Preparation for 11/4: Wikipedia Project Article Plan I

Dear All:

We finished class today with a serious charge -- we need to better understand what Wikipedia is going to require of us in terms of ethical behavior, fallibility, reciprocity, and rhetorical velocity. Our participating in that environment does mean that we are agreeing to a set of shared guidelines and guiding principles, so we are not jumping in cold. However, even with those guidelines in place, there is still room for us to misunderstand some Wikipedia principles and there is plenty of room for error and harm. Misunderstanding and error and harm are what we want to avoid!

I read your group blog comments after class today, and I think a few groups have come up with excellent definitions of "ethics" or "fallibility" that are specific to writing and editing in that medium. I also think a few groups made some excellent connections among today's readings so as to justify those new definitions for that medium. When we convene on Tuesday, I'll go over the definitions I think are most useful to guide us. There are four things I'll need you to do in advance of Tuesday's class.

Individual: Review

Review Zittrain's chapter and Hood's web-based case study if you hadn't read them that closely for today, mainly because each of them does discuss particular aspects of the Wikipedia community that we'll need to keep in mind.

Team: Fleshing of Outline

Visit our Wikipedia Work Space (via Bb) and see that I integrated your outlines into a single draft outline for our article. Several teams put in a tremendous amount of work on their outlines which made my task easier because I understood why you outlined what you did. By class time on Tuesday, I am asking all teams to begin to flesh it out. Instructions are included directly in the Wikipedia Work Space, and at this early stage, don't worry too much about overlap. It is common in Wikipedia articles for some sections to echo each other, since all subtopics work together to create the same intertext. Please do as well as you can and as much as you can; the more your team contributes to our shared outline before Tuesday, the further along we will be as a class. I will ask only that each team color-code their contributions, so that I can keep track of who does what.

Individual: Creation of Wikipedia Account

Create a Wikipedia account and establish a username. Go to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username_policy> and think about how anonymous you’d like to be on the internet. Then, go to <Wikipedia English> and from the "Main Page, click "Create Account" (in the top right tab) to register for an editorial account on Wikipedia. Please just keep track of your username so that next week I can collect them all. If you get stuck, <this video> will give you step-by-step instructions for registering an account, once you have chosen a username.

Individual/Team: Come Prepared

Please bring your laptops and/or production devices to class on Tuesday so that you can be ready to work. Please also bring -- in print, digital, or electronic (linked) form -- all of the sources that your team has decided would make good contributions for writing our article. Hint: There should be many of them, given the level of detail that our outline contains so far. Remember all of the places you have to draw from in order to gather sources. It wouldn't surprise me if we started with 2 dozen sources and added or subtracted from there. You all did a lot of good brainstorming this week.

See you on Tuesday and I'm very much looking forward to it,
-Prof. Graban

Case Study Group Preparation: Ethics and Fallibility

Working Backwards from Gates

• Part I. Pick one or two of Gates's most provocative claims (about integrating the American mind). What can you find in Hood's essay or Zittrain's chapter that might challenge, disrupt, or possibly move the claims further? Compose your response as a "comment" below.
• Part II. Then, look over Best's article called "Damned Lies and Mutant Statistics" in Bb Genre Samples, Case Study #1. We'll talk about it together during our class discussion.

Unpacking Zittrain

• Part I. If we had to pick the principal (or most significant) parallal that Zittrain draws between road safety and how he presumes Wikipedia can work (in an ideal world), what would that be? What can you find in Gates's essay or Hood's essay that necessarily underscore this or support it? Compose your response as a "comment" below.
• Part II. Then, look over Best's article called "Damned Lies and Mutant Statistics" in Bb Genre Samples, Case Study #1. We'll talk about it together during our class discussion.

Working Forward from Hood

• Part I. What claims about the pedagogical value of Wikipedia (according to Hood) do we also see reflected in Zittrain's "Rise of Wikipedia," "Price of Success," or "Value of Netizenship" sections? Should we be challenging them? Compose your response as a "comment" below.
• Part II. Then, look over Best's article called "Damned Lies and Mutant Statistics" in Bb Genre Samples, Case Study #1. We'll talk about it together during our class discussion.

