At first glance,
it’s easy to see an immediate difference between the Marshall McLuhan and
Michelle Citron biographies on Wikipedia.
The amount of content featured in the latter biography pales in comparison to
the former. There’s a staggering amount of information on Marshall McLuhan, and
the sources or notes at the end of his biography is more than ten times that of
Michelle Citron’s. This could partially have something to do with the fact that
Michelle is still alive and what impact she’s had in her field. Towards the
end, the both include the standard “Notes” and “External Links” section, but
McLuhan also features a “Further Reading” section, which I think is extremely
helpful. Most users of Wikipedia are
students who are in need of research. Writing an article for Wikipedia requires writing for a broad,
general audience, but those in need of more or specified information are at
least point in the right direction in McLuhan’s article. I’d really like to
include a similar section in our own article on Multimodality. There are
certain things that may not fit into our subheadings, but are still worth a
mention for those readers who may be interested in learning more.
The structure of
both is similar, though McLuhan has more subheadings in his contents. The both
have a life and career section; however, Citron’s is split up between two
sections as opposed to McLuhan’s one. I think one of the reasons behind this is
to expand the article a bit more. If Citron’s early life and career were
condensed into one section, the article would most likely look even shorter
than it already it. Another reason could be that McLuhan’s career was a large
part of his life and vice versa, so it made more sense to group them together.
Both articles
cover major works. With Citron, there are tables of data regarding her
filmography and multimedia projects. There’s also another section of authored
works or books she’s contributed to. Personally, I would have liked to have
seen this formatted like the two sections before that with the tables, just for
continuity’s sake. McLuhan’s lacks the fancy tables, but his major works have
their own headings. Since they probably require more of an explanation, using a
table wouldn’t function well given the content. I think this is something that
needs to be remembered when composing. What is the best way to display this
information? It wouldn’t make sense to try and write paragraphs upon paragraphs
on Citron’s films if the gist of them could be summed up succinctly in rows and
columns, which made the content easier to read. Though, I am concerned that the
information has been rendered too simple. Despite Donald Lazere’s “Avoiding
Oversimplification and Recognizing Complexity” addressing these terms in public
arguments, I feel like they also apply to writing for Wikipedia. In “Oversimplification” the term is explained as
“appealing to the lowest common denominator of critical thinking skills” (245).
Although you want to make the content easy to read and comprehend, there’s the
risk of making it too simple. With Citron’s tables, it could be taken as a lazy
regurgitation of facts. I know that as a reader, I don’t want to be treated
like an idiot nor do I want to learn something that I could have just done on
my own. I think the drawing point of Wikipedia
is their ability to amass varied information in one place on a particular
subject. It’s entirely possible that I could have found Citron’s entire
filmography on another site, but with more added depth.
Citron’s
biography, surprisingly, features absolutely no images or illustrations. As a
user of Wikipedia, I expect an image
of the subject at the very least. McLuhan’s biography contains three. There is
one of him, a diagram that helps illustrate one of his key terms, and a street
that’s been co-named after him as a part of the “Legacy” section. I’d like to
include photos or illustrations in our article. Perhaps it’s a good way to
include examples without having to go into explanations for each one.
With Henry
Sidgwick’s biographies, I much preferred the Wikipedia version. Being hit with blocks of text in the
encyclopedia entry is a bit of a reader turn off, so by breaking it up
and including links via the contents is helpful. I also appreciate the tables
used in Wikipedia’s entry because the information is
optional. It doesn’t bog down the article buy inserting the information into a
paragraph. Rather, it’s easier to access and makes the article less cluttered.
I’m also wary of
the tone in the encyclopedia entry. Martha Kolln’s “The Writer’s Voice” says
“clearly, it’s the rhetorical situation – the topic, the purpose, the audience
– that determines the tone” (108). There’s a chance that I’ve incorrectly
identified one of those three and I’m misreading the tone within the article.
However, I remember reading a statement that started with “although the last
few years have seen an remarkable rehabilitation of ethical hedonism…” To me,
this bordered on making a claim and I felt the Wikipedia entry had more of a neutral tone, surprisingly, than the
encyclopedia entry.
For a featured
article, I’ve chosen the one on Windsor Castle. It’s a rather lengthy
article, but I think it’s quite well done. There is a nice balance between
photos and images when compared with the text, and all of the images have
proper copyright. It appears to be well researched, but I’ve noticed that a lot
of the notes are attributed to a lot of the same sources, so I’d have some
concern with source bias. Another concern I had was with the lead. In Wikipedia’s Featured Article criteria, it explains
that the lead should be concise. The lead in this article seems a little long
and includes information that I feel isn’t particularly necessary (e.g. “More
than five hundred people live and work in Windsor Castle”). These things,
though, are miniscule when compared to the article as a whole.
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