Wikipedia Project Analytical Reflection

Composing the definition and lead sections for our class Wikipedia article on “Public Sphere Writing” was quite the challenge. For starters, I had never even edited a Wikipedia article before this class required me to do so, much less written one of my own from scratch. Having a solid and predetermined group was definitely helpful. We would keep each other in check with what we added on to the article.

The most difficult part for us was how little we felt we had to work with. “Definitions” are extremely broad, and although defining “Public Sphere Writing” was a given, the rest of the words and terms we were to define were not set in stone. My group ended up in a way having to wait it out on everyone else, and then build definitions from what their sections focused around.

The rhetorical velocity introduced in Ridolfo and Rife’s text is visible here. Texts that are delivered digitally are easily “readily available to mix, mash and merge” (Ridolfo 229). I found this to be specifically true in terms of this assignment. As I was editing one thing through the original GoogleDoc, and later through the Wikipedia sandbox, my group could almost immediately see it and give their input; whereas had it been a few years back without this recent technology of digital delivery, the rhetorical velocity would have been interrupted.

In Handa’s The Multimediated Rhetoric of the Internet she mentions how the Internet has affected culture, and this concept become obvious not only throughout out projects semester-long, but especially and with a heavy emphasis on this project in particular. Wikipedia is in its entirety Interned-based. Because of its public-sphere, multi-editor nature, it cannot exist without the Internet. Killingsworth’s appeals to time played a role when doing this project as well. For one, an appeal to time was important when composing this article, as it is a timely entry. Although encyclopedias usually hold entries on everything, no matter the timeliness of it, the term we did our class Wikipedia project on was one that was not previously on the platform, and I believe it is important that we changed that as a class. With today’s rhetorical velocity of the digital age, writing in the public sphere is common. It’s crucial that Wikipedia holds an entry on the ins and outs of the practice of public sphere writing.

Furthermore, the most obvious text that resonated with me throughout the composition of this Wikipedia article were Porter’s theories of “intertextuality.” The sandbox itself was the epitome of intertextuality. One text grabbed from another which led to a sequence and webbing of borrowing bits and pieces of information to eventually form a new text, able to stand on its own. "Examining texts 'intertextually' means looking for 'traces,' the bits and pieces of Text which writers or speakers borrow and sew together to create new discourse" (Porter 34). Wikipedia’s structure involved linking from one Wikipedia page to another as it becomes appropriate and relevant in the original text. This leads to visible intertextuality. In our article alone, several other pages were linked to, and eventually, our page will be linked in other articles too.

All in all, if I were to think hard enough I feel like this project encompassed every critical text we have gone through as a class throughout the length of this semester. The aforementioned are the ones that stood out to me most clearly.

Porter, James E. "Intertextuality and The Discourse Community." Rhetoric Review. 1st ed. Vol. 5. London: Taylor & Francis, 1986. 34-47. Autumn, 1986.

Ridolfo, Jim and Martine Courant Rife. “Rhetorical Velocity and Copyright: A Case

Study on Strategies of Rhetorical Delivery.” 223-243. Web.