Preparation for 10/30: Wikipedia Group Outline and Case Study #3 (Ethics and Fallibility)

Dear All,

There are two main happenings on Thursday:

Reading and Blogging for Case Study #3 ("Ethics and Fallibility")
We're following the syllabus, so there are no surprises here. This week's case study will be based on our critical readings by Gates, Hood, and Zittrain. I think you'll enjoy them. Remember that several of you are on the <blogging schedule> to initiate posts, while the rest of you are on the schedule to respond. It's late in the game this semester, and I have given you lots of attentive feedback on your blogging, so please impress me (and each other).

Group Outline for Wikipedia Article (due by 2:00 p.m. on 10/30 in our Wikipedia space)
Before Thursday's class, you will need to be in touch with all members of Wikipedia working team and start generating the following in our Google Drive workspace :
 

1. A potential outline for our shared topic ("Public Sphere Writing"). If it were up to your group, what structure would our article follow? Please be as detailed as you would like, outlining not only a possible top structure for the article, but possible subtopics as well. If you are uncertain of how detailed the organization can be, please review Wikipedia pages on similar or related topics, as well as the project pages from <SA #4>. (See also Wikipedia project pages on <Article Development>, <Article Creation>, and <Featured Articles>.) You'll notice that every Wikipedia page has to contain certain elements.
2. A brief reading list or list of sources that represent not only what you have read and what you think will feasibly contribute to our topic, but also sources you may have come across from other classes, from the bibliographies of what we have already read, or new sources you have discovered on your own. This means start gathering relevant sources from “Critical Texts,” “For Further Reading,” and “Case Studies & Genres” (if relevant). 

Immediately after Thursday's class, I will compile all outlines and bibliographies into one, and then I will send out the next set of instructions to all Wikipedia teams to complete before class next Tuesday (11/4).
 
This is part of your process work for the Wikipedia project, and the onus is on all of us to do it well. All phases of the project should involve source gathering and exploration, so that we make the best writing and editing decisions. Work hard, but have fun with it! The more efficiently you work together, the better able I am to work with your team.
 
Looking forward to it,
-Prof. Graban

Policy Argument Feedback Conferences

Hello All:

As we did for the Sci/Tech Blog Assignment, we'll discuss your Policy Argument Assignment via face-to-face (f2f) conferences, during which we can talk about how your delivered genre did or did not meet the assignment objectives, how well it informed or where you struggled to inform through it, what you think went well about it, and how you might improve on or revise it for your portfolio. We'll talk a lot, of course, but you'll take notes so that you can get the satisfaction of fairly immediate and thorough feedback on the second major assignment of the semester, and on your other short assignments thus far. These conferences are required, so please don't delay in claiming a spot on our <schedule>.

-Prof. Graban

Preparation for 10/23: Meaning/Form Workshop and Policy Argument Peer Review

Folks, for Thursday you'll see we'll begin class with a workshop looking at Meaning-Form relationships. Then, we'll peer review your Policy Arguments, and I'll have a worksheet to guide you.

We're reading out of Style and reading an online excerpt on "rhetorics of web pages" in Barton, Kalmback, and Lowe's open-access book called The Writing Spaces Web Style Guide. Even if you are not constructing a web-based policy argument, this will still be relevant to our discussions about hypermediated forms of policy arguments. To be fully ready for Thursday's peer review, please bring Style and Working with Words, as well as your laptop with a downloaded or readily available copy of your completed draft of the Policy Argument. Or if your Policy Argument form is going to be paper-based and/or circulating in print hard copy, then please bring 1 good copy of it to share. Your argument should be complete and in as finalized a form as you can get it, though I did mention today that I understand some delivery forms shift and change as a result of peer review, and that may be the case with yours.

If you're still stuck, still wondering, still wanting to tie together loose pieces of knowledge-making as we near the end of this sphere, let me just remind you of the good work and thinking you have already done that is documented in our Bb class notes. Now is a good time to look over the swath of notes we have generated together since Sep. 25, because it's likely that one of those documents -- whether it is the list of key terms we defined to help us get in the mindset of policy arguments, or the gridding that we did during Case Study #2, or the way we discussed "hypermediation" or "citizen criticism" -- that may make something make concrete sense for you.

