Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/Cornell University/Online Communities (Fall 2013)/Maria Popova

Wikipedia Project: Final Report

Contribution to the Article

For this project, we added and re-organized a significant portion of the existing Wikipedia article. Additionally, minor edits were made to the article included wording and diction centered around the short summary of Popova. We also updated and included new sources, as some facts in the existing Wikipedia article were missing citations. We expanded the information on the Wikipedia article regarding Popova’s personal life, which was made through the addition of a section called “Early Life, Work and Education.” We expanded the existing “Work” section of the Wikipedia article by adding the subcategories “Side Projects and Partnerships,” “Working Style,” “Content Selection and Output,” and “Awards and Recognition.” We expanded and made corrections to the existing “Criticism” area of the article. The original article included biased language not attributed to a reliable source, so we updated the section, removed bias, and added sources. We also added subcategories of “The Curator’s Code” and “Affiliate Advertising” to the existing “Criticism” category.

Our main addition in terms of multimedia was a picture of Popova. Ric was able to reach out to Popova herself via email and ask Popova to personally submit a picture for usage in the article, which she was gracious enough to do in a timely fashion.

Catherine was personally very familiar with Popova’s work prior to this project, and had been following Brain Pickings for around a year. Outside of Catherine's prior knowledge, the group primarily found sources of information on the Internet. Popova has had a solid presence in the media, which made it simple for us to acquire details about her work and personal life through conducting Google searches. For example, Popova has had interviews and spotlights in very prominent news sources such as The New York Times, Mother Jones, and LifeHacker, among others. Most of these published features focus on Popova’s life and work, which was also the main topic of expansion in our Wikipedia article. Much of Popova’s work, partnerships, and other creative endeavors are primarily digital, so it was also fairly simple to research and learn more about these. A good example of this is the writing Popova does for The Atlantic. This is not information Popova produces and self-publishes, so it is not considered “unreliable” or an “external source” by Wikipedia. Popova’s work on The Atlantic is a credible and easily located source, and so was very useful to us in our information search. Additionally, since Popova herself is very active on the Internet (whether it is on her own blog, on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, or even through email), she herself was a very useful source of information.

We think the article is ready to move up from a C-Class article to a B-Class article. Through the help and guidance of Wikipedians and through our own research, we significantly expanded the existing information on the Wikipedia article and re-organized the article to flow in a more cohesive, logical manner. Additionally, through communicating with Popova herself, we were able to address an error in the “Controversy” section of the Wikipedia article. We took extra care to weigh the information given to us by Popova with external sources (Reuters, PandoDaily) representing the contrasting opinion of individuals criticizing Popova and write out the section in a manner that was neutral and shed equal light on all sides of the controversy.

Evolution of the Article

The Wikipedia article started out as a skeleton with minimal content and no pictures. We made several changes: updated figures, added content, added categories, added subcategories, and uploaded an image provided by Popova herself. We researched and found references to content that was already on the page but lacked a source. We also revised misleading or inaccurate information upon Popova’s request. The current revision is different from the one that we started with because it is much longer, includes updated and more accurate information, has additional categories, and includes multimedia. In addition to working as a team, comments from Wikipedians, the TA, the professor, and from Popova herself all contributed to the way that the article evolved. Communication and feedback was a major contribution to the development of this project, and the fact that we were fortunate enough to have email correspondence with Popova was especially helpful to the development of the article.

After we submitted our article to the “Did You Know” category, one of the moderators of Wikipedia looked over our nomination and informed us that the article did not qualify. This was since our edits were only a 3x expansion as opposed to a 5x expansion, which was the required minimum for nomination consideration. However, since we started our project early, we fortunately had enough time to add more content and expand our article. It was a challenging process finding more content to add. Not only is Popova only 28 years old, she is also an individual who likes to keep her personal life relatively private. Furthermore, we could not use direct content produced by Popova on Brain Pickings, as under Wikipedia standards it qualifies as an unreliable source (self-produced and self-published). However, we were able to overcome this challenge by continuing to thoroughly research Popova and add more detail to the content we already included. The time and effort that this took was extensive, but we were able to increase the volume of our expansion from 3x to 5x. The moderator, Allen3 has yet to approve our nomination.

Community Experience

We found the overall community experience of this project to be especially positive. Not only did we have the opportunity to interact with one another, we also had the pleasure to communicate directly with several Wikipedians and course representatives through the article talk page, individual talk pages, and email communication.

The majority of the communication occurred through the talk page for the article with other Wikipedians that were invested in the article. Here we had interactions with veteran Wikipedians Accedie and Quiddity. Accedie was the original creator for the “Maria Popova article” and provided us with general feedback on additional content creation as well as helpful guidelines in regards to adding media to the page. She specifically recommended us to take advantage of Wikipedia Commons in order to avoid any copyright issues when uploading a profile picture for Maria Popova. On the other hand, Quiddity gave us feedback in regards to external content that we were referencing. He communicated the importance of maintaining an unbiased view when using these sources and to be sure to credit them as such. In addition to their original comments, we reached out to these two Wikipedians through their individual talk pages again to get a second opinion after uploading the bulk of our content.

Aside from communicating with the general Wikipedian community, we also had interactions with JMathewson and Jared Kass, our Wikipedia ambassador and mentor. With their help, we were better able to realize the norms for communicating with others and received specific feedback as to areas that we should be especially careful about such as uploading images and ensuring that the content we upload is accurate. At the same time, we interacted with Allen3 as mentioned in the previous section for qualifying for the “Did You Know” nomination.

Through our combined interaction with fellow Wikipedians and course representatives, we felt a strong sense of community. Instead of going through an experience where we were instructed what to do, we had a back and forth interaction with the contacts mentioned above. Furthermore, although we were new at the task of editing and improving Wikipedia articles, we were treated with respect and regarded as equals, which enforced the feeling of community.

Finally, we had the opportunity to interact with Maria Popova herself. As she is a relatively active in her current online work, we decided to reach out to her through email to ask for her feedback on the article and for her to donate a picture of herself to the Wikipedia cause. Through this form of interaction, we were able to correct a few inaccuracies within our article such as the criticism portion where Maria provided direction as to how the funding issue was resolved. Overall, it was a helpful and meaningful experience to have been in touch with her.

Responsibility Breakdown

Catherine and Jennifer were responsible for the research and content creation portion of the Wikipedia project. Since there was a minimal amount of content on the existing Wikipedia article, they researched material that was not yet mentioned in the article and added content as necessary. The research process was collaborative; though Catherine and Jennifer split up sections to individually research, they often touched base and shared sources as the research period went on. The actual writing portion was also collaborative. After acquiring all the sources, Catherine and Jennifer were then responsible for repurposing and reorganizing the content (this entailed the updating of figures, the rewording of diction, the reorganization of categories and the addition of necessary subcategories). They had a very involved role in terms of working with Wikipedia language, and made sure that their word usage was unbiased and in encyclopaedic style. They also did a large amount of editing work (in terms of the written content) when all the sections were added to make sure the writing was organized in a manner that flowed and made sense to the reader.

Ric’s responsibility included the Wiki markup language, technical work, and communication portion of the project. He communicated with Wikipedia editors, TA’s, and the professor through Wikipedia to acquire feedback, commentary, and guidance (and became very familiar with the norms of Wikipedia communication!) He also communicated with Maria Popova via email, where he requested she submit a picture to Wikipedia for usage in the article. In addition, he added the content and sources that Catherine and Jennifer researched to the Wikipedia page and revised parts of the content throughout the process. He also completed the tasks of adding a large number of references to the page, making sure that they were cited accurately and correctly, and structuring the added content.