User talk:Hgfoster

Hi there I'm hgfoster, a Second Year University student excited to start learning about how to crate Wikibooks as part of my education!

Wiki Exercise #1 What Makes a Good Wiki
My first experience of social media platforms has been for personal use or for occasional off and on blogging on a blogging website called Blogspot, where I have learned to use the comments section on each page, very much like Wikipedia where you can reply to each post on a specific topic. However recently I have gained an internship where I am to expend the knowledge of the company to a target audience though social media platforms, for example putting up statuses, videos and photo updates on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I feel like engaging with an audience is easier on social media as the comments section is more accessible to a wider section of the public (i.e. people that aren't the best at technology can use it easier that using the 'talk' section of Wikipedia) As well as this, it is easier to reel more viewers on Facebook as you can gather interest from multiple people with different interests, while communicating with others on Wikipedia it is about a very specific theme.

On top of this, social media is vital in my internship as we use a platform called Slack in which we use it to collaborate and work as a team to share our thoughts and ideas, and even use it to have web chat meetings. I feel like the 'talk' or 'discussion' areas of Wikipedia are similar to this, as you can respond to ideas in real time as a comments section, rather than resembling a group chat.

In relation to University, I have used the One Drive to edit documents in real time with other people, which made it easier for use all to help out on the powerpoint at the same time rather than just letting one member of the group doing all the editing which made the project more fair to do. A con of this however is that there was the potential for members of the team to clash when we were writing the slides when everyone was trying to do their own thing another person would interrupt for example. I feel like this would be a similar problem in Wikipedia as while its a positive that many people have access to your article, it is also a con as it could be changed either.Hgfoster (discuss • contribs) 20:17, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Marker’s Feedback on Wiki Exercise #1


Posts and comments on other people’s work, of this standard, roughly corresponds to the following grade descriptor. Depending on where your actual mark is in relation to Understanding and Engagement elements, it should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band overall.


 * Good. Among other things, good entries will make a clear point in a clear way. They will relate concepts to original examples in a straightforward fashion. They will make effective use of the possibilities of the form (including links, as well as perhaps copyright-free videos and images, linked to from Wiki Commons). They may also demonstrate a broader understanding of the module's themes and concerns, and are likely to show evidence of reading and thinking about the subject material. The wiki markup formatting will be very clear.


 * This post is at the lower end of this grade band, so there’s clearly room for improvement here. I think in order to engage with the wiki exercises a bit more, it might be useful for you to look at the Grade Descriptors and (especially for this, perhaps, the Understanding) criteria in the module handbook to get more of an idea of how to hit those targets. Less instrumentally, and more in relation to this particular post, making more use of the wiki functionality and markup would go a long way to improving fluidity and functionality of posts. I suspect that, as you become more familiar and proficient with the platform, that this will make a considerable difference. In addition, the edit clashes that you have identified in real-time (mainly cloud-based) platforms are indeed something that you may encounter on WP. But isn't that something that we need to think about as an identifiable issue? one of the issues with real-time collaboration, but also, the different between wikis and social media has largely to do with the slicker user experience of social media platforms when compared to under-the-hood user interfaces of platforms like this one. Definitely something that I think you could reflect upon and use.


 * Re: responses to other people’s posts – these are fairly good, if a little brief. Remember that the comments are "worth" as much as posts themselves. The reason for this is not only to help encourage discussion (a key element of wiki collaboration!) but also to get you to reflect upon your own work. This can all, of course be used to fuel ideas that might form part of your project work. I like that you have framed some of your responses as questions to solicit discussion (this is, arguably, what discussion pages are all about!) and also that you are beginning to discuss in an open and critical way (that is to say, you've responded to what other people are saying and are contributing meaningfully to discussion - arguably the civic element of wiki that you ought to be thinking about, which you clearly are). However there are a few assertions made for which you need a lot more depth. For example, in one of your comments you state that one can contribute to social media - but the manner and quality of that contribution will be very different to a wiki contrib, right? So, what I'm saying is, you need to engage with your own points as much as with other people. Reflect upon what you want to say and the way you say it because it is in this way that we can be much more precise in our arguments and be more persuasive.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 15:10, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Comments on Wiki Exercise #1

 * Comment by Suzanne Clark (SuzanneClark22) This is a more personal view of the uses of social media and Wikipedia. Although you have outlined some advantages and disadvantages of the two different types of media, you have given no evidence of other people that have similar views to you. Your different experiences using different forms of social media are insightful, might we question more the ways in which you believe Wikipedia can be seen as less collaborative and easy to access than social media sites such as Facebook at Twitter?