Finally, and I apologize for letting this preparation post go on so long, I'll document here that in today's class, by a vote of 13 - 8 - 3, you selected "remediation" as the topic of our Wikipedia article. (The other terms that garnered votes were "citizen journalism" and "collaborative journalism.") Please take 48 hours to let that notion settle and I'll check in on Thursday for "buyer's remorse." I offer you this settling period because it's clear to me that you -- as a class -- are immensely talented and have a real and critical understanding of what could be accomplished through a Wikipedia article, so I want to ensure that the topic is something we can all do together (given our shared expertise) but also is interesting and viable enough that you would want to do it together.

See you on Thursday,
-Prof. Graban

Preparation for 10/21: (More on Activist Genres and) Wikipedia Project Introduction

Dear All:

For Tuesday, we're following the syllabus, giving you an opportunity to draft your <Policy Argument> and/or review our Bb notes for this sphere so far and/or submit the second <Analytical Essay>.

However, in addition, please remember to come to class with two (2) viable topics for our class Wikipedia project. I'll ask you to weigh several factors as you choose topics, and to prioritize them this way:

• what you think we can claim as our shared expertise (in this class)
• what you think is neglected or under-represented in Wikipedia
• and this could include a <stub> or an article that Wikipedia has been identified for <expansion> or an existing article that needs significant rewriting.

We'll spend the first half of class considering the various forms and embodiments of activist genres, and the second half of class discussing the Wikipedia project and selecting our shared topic.

Many thanks and see you on Tuesday,
-Prof. Graban

Preparation for 10/16: Appealing to Empathy and Reason PLUS Citizen Investigation, Manifestos, Activist Genres (Combined)

Dear All, as promised we'll be combining both days' discussion into one on Thursday (10/16), so I appreciate the mini-discussions that surfaced on your blogs today. (I'm trying to work some of them into Thursday's lesson plan).

That said, the only change to the syllabus is that I need you to please bring Tuesday's readings (and any notes) so you have them ready to access for Thursday's discussion. As well, <SA #4> is due (per syllabus).

On the syllabus, you'll see that we had originally planned to discuss "Wikipedia article pitches"; in light of our schedule change this week, we will discuss them together, but nothing is due in advance.

See you very soon,
-Prof. Graban

10/14 Class on Blog Today

Folks, in the event that classes are cancelled today due to the weather advisory, I'm going to proactively ask you to conduct a discussion on the blog in place of today's class. On Thursday, I will be combining both discussions ("Appealing to Empathy and Reason" AND "Citizen Investigation, Manifestos, and Activist Genres"), so please come prepared and with readings. However, so as not to completely lose one class day, I am going to ask you to simulate part of today's discussion right here on the course blog by responding to two (2) prompts below. Please note I am asking for this activity to be done during class time, 2:00-3:15 p.m. today. That will be your attendance and participation for the day.

First and foremost, select a genre as a "case" on/through which you will respond to your prompts. For your genre/case, I'll ask you to select one of the "Resolutions" from our Bb folder (in "Cases and Genres"), or Nakasa's "Writing in South Africa," or Alexander's "The New Jim Crow," or Bouie's "Criminal Justice Racism," or Jason Parham's "It's Time We Treat Police Brutality ..." (identified as "gawker blog" in Bb "Case Study #2").

Next, write in response to two (2) of the prompts below, by composing a post to your own blog that responds to them, weaving them together if you so desire. Then, please respond to two (2) of your classmates' posts (which you'll find on their blogs).

• Of all the terms that Lazere introduces and illustrates, which 3 or 4 most closely align with Corbett and Eberly's discussion of citizen criticism, and then, how do you see them at work in your selected genre/case? Note that I'm not only asking you to explain and unpack the connections, but to infer them somewhat, since they may not be explicit.

