that was moved to its own ‘History’ section. In terms of the Structure criteria, we believe that the article meets B-Class standards.
- Readability/Voice - Overall, there are no complaints of major grammatical issues and the article flows reasonably well. The article meets B-Class standards in terms of this criteria.
- Supporting Material (Pictures, Tables, etc.) - The pictures we added aid in the understanding of the article. The picture of the label under Nutritional data provides information on what the actual label of the 60% Less Sodium container looks like. The table provides nutritional information for just the Original Spam product in a more readable format. In terms of Supporting Material criteria, we believe the article meets B-Class standards.
- Appropriately Understandable - Information was added to target a broad audience. Information presented in the ‘International usage’ section brings forth cultural aspects related to Spam from various backgrounds. No technical background is assumed. More scientific terms such as Vitamins and Minerals, were linked to their respective Wikipedia pages in order for the reader to obtain a better understanding of the material presented. In terms of Understandability, we believe that the article fits B-Class criteria.
Overall, the article seems to fit the majority of B-Class criteria, but other Wikipedia users like BlueRasberry have pointed out the inclusion of potentially weak references and sources. Given that content and its support is the largest part of a Wikipedia article, we believe that moving forward, editors will need to address the controversial reliability of these sources to be fully sure that the article can be considered B-Class. Specifically looking at the ‘In popular culture’ section, we had trouble finding scholarly articles for the content in this section and instead drew from newspaper archives, especially since many of the celebrations are local events.
At the start of the project, the Spam (food) page was listed as a C-Class article of high importance in the Wikiproject Food and Drink but a B-Class article of low importance in the WikiProject Hawaii. On the article’s talk page, there was a slow amount of activity with the last major activity occurring around 2011. A more recent addition to the talk page in August 2014 called for an expansion of the content, particularly regarding Spam’s history, by user JKeck, which prompted us to choose the article. Looking at the actual article’s edit history, we could see that the page had been continuously edited even though activity on the talk page was limited.
The initial state of the article was divided into major sections including Name, Nutritional data, Varieties, and International usage. Within the ‘Nutritional data’ section, Spam’s nutrition information was presented in a paragraph format. Under ‘International usage’, subsections included United State and Territories, United Kingdom, Asia, and Spam Celebrations. The ‘International usage’ section contained historical information related to Spam as well as brief content describing its relevance to certain areas of the world.
Changes to the Spam (food) page were made periodically. Significant changes to the article were made weekly from September 11 to October 16. During Week 1, we proposed changes on the talk page and reached out to other Wikipedia editors. During Week 2, we cited sources on the talk page and what information we would take from them, and continued reaching out and replying to other editors. During Week 3, we made our first actual edits to the article. We also replied to editors we had previously been contacting, in addition to new editors to the page who came to leave feedback. During Week 4, we made our final major changes including reorganization, added information, and added citation of sources. We also replied to new and recurring editors to continue our communication with them.
How the current version of the article is different from the initial state of the article is described as follows. We reorganized Spam to expand on existing content and took inspiration from existing GA-class Wikipedia food articles such as Hot Chocolate and Gumbo. These articles gave us an idea of what kind of information, and what level of detail, we should include on Spam (food). We also specifically looked at Cheese and KitKat to better understand how to organize the structure of our article. For example, those articles put nutritional data and varieties at the bottom of their articles, so we modeled ours off of that. We also expanded the introduction, ‘International usage’, ‘In popular culture’, and ‘Varieties’ sections. We also added a ‘History’ and ‘Nutritional data’ section, along with corresponding images that complemented the content, such as a picture of Spam’s nutritional label. We also focused on making the existing content more readable to users; for example, we presented the nutritional data in table-format, and distinguished ‘History’ elements from ‘International usage’ elements.
