Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/Cornell University/Online Communities (Fall 2013)/Peer-to-peer
1. Your contribution to the article in terms of the changes you have made in the article. Add details about content, formatting, style, organization, multimedia, links, etc. Describe where you got the information for these changes and what sources you used. Do you think the article now ready to move up from a C-Class to a B-Class? Why or why not?
Over the past few weeks, we have made considerable changes to the “Peer-to-Peer” article. When we first found the article, we saw that it lacked an organized architecture. For example, the history of peer-to-peer was at the bottom of the page, and several subcategories didn’t fit under their current sections. We added several categories that we thought were missing from the initial existing page, such as “Social and Political Implications.” We also thought that “Current Applications” would be most useful as its own section. Once we had these new sections outlined, it was much easier to us to move around subsections that we thought did not belong in their existing locations. Although we feel strongly about our edits and think we improved the page considerably, we do not think it’s quite ready to move from a C-Class article to a B-Class article. We feel we have closed the gap in improving the “Peer-to-Peer” article to a B-Class, but a B-Class article requires significant discussion on the “Talk” pages, and unfortunately there’s not much interaction at this time. The good news is that this article is listed as a an article of high importance, so there’s hope that in the near future Wikipedians will take the next steps in further improving the article.
2. The evolution of the article in terms of what it was like when you started, what changes you made when, and how the current revision is different from the one when you just started. What contributed to the way that the article evolved?
The “Peer-to-Peer” article presented some unique challenges throughout the several weeks we had worked on it. When we first began to look at the article, it seemed jumbled and hard to navigate. As we mentioned, the sections seemed scattered and unorganized. Changing that architecture by reorganizing the categories and subcategories was our first major change, and one that boded well for us in further improving the content within certain sections that we felt were lacking. All of the users that we were in contact with stood behind our proposed changes and explained that this would be beneficial to the article as a whole. They also explained that changing the architecture would not take value away from what was previously added to the article. Their feedback allowed us to move forward with our proposed changes.
After we had restructured the Table of Contents, we looked deeper into each section to decide what areas needed to be developed more. We talked through each section about what it was lacking and what information we would need to develop it. As a group, we divided the sections among ourselves and individually researched our sections. After we had come up with information, we sat down and discussed whether our planned Table of Contents still fit with the information we had found. We had some difficulty finding information for sections we added such as “Demographics,” and others we felt were redundant, such as “Network Politics.” This posed an interesting problem. Do we keep the sections and search for any bits of information regarding the topic just so that we can expand the article, or do we delete the sections entirely? We decided it was best that we choose quality information over quantity, so we revised our Table of Contents again to match the information we were able to gather.
Overall, the article is considerably different now from the time we started, and even from the time we made our first architectural change. Our decisions to restructure the article so that it is easier to understand for readers and our ability to find information were the biggest factors in the decisions we made to improve the article.
3. The community experience you had in terms of interactions with others through article pages, talk pages, or other means. Describe specific interactions, who they were with, and whether they were beneficial or detrimental to your Wikipedia experience (anonymize names of those you had negative interactions with). Did you feel that you were in a community? Why or why not?
In order to make successful edits to the article, our group first identified several individuals who had previously contributed to the article by looking on the “Peer-to-peer” talk page. We posted our suggested edits on the article’s talk page, and more specifically, we contacted users Loadmaster, Kbrose, and Old Death, and posted our ideas for edits on their personal Talk pages. Loadmaster, in particular, was an especially helpful Wikipedian, as he/she was very honest and prompt when answering any questions we had. When we posted our suggestions on the peer-to-peer talk page, he/she offered approved of our ideas and gave us helpful tips as we began to move forward with our edits.
Loadmaster explained to us how to “be sure to include information that’s already in the page, making any corrections as necessary; restructuring a page should not remove anything of value, but should present existing (as well as new) info in a more readable way.” This advice was crucial in our confidence and ability to update the article. Since we took this initial advice to heart, we were very conscious of not reverting previous editors’ work, even though we initially considered eliminating small portions of the existing article. Had we not taken Loadmaster’s advice, it is far more likely that we would have caused more conflict, as people would have been offended that their contributions were deemed meaningless, which is a serious issue that we’ve discussed through some of our class readings.
As a group, we felt that our interactions with other Wikipedians were beneficial, as they were understanding that we were new to the Wikipedia community and made thoughtful suggestions as we learned the norms. We felt like we began to become a part of the Wikipedia community as we interacted with other users because they eased us into the process of updating and editing our Wikipedia article. If we had not had such positive and thoughtful feedback, we would most lkely not have felt part of the community. After reading the first few readings for this class, we were initially apprehensive about taking part in this community, which is subject to territorialism, as well as contempt towards new editors. However, we were fortunate enough to not have negative interactions, aside from one or two edit reverts.
In addition, we felt that there were many options available to use as new editors, which we took advantage of, such as the Wikipedia Teahouse. At one point we were considering merging an article which we thought was a repeat of one of our subsections (“Social peer-to-peer processes”). We asked about this on the Teahouse, and received quick responses to this question. With the feedback that users like Loadmaster provided, we decided that merging the articles was not the best option.
One of the last things that we did in our interactions with the community users was awarding Barnstars to those who helped us. Awarding Barnstars was actually a very rewarding experience, seeing all the different kinds of Barnstars available, and awarding them to those who did support us in our roles as new Wikipedia editors. It felt good expressing our appreciation to the community that we had felt we became a small part of.
4. A detailed breakdown of who did what in this project in terms of content, communication, and technical aspects.
One of the first things that we did as a group was to restructure the format of the article, which we thought was not well organized. We spent roughly 45 minutes in a collaborative space using sticky notes on a whiteboard to see where we could move the existing subsection into new categories so that the page made more sense to visitors. Once we established these new changes, we were able to more efficiently move forward with our edits. The following is the breakdown of what each person contributed in terms of content, communication, and technical aspects:
Christian oversaw the restructuring of the hierarchy of the page content, and added content to the newly restructured architecture section. In general, this section was fairly well developed compared to some of the newly created content sections, but a few sections, such as “Hybrid Models” had been flagged for expansion. The biggest modifications that were made to his section was the elimination of the “citation needed tags”. He also engaged with other Wikipedia editors.
Alyssa worked on adding more information to the Historical Development section of the page. As a group, we felt that this section was lacking depth on how peer-to-peer networking began and evolved over time. In order to expand and improve this section, Alyssa looked at the literature on the history of peer-to-peer to find what started the peer-to-peer phenomenon and how it transformed as media technology improved. She found two useful sources to add to the page. Alyssa used group discussions to formulate and post suggestions on other Wikipedians’ talk pages.
Craig worked on adding more information to the Political Implications section of the article. Intellectual Property Law and Illegal Sharing was the section that needed the most work. Craig tried to add more information to the basics behind copyright law as it regards to peer-to-peer systems. In addition, making the two sections of Political Implications more coherent and easier to read was something else that was worked on.
Josh worked on generating and adding content to the Social Implications and Current Research sections. The Social Implications section did not need a ton of work, but Josh added information pertaining to some of the reasons that people do not cooperate and why other social aspects of P2P networks can be difficult. Since a lot of social implications fall under specific types of P2P networks, such as file sharing, Josh could not use some of the sources he found in order to fall in line with suggestions made by other users. The Current Research section needed the most work because there was no information. He used an article from Google Scholar to discuss what kind of research is being done with P2P networks and how to improve this research.