• According to Corbett and Eberly, what could spectator culture (or consumer culture) have to do with our ability to argue well in the public sphere when those arguments are partially mediated as/through blogs? What are the most compelling reasons that Corbett and Eberly give for why this is important, why it might succeed, and how it could fail -- and how do those reasons align with Rettberg's discussion? Note that your best way through this may be to focus your response on one of Rettberg's key arguments about "blog/ging," "community," "networks," "engagement,"and even "citizen bloggers" (if you want to revisit what we read previously from her book). In other words, you're extending Corbett/Eberly's theory towards blogging in particular based on the alignments and disalignments you see between their arguments and Rettberg's.

• Obviously, today's readings are setting us up to think more about citizen criticism. Do the two authors you read for today in any way take up, build on, forward, complicate, or disrupt anyone's notion of citizen criticism from earlier in the semester? (I'm thinking specifically about Miller/Shepherd, Kaufer, McDonald, or Jones, but you are welcome to consider other authors we have read). As you think about how to create your intertext between today's authors and other authors we have read, you might think about how to use your selected genre/case in order to demonstrate what can go right or wrong in citizen criticism.

-Prof. Graban

Preparation for 10/14: Appealing to Empathy and Reason

Folks, we're following the syllabus and reading as usual -- another excerpt from Rettberg's Blogging, as well as shorter essays by Donald Lazere and Ed Corbett and Rosa Eberly. However, for anyone who might like a sneak preview of some (more) hypermediated arguments we will be discussing and/or to review the ones we discussed last class, here are relevant links:

• RSA's Animation of Evgeny Morozov's <"The Internet in Society"> (this is also inside our folder marked "Photo Essays" in Bb "Cases and Genres") 
• Various "Resolutions" in our Bb "Cases and Genres"
• Jason Parham's <"It's Time We Treat Police Brutality as a National Crisis"> on gawker.com (this is also inside our folder marked "Case Study #2" in Bb "Cases and Genres")
• Sharon Daniel's <"Public Secrets">
• Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simon's <"Pinepoint Revisited">

See you next class,

-Prof. Graban

Policy Argument Proposal Deadline -- Extended

Dear All:

I have extended the deadline for the Policy Argument Project Plan until 5:00 p.m. on Friday, 10/10.

You're welcome, and this is probably one of the last extensions I'm going to make, given that you're all very bright. Remember that you have had this assignment sheet in hand since September 30 -- and it was loaded onto Bb earlier than that, and a brief description of the assignment with posted deadlines has been up on our blog since the beginning of the term. In other words -- the information is available to you, so I'm always holding you accountable for it.

Remember, too, that this is not a formal proposal, but rather a planning proposal. It will enable a dialogue between you and me. It will represent the beginning of that dialogue so that I can respond to your project idea.

You should not expect to know every detail about your Policy Argument yet because we are still working through the sphere; however, that doesn't mean you shouldn't start grappling with the assignment, and yes -- you know by now -- every assignment I give you will be one that requires you to grapple. Please get used to that; you came through the Sci/Tech Blog just fine.

In preparing your projecct plan, please read through the Policy Argument assignment sheet carefully. You might also review your class notes and/or check out our notes in Bb, as I upload the notes almost as soon as we generate them. Figuring out this assignment requires a kind of synthesis of knowledge that I'm holding you to because I can hold you to it. (Shall I say it again? You came through the Sci/Tech Blog just fine.)

Have a good and productive weekend,
-Prof. Graban

Preparation for 10/9: Place, Time, Logic of Hypermediacy

Dear All, we're reading and blogging as usual, per syllabus, but two things to remember:

1. you're selecting between Killingsworth's chapters, so feel free to choose either appeals to place or appeals to time
2. we'll be examining/investigating some mediated public arguments, and I suspect that will give us an opportunity to discuss some of your concerns about the Policy Argument assignment (so bring your assignment sheet, of course). I may even ask some of you to talk with us about your ideas for the assignment as they progress. It will be a great opportunity for you to get clarity on the scope and nature of the task before submitting your e-mail proposal to me.