In addition to these revisions, our idea of what a good Wikipedia article looks like evolved throughout the project. Correspondingly, we changed the way we edited. In “Follow the (Slash) dot: effects of feedback on new members in an online community”, Lampe et al. cites that new users believe they can detect good comments on Slashdot, but that everyone’s opinion of what constitutes “good” can vary. Similarly, we thought we knew which edits we would need to make to improve the Spam (food) article, but as we interacted with Wikipedia editors, we realized that our preconceptions were not correct. Specifically, we realized that there are specific requirements for a B-class article (see above), that concise and neutral wording is important in conveying facts, and that Wikipedia articles are straightforward and fact-based rather than scholarly research articles.
There were numerous factors that contributed to how the article evolved. During the first week we did not receive as much feedback from other Wikipedians, thus our contributions were more minor. They included simple rewordings, grammatical changes, and the like. During this stage, more research was accumulated in order to find proper sources. As the weeks progressed and more activity was present on the Talk pages, we provided more detailed edits. With more interest in the article from other Wikipedia users, we also saw more editing and contributions from other people and not just us.
For policies, we needed to familiarize ourselves with Wikipedia’s policies through the student orientation and through interacting on Wikipedia. We learned Wikipedia’s core principles, policies on editing, and nuances such as the use of reliable sources and media. In terms of technical aspects, we needed to learn Wiki mark-up language, formatting, referencing, and citation customs.
We learned the various rules of Wikipedia through different means. For instance, the student tutorial and in-class demonstrations were helpful in seeing first-hand how to edit, format, reference, and upload content. Furthermore, we found more resources throughout the process of editing whenever we needed additional guidance. We found existing resources such as the Wikipedia editing cheatsheet and citation templates that proved useful throughout the process. In addition, we interacted in Teahouse with other users, particularly about the reliability of sources and the various Wikiprojects. For more specific topics such as the creation of a table format for nutritional information we looked to examples such as the table presented on the Nutrition facts label page.
Lampe et al. suggests that new users can be dissuaded by information overload. We experienced this through the sandbox tutorials, which were lengthy and detailed, especially for our first introduction into Wiki markup language. The amount of new information introduced so quickly prevented us from learning as thoroughly as we could have. In addition, the Wikipedia tutorial that was provided to us was too shallow and did not give us an accurate idea of the scope that editing could take, especially the interactions with other users, which further added to the daunting nature of Wikipedia in the beginning.
Reeves and Sherwood, in “Five design challenges for human computation”, explore the design considerations that should be taken into account to encourage the success of the systems. In this light, the talk pages were conducive to collaboration with more experienced Wikipedia editors. Both BlueRasberry and NorthAmerica1000 proved to be a very helpful contacts. These Wikipedia editors stood out as people we interacted with who made us feel very welcome to the community of Wikipedia editors. Specifically, both provided guidance through constructive criticism of our edit proposal. NorthAmerica1000 also further provided additional sources to look at, some of which we were able to incorporate in to the article; when we thanked him for his efforts, he remained responsive and encouraging. BlueRasberry was also very helpful as he gave us a detailed explanation of Wikipedia ratings and provided constructive criticism and encouragement about our edits. Furthermore, he provided specific and concrete praise that highlighted the uniqueness of our edits. For instance when we reorganized the ‘History’ section, BlueRasberry specifically states how “all of these were needed improvements...grasped that odd historical stories are best grouped together in a ‘History’ section rather than named individually.” This demonstrates the Goal Setting Theory and the findings of Beenen et al. presented in “Using Social Psychology to motivate Contributions to Online Communities”. By giving us specific goals such as pointing our group specifically to the Gumbo page as a model page, BlueRasberry greatly impacted our further edits and motivated our future contributions. We continued to look through various articles of the same quality in order to improve our own page.