SuzanneClark22 (discuss • contribs) 12:54, 9 February 2017 (UTC) SuzanneClark22 (discuss • contribs) 13:05, 9 February 2017 (UTC)


 * That is a very good point, although I have had informal discussions about the ease of use of Facebook and other social networking sites I've not asked around, a guess of mine would be that the further away from a 'Facebook' layout (by this I mean a very obvious home button and ways in which the user is meant to share and write posts) you get, the more people struggle to use the programme. I think it would also be interesting to touch upon crossovers between social networking sites in particular Facebook and Twitter- those using Facebook may not be aware how the use of hashtags as a way of searching on their site is available (personally I noticed this in status updates, you see many tweets hash tagging but not as many Facebook statuses) while it is a renowned aspect of Twitter. This is also a great example of why I think that Wikipedia is less collaborative and not as easy to access- a lot of the controls that this site uses are not the same to other social networking sites, meaning you have to learn a new way of communicating on this website. Ie there are no 'follow' features (as far as I'm aware, I am still learning this programme) where you can keep up to date on edits on topics or bookmark certain users. I feel like unless you would know ones username to search it I would feel very distant from other users on the same programme. Hgfoster (discuss • contribs) 21:33, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

This is very interesting. If I am right you are saying that one of the major differences between Wikipedia and Social Media platforms is that Wikipedia is based on a collective collaboration of knowledge surrounding a certain topic, and that Social Media on the other hand is more open to be used for generally whatever the user wants and therefore stands as a more suitable option for companies to use for advertising?

I also noticed when reading your article that you discussed the fact that you, as a part of your internship, personally use Social Media for advertising. My question here is then do you think that by using Social Media in such a way you diminish your own personality on it as you are, in essence, acting as an extension of the company on social media instead of a version of your own self? Or do you think that by acting for the company you are simply showing a working side of your own personality anyway?

Regardless, I agree very much with your post and with the differences you have marked out between your named platforms as I also believe that Social Media is used for very different purposes than Wikipedia and that it stands as, in a sense, being more convent and less revolving around certain topics from page to page (to an extent as one could argue that each page on any Social Media has a purpose that it is technically revolving around, whether to purpose is being to entertain, inform or promote). I also agree with you when you discuss the similarities between some Social Media platforms and Wikipedia (such as Slack) as I do think in some ways they are very similar and that collective knowledge building can be seen in both when used productively, very much like the way, as you said, you can work together in group chats. You are, in my opinion, very right when saying that both platforms have pros and cons and different uses.

Thank you

--Campbell Wallace (discuss • contribs) 00:27, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I feel that social media by no means diminishes my own personality, but rather In my particular example I get to write as myself under the name of the company, so I would more say that the part of the companys personality is in actual fact my own. The updates are very informal, so I wouldn't even extend it to my contribution as a 'working personality' but rather maybe a more censored one, that i take the persona around of friends and family too. Hgfoster (discuss • contribs) 03:37, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

@Campbell Wallace - "[...]differences between Wikipedia and Social Media platforms is that Wikipedia is based on a collective collaboration of knowledge surrounding a certain topic, and that Social Media on the other hand is more open to be used for generally whatever the user wants and therefore stands as a more suitable option for companies to use for advertising?"

You've hit upon the massive issue and asked THE question. For, how insidious must a company be to pry into our social lives, attacking us when we’re at our most susceptible to the joys of regular human contact whether through internet communications or whatever else? This company is evidently invested in the notion of selling itself over and above the supposed, manufactured, physical product or service that one might regularly suspect. Perhaps, the company’s image is the product and with that footing what they achieve in any sense can only be understood in terms of ‘good PR’. Whatever such a company offers as its business is secondary to the idea they sell which matters above all. In the realm of ‘ideas’ can we understand that @Hgfoster’s use of social media as a vassal for a company suggests an ideological reading?