Some of you may recognize the term "hypermediacy" from other readings you have done--or, more specifically, from Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin's Remediation. (David Blakesley, a contributor to Kairos journal, offers a quick gloss of Bolter and Grusin's concepts <here>, including "hypermediacy" among other terms.) To clarify, we're going to examine this concept of hypermediacy to determine whether it has anything to offer us as writers/editors of mediated social policy arguments, as Carolyn Handa argues that it does. We'll also consider whether some of its aspects can be useful even in less explicitly mediated arguments (as in, arguments delivered through alternative media). And finally, we'll bear witness to how certain policy arguments get delivered.

See you Thursday and looking forward to it,
-Prof. Graban

Preparation for 10/7: Workshop on Conflict Levels and SA #3

Dear All:

We are following the syllabus as usual -- no changes! As a reminder, please bring back your case study materials to Tuesday's class meeting, since we are extending the case study into next week and performing our workshop on those genres.

See you then, if not before,
-Prof. Graban

Added on 10/7: Folks, after our workshop today, I'll be directing each group to answer some of the following questions. You can feel free to compose your response as a "comment" on this post.

Today, we're synthesizing principles that may help us better understand Kaufer's "levels of conflict" in a way that is meaningful to making policy arguments in the public sphere. I'm not so sure that the best way to use Kaufer's article is simply to apply one or more of his stock issues to what we're doing. Instead, I think Kaufer gives us several options for understanding how policy conflicts are diagnosed, but it's up to us to decide how his classification of conflicts fits with our other logical, rhetorical, and discursive knowledges, and what questions this raises for public sphere writing on potentially polarizing issues. So -- onward! Please answer one of the following questions:

1)  How does one of the texts you discussed present other possibilities for responding than just dis/agree? Based on how the writer uses historical evidence, please respond in terms of some of the things you analyzed for today (e.g., claim structure, stasis level, conflict analogy, stylistic "ethics," value terms, clarity, etc.). Whatever you do -- and with the full knowledge that the writer's language is not the only factor in this discourse -- please try to build a coherent theory of how this text uses history to make a policy argument, or how it uses history to respond to a problem of discourse. "Building a coherent theory" requires more than just making assumptions about what the writer does or what the audience knows, and it requires more than just making generalizations.

2)  In one of the texts you discussed, where do you see conflict and perspective most clearly? Where are you included or excluded as a reader? Drawing on some of today's concepts (e.g., claim structure, stasis level, conflict analogy, stylistic "ethics," clarity, etc.) please try to build a coherent theory explaining why/how this has occurred. Pay special attention to the role of key terms in the text -- especially if you think certain time-tested definitions of a term are being challenged, or if you think a term is being used significantly but without explicit definition or discussion. Again, "building a coherent theory" requires more than just making assumptions about what the writer does or what the audience knows, or making generalizations.

3)  Revisit one of the texts you discuss and decide whether it qualifies as a “simulation” of an argument or whether it qualifies as a real “ethical deliberation” (Jones 158). Justify your choice in Jones’s terms. Also, justify your choice in Kaufer's claim about weight of policy conflicts versus scale of conflict (61). Finally, justify your choice in terms of some of the other things you gridded for today (e.g., stylistic "ethics," clarity, word choice or ideographs, etc.). It's possible you will find a statement similar to what Williams and Bizup might call an "ethical violation of style" (e.g., obscurity, misdirection, subversive clarity, opacity) (Style lesson 11) or what Jones might call a violation of “The Usage Rule” (177). If so, explain how that occurs.

4)  Is there anything in one of the texts you discussed that acts like a "value" term or an "ideograph"? The concept of "Ideograph" was popularly coined for rhetoric by Michael Calvin McGee, although the word in its general definition has existed for some time. McGee's "ideograph" is a word that uses abstractions in order to develop support for a political position (e.g., "freedom," "liberty," "justice," "pursuit of happiness," etc.). Not just any term can be an ideograph, but if -- in the context of discourse -- the word carries ideological assumptions and inspires familiar associations among an audience, it is likely functioning this way. Please draw on some of the concepts we analyzed for today in explaining your ideograph.