Ian also left us additional feedback on our talk page thanking us for our contributions and offering a couple of suggestions as well. We had a very positive experience interacting with these users who were willing to work with us as new editors to help us learn the ropes to better improve the article, offering understanding and encouragement in addition to useful feedback. This is similar to Morgan et al.’s study, “Tea & Sympathy: crafting positive new user experiences on Wikipedia” which discussed how early outreach and the support of other members of the community plays a significant role in welcoming newcomers, which was applicable to our experience on Wikipedia as new editors. When NorthAmerica1000 and BlueRasberry first provided feedback on our proposal, we felt supported by them, and also felt personally welcomed by NorthAmerica1000 when he left welcome messages on our individual user talk pages. NorthAmerica1000 also jumped into a discussion with SovalValtos to help defend us in terms of clarifying our intentions for researching sources, which reassured us by making us feel supported by other Wikipedians.
We also interacted with other users through the Teahouse when Kathy posted a question. Morgan et al.’s study specifically discusses the Teahouse. In our experience, the Teahouse provided a safe space that welcomed new users. We were more inclined to post our first questions on the Teahouse, because we knew we would not be judged. In this specific environment, old members take extra care in welcoming the new members of Wikipedia. Also, when we first visited the Teahouse we saw another post from a new member. This further encouraged us to communicate on the Teahouse. From these early interactions with other users, we felt integrated into the Wikipedia community by responding to their feedback and integrating their advice into our work. However, later on we felt distanced from the community and more on our own as we received less feedback (possibly because they were busy).
At the very end of our editing process, BlueRasberry thanked us using the ‘thank’ function on Wikipedia for our response to his feedback. This is an interesting function that reminded us of Yee et al.’s study which emphasized how social norms in real life translate into the virtual environment as well: thanking people is a social norm, and Wikipedia providing a function to do so is a reflection of how this social norm is actually built into the online community.
On the other hand, our interactions with SovalValtos were discouraging. Both Lessig and Dibbell addressed regulating behavior by highlighting the danger in ambiguous regulation online. In terms of Wikipedia, editors are encouraged to regulate each other freely. But SovalValtos’s personal method of regulating our content proved counterproductive. He first cautioned us to use reliable sources when we posted our initial edit proposal. However, he followed this comment by making one of our proposed edits on the Spam (food) article using an unreliable source we had initially proposed. Our following interactions with him proved inefficient, as we tried reaching out to him on his personal talk page to ask about his specific edits, but he avoided cooperating with us. At this time, another user also commented on our post on SovalValtos’ page: “Please remember ladies that nobody owns the page. Discuss on the article talk page.” We felt that this was uncalled for, because we had simultaneously been interacting with other users on the article talk page as well as personal interactions through user talk pages, so we responded with a careful explanation of our intentions. SovalValtos continued to make edits to the article on his own without giving us constructive feedback on our edits, so it was hard to understand what his intentions were, and we did not know how to efficiently collaborate with him on the article. We did our best to communicate our opinions through our responses to and questions about his comments and edits, though they sometimes went unanswered. Ultimately, we felt like SovalValtos was picking on us without effectively communicating with us. He didn’t take the time to make his criticism constructive or specific enough for us to understand how to address the issue. However, his contributions towards the end of our project were more helpful as he began to communicate with us more clearly through his edit summaries and by posting on the article talk page.
Throughout the course of this project, we did feel part of a community. But surprisingly, we did not feel a part of the Wikipedia editing community; instead, we felt a part of our INFO 3460 Spam group’s community. We did not feel that we belonged in a Wikipedia editing community, because we felt that the editors did not form a cohesive community. Editors are different in their editing styles and interactions with others. For example, NorthAmerica1000 cooperated positively through copious constructive criticism, additional sources to look at, and constant responsiveness. His talk page reflects his habits of positive interactions through numerous friendly posts from other editors. On the other hand, SovalValtos was very negative. He provided unconstructive criticism, and did not seem forgiving of the fact that we are students new to editing Wikipedia. His talk page shows evidence of previous editing wars as well as arguments with other editors about his edits, which often consisted of taking away others’ content that he didn’t find reliable or relevant. Furthermore, some Wikipedians did not interact with us at all, despite our attempts to reach out to them. Interestingly JKeck, who had originally been the last user to post on the Talk page of the article had not responded to our communication at all.