@Hgfoster - “In my particular example I get to write as myself under the name of the company, so I would more say that the part of the company's personality is in actual fact my own.”

The ‘company’s personality’ is the bone of contention here (for my part anyway). How can we obscure things so overwhelmingly that companies are endowed with personality which was formally at least, the domain solely of living things? Is it not generally recognized that your pet dog has personality whereas Walmart or your toaster do not? If a person acts in such a way that is uncharacteristic as in, committing some action that was an affront to their perceived personality; can a company suffer the same slip in their integrity? How then do we judge them? If Coca-Cola funds paramilitary death-squads in Colombia to murder trade-union leaders is Coca-Cola still “fun, sociable, a good time”? Or, do we just call companies what they are and understand them in terms of their material relations. Apologies for sounding flippant but you can excuse me this liberty: the further in time the divorce is prolonged between the human and its sapient, human-like construction the greater the contrivance grows to accommodate the latter. The monetisation and marketization of our social existence risks reducing the scope of human interactions.

--CITIZEN LUC (discuss • contribs) 14:33, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Reply from CITIZEN LUC
Picking up on several things you mentioned (@Hgfoster) :

"I am to expend the knowledge of the company to a target audience though social media platforms, for example putting up statuses, videos and photo updates on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram." sic

Does this company then, with a social media presence itself develop a personality or some idea even of personhood that extends greatly beyond what would otherwise be demanded in the very basic understanding of what a company is? I'll make this point more clearly by way of example while now, to say it in a word: are distinctly human characteristics imprinted onto distinctly non-human constructions? When asked what words come to mind when one thinks of a recognised brand like NIKE the responses perhaps unsurprisingly might take the form of “NIKE is fun, outgoing sporty and a strong, natural born leader. They don’t give in easily!” But, what a weird contortion that is. NIKE isn’t a person in the same way your computer isn’t a good listener. It's a Frankenstein-esque project to endow the non-human with human vulnerability.

Memorably, In 2011, Republican US presidential candidate, Mitt Romney proclaimed to a crowd in Iowa that “corporations are people!” His audience of blue-collar American men and women in attendance at the Iowa State Fair where left dumbfounded save a lone voice that bellowed back “NO THEY’RE NOT!”. This lone antagonism was the impetus for the townsfolk to gather their pitchforks and chase the hideous creature from sight.

"I feel like engaging with an audience is easier on social media as the comments section is more accessible to a wider section of the public (i.e. people that aren't the best at technology can use it easier that using the 'talk' section of Wikipedia) As well as this, it is easier to reel (sic) more viewers on Facebook as you can gather interest from multiple people with different interests."

If a social media representation of a company makes this effort to ‘humanise’ their enterprise or as was stated “[be] more accessible to a wider section of the public”, what implications does that have? Should companies be invited into our social sphere? Should every aspect of human existence be intertwined with the machinations of some faceless global monolith? Should that construct have a face? Should its teeth be pearly white? Should your time on social media be inseparable form a shopping experience, should conversations wither to the catchy slogans of advertisements?

--CITIZEN LUC (discuss • contribs) 10:40, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Owning a Social Meida Account vs Using One
I think it is important to distinguish between owning a social networking account and being active on one- as a person can visible online by owning an account, but the scale to which he/she is visible is determined by the volume of posts and their privacy settings. For example, many of my own friends have very limited visibility on social media; my friends like this only use Facebook and don't have other social media accounts. A select few of them don't even have profile pictures that are recent or themselves, only using Facebook as a messenger to keep in touch with their friends on a personal level, rather than a more public level that includes state updates.

