1102 Post 3: Content Gap

As with anything that you write, you must always keep in mind the needs of your audience and the response that you want from them. According to the training for Wikipedia instructors, Wikipedia has one main purpose:

The core purpose of Wikipedia is to provide open, accessible information to the world. It's written by volunteers, who work to improve areas they're interested in. They summarize existing information from reliable sources on that topic.

This, in a nutshell, is why and how you write for Wikipedia. People visit Wikipedia to get a quick, reliable overview of a topic AND to find links to more in-depth information.

It seems to me, then, that content gaps have two aspects:

1. the gap between the information in the existing article and what the reader needs, and
2. the gap between the information in the existing article and the information available about that topic.

You can keep both of these gaps in mind when researching your article. So a first question is about the kinds of information that readers are looking for when they come to a Wikipedia article. Why would someone read an article about a short story? Does your article provide the information readers' need? If not, then that is the gap.

The first question is about the kinds of information that is out there in the scholarly world. What kinds of information has been written about your short story? Is that information reflected in the article about your story? If not, then that is the gap.

Leave a comment to this post about a gap that you see in your Wikipedia article.

1102 Post 1: Wikipedia

I'll say it up front: I like Wikipedia.

Do I trust it? Heck, no!

So what's going on here? Why would I like it if I don't trust it? I'll explain.

The problem for me is authority and how we assign it and to whom we assign it. This is a real issue in an era of Fake News. Today, we are all learning that we should not trust everything we hear on television nor everything we read on the Internet, including Wikipedia. But what about the things we read in the library or access on GALILEO? Should we believe those things? What about the things our professors teach in their classrooms? Nope. We shouldn't believe those things either--at least not without testing them for reliability and authority first.

Peer reviewed articles are not always reliable and accurate. Sometimes they tell outright lies. So how can we tell reliable fact from misleading lies?

That's what I want to teach students: how to develop a critical mind that can assess the authority and reliability of found information. Wikipedia gives me the ideal chance to do that because some of its articles are rock solid and reliable, while some of them are outrageous lies. I want you to know how to tell the difference.

1101 Post 1: My Online Image

So I googled my name, and got seven pages of links. Seven didn't seem like much, but then, I googled "Donald Trump", and he had only 12 pages. So does this mean that I'm a little more than half as famous as the President? Probably not, but it did make me feel a bit better.

So what's my image on the Web? First, it's rather accurate, I think. I show up mostly as an educator and a family man. I think that I'm more a family man than educator, but my educational image is sharper and more pervasive on the Web than is my family image. And by image, I don't mean merely pictures. Rather, I mean the impression of myself that I have left on the Web.

I can see the schools where I have worked and currently work. I can see my participation in online educational efforts and MOOCs (massive open online courses). My own writings on my blog and in scholarly articles shows up as do mentions in the writings of other scholars. For instance, Helen deWaard mentions some of my writing in her post "Agency -- Give or Take?" That was nice of her.

And that's the text stuff. If you click on the Images tab in Google search, then you can find lots of pix about me, my teaching and writing, and my family. Almost all of it accurate. All in all, I have to say that I'm satisfied with how I appear on the open Web. I think I like me.