Despite not feeling a part of the Wikipedia editing community, we did feel a part of our small class group’s community. Our editing process consisted of collaborating simultaneously on a GoogleDoc, then posting the final changes to Wikipedia. This manifests our community-based group work.
Within our group, we also each had different perceptions of community membership. Tiffany felt a part of the general Wikipedia community (including readers) since we contributed to a Wikipedia article. Although we were not a part of the editing community, we did contribute to an article, and tried incorporating ourselves into the Wikipedia community. However, Linda and Maggie did not feel a part of the general Wikipedia community, since our contribution was too short, and was required for class. Linda felt that because we were working in a group and essentially contributing to the article as one editor compared to the other individual editors that we encountered, it was hard feeling like we as individual group members were part of the Wikipedia community; it felt more like our collective group was part of the Spam editing community but as individual members we were not. Maggie felt like our Wikipedia community was mainly comprised of our project group, with occasional feedback from other users, but no other users continuously collaborating with us. Although we received constructive feedback on our proposal, the subsequent responses were sporadic and it did not feel as though the users were actively involved with us throughout the entire process. In fact, with SovalValtos making edits on his own without communicating his intentions or opinions on our proposal, it almost felt as though we were competing against him, and never felt like we were working on the article together as a community until the very end when he began to communicate more clearly. Interestingly, this whole experience made Kathy feel like she belonged to a subset of the Wikipedia community, consisting of our project group and the Wikipedia users that did provide consistent positive feedback along the way. To Kathy, in a way, NorthAmerica1000 felt like an honorary member of the project group; for instance, this user provided additional citable sources after we had proposed our own and asked for feedback.
In terms of the content, the breakdown was as follows:
- Linda looked up and proposed sources on the talk page, communicated edits on the talk page, added inline citations, contributed to international usage (Japan, Philippines) content, and edited and uploaded photos.
- Kathy looked up and proposed sources, communicated edits, added citations, rearranged the structure and moved the ‘History’ section, rearranged and added information into more appropriate sections (‘History’, ‘International usage’, ‘Popular culture’), and reformatted nutritional information into a table.
- Maggie looked up sources, rearranged the structure of the article and merged the ‘Name’ section with the ‘History’ section, created and contributed to the ‘Popular culture’ section, consolidated international usage for South Korea, added inline citations, and fixed grammatical errors and typos throughout the course of the project.
- Tiffany looked up sources, made the bibliography, added citations where needed, expanded the content in international usage for the UK, Hong Kong, and Israel, added ‘Popular culture’ offshoots, and added the ingredients of Spam.
In terms of the communication, the breakdown was as follows:
- Linda communicated edits on the talk page of the article, asked questions about the differences in standards between different WikiProjects in the Teahouse, asked questions about the reliability of sources in the Teahouse, and asked similar questions in the WikiProject Food and Drink. She specifically talked to DocKrin, BlueRasberry, and NorthAmerica1000.
- Kathy asked questions in the Teahouse about a range of issues we came across that we needed help with, communicated edits on the talk page of the article, and asked for guidance on the WikiProject Food and Drink. She specifically talked to Macrakis, NorthAmerica1000, and JKeck.
- Maggie communicated on the talk page of the article and helped us to maintain constant communication with NorthAmerica1000, BlueRasberry, and especially SovalValtos throughout the course of the project by responding to their feedback on the Spam (food) talk page as well as specifically through their personal user talk pages.
- Tiffany communicated on the talk page of the article and helped us to maintain constant communication with NorthAmerica1000, SovalValtos, and Ian (Wiki Ed) throughout the course of the project.
In terms of the technical aspect, we each marked up our own content and corrected each other’s mistakes and typos. We did the majority of our work on a Google Doc or in one of our member’s sandbox before transferring our edits to the actual article.