Myself on the other hand, am very active so therefore visible on social media. I have multiple accounts linked together - all of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter meaning that if you are my Facebook friend I am very traceable to these accounts. Each of these forms of information are different meaning that someone could view a whole lot about me, in hignsight this could be dangerous which brings me on to my next topic. I have quite a variety of social media forms, including:


 * Facebook
 * Twitter
 * Instagram
 * Snapchat
 * Youtube
 * Slack
 * Depop

The uses of each of these has a range of information about me, not only for social networking, but for to work and to online selling and shopping. I would argue that Depop, an online sellers account, could be Social Media as its almost like Instagram meets Ebay, where those selling the items are more linked into a personal level with the shoppers through having a personal page and being able to see things the sellers have previously bought or 'liked'

Social Media Security
Facebook takes a more personal form where I have to add people in order for them to see most of my content (however, my profile pictures and a select amount of ‘public’ photos are available for viewing for those who don't have me as a friend. I could control this more under the ‘settings’ tab of Facebook but I chose not to in order for those who I may know adding me, to know who I am.) The content on Facebook for me is a mixture of photos, things I’m tagged in (sometimes other peoples videos, like memes) and status (although I hardly post a status without a picture attachment) Only those who are my Facebook friend can see where I work and where I'm from, but they can see what University I go to. I feel this isn't as

This is very different from Instagram and Twitter however, as I have chosen to keep my accounts on both of these open, although yet again I have the option to make these private and chose not to so that many people can see my content. Although I haven't really thought into why I keep my accounts open, I feel that it could be related to posting my online identity, so that more people are available to see what I would like them to; possibly characterising myself (as an example what I mean by this is that when I post a series of holiday pictures it may be so that people may view me as cultural) These 'preformed' identities in relation to my personality is what makes social media appealing to a large group of people, where we can show the best of ourselves online and downplay the negatives. Social media could be easily argued to act as a mask in this way, where we are only seeing what other people want us to see (in most cases!) On the other hand, it may just also be that I don't feel the need to keep my account private as I never post where I am until after I've left the area.



Instagram and Twitter are quite different in relation to Facebook in that the forms that they take are more specialised- Instagram for photos and Twitter is basically all about what the person is saying. This means that the functions in each are more specialised- for example, Instagram has an in built editing feature where you can play with the colours and lighting, while Twitter and Instagram had started the trend of using the hashtag to search.

However, it is a major concern for most people who use social media platforms that those owning the companies may be looking through our data, and even keeping it after we remove our accounts. For example, a page from the Guardian raises these concerns ( here) that we never really know where the information we give out goes after we publish it. A prime example would be Snapchat, the platform is built so that you can send pictures to other users for 1-10 seconds, and after that the image is no longer available to either party. However, there are security fears that the pictures are actually being saved by the company, and the idea of a picture sending app where you can't go through your pictures is lost ( here )

Relation to Wikipedia / WikiBooks
While the Wiki sites are mainly used for information, rather than posting pictures of what you're doing that day, it is yet still an open community, and where you get an open community, you get security risks.

Hgfoster (discuss • contribs) 01:25, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Comments on Wiki Exercise #2
Really good points you made. My own twitter and instagram are open to the public although my facebook isn't. With the information it has about my workplace and where I live, I prefer to keep that private. Instagram and twitter allows me to be more expressive while filtering what I sat knowing anyone can see it. I think the wiki sites can still show personality though to an extent due to the ability to edit and discuss work. By the way we phrase our sentences and what infomatin we pick up one, we can still show a persona of some sort on a site such as this.

Littlekatie1 (discuss • contribs) 21:11, 15 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Yeah personally I am really bad with forgetting that the internet is a dangerous place, I think by one or two of my public Instagram posts although it doesn't say directly where I work i think I have my lanyard in the picture (for example) Yeah the struggle with it being an open media a lot of my family and co workers can see my posts, so I actually feel less free to post what I want! I totally agree there, unless someone went out of their way to diminish their personality on Wikipedia I think it would still be pretty easy to tell. Our usernames can give away quite a lot about us sometimes, especially since a lot of people use the same username it can make them more traceable! Hgfoster (discuss • contribs) 16:36, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

First off, I'm impressed with how you have formatted your entry. You seem to have a better understanding of how to use the wikibooks platform. I like the points you made regarding social media vs wiki. To piggy back off of a comment someone previously made, you can definitely express yourself through the information you share and how you phrase it. The information you choose to highlight and what you decide to contribute may show a lot about you areas of interest and understanding. I have multiple social media accounts and I find it hard to keep myself on private. My instagrams, with the exception of my finsta, are open for everyone and although I am fairly inactive on twitter still leave that open. I tend to use facebook as a way to be more hands on in terms of networking rather than just a way to talk to family. Charleneabeana (discuss • contribs) 20:13, 16 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Thank you! Yeah I agree, I hardly ever use my Twitter account too, which is actually why I don't want to go back to it because I've no clue what I had posted when I used to have it! I'm personally terrified that there'll be something embarrassing, but I don't want to delete my account so I can basically go back on it and laugh at myself. What do you mean hands on in terms of networking? Do you mean in the way for the use of projects at University, finding people in my groups that I may have not met before in order to discuss class work (very much like we're doing now for our Wikibooks project!) Hgfoster (discuss • contribs) 04:20, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I find it funny how you mentioned the difference between participating in social media and having an account. Personsanally I only own Facebook,  and at that I like to keep thee amount of friends I have on it at a minimum- I had even tried to keep to less than 100 Facebook friends as I'm just not interested in social media. However, being a uni student and meeting lots of new people, this has changed so from this you could argue that even when I had tried to not be as visible on Facebook, it eventually came around and struck me Scottmcindoe (discuss • contribs) 04:58, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Social Media and Focus
For me, being on so many social networking sites for my different types of information (i.e I'm on Facebook and Slack for work, Facebook for University ect) I find it hard to avoid the temptation of going off track- if I went on Facebook for work I find it hard not to scroll through my timeline to procrastinate whatever it is I'm doing. The only way I find to deal with this problem is either being strict and just forcing myself off of it or letting myself on for 15 minutes to 30 minutes before i continue with my work. The contributing factors to me making this call is that if find social media a way to 'turn off' for a few minutes and finding it an okay way to 'zone out' or detach myself from whats going on around me, so I don't completely cut myself off from it as I enjoy being able to detach in-between study breaks. It also makes it easier to redraft my work, as I'm looking onto it with 'fresh eyes' and can spot mistakes that I may have made. On the downside of this however if I'm in the middle of something and become quite distracted I lose where I am on and lose my focus.

For the purpose of University, theres lots of information on the internet for readings that are normally always relevant to the course or topic I'm writing about which is handy as I get to step away from the course readings. However, the course readings are always tempting as you have to shift through a lot of random and irrelevant readings in order to get a good or relevant one. If I search something in Google to look for readings through Google Books, a disgusting amount of irrelevant readings appear that have nothing to do with what I searched for even if the Title or Keywords are very similar. This in itself can be quite time consuming and stressful, and in the end the book I find is usually on the course set readings anyway which defeats the whole purpose of looking up my own readings.

I have included a table of the Pros and Cons of the 'Information Overload' Online

Wiki Contributions and Focus
In terms of my Wiki contributions, my workflow has a tenancy to be all there or nothing which can lead to my Wiki contributions being quite large all at once. I lose focus really easily however when I am focused I am focused for a larger span of time. This makes it difficult for Wiki contributions as it's more of a discussion process that goes back and forth so I get lost when I'm not focused or go off to do something else while I wait for a reply which can be quite irritating. On top of this, I usually find it quite difficult to read off the computer so end up taking longer to read through the comments. This problem is not a result of information overload however, but is an example of the shift to the internet for information and discussion. I still much rather read books than online, however there is a lot more information online and off Wikibooks.

This way of going back and forth rather than focusing all at once in relation to Wikibooks is actually a smarter way of spreading focus as you can get more done in smaller chunks of time rather than all at once, if only I could be focused in small periods of time. This is partially due to the temptation of social media- where I can't take a 10 minute break without it turning into an hour long one!

Comments For Wikibooks 3

 * Really like the table of the pros/cons and agree with them completely. How did you make that table? I am like you and lose concentration easily, especially when it's needed for a long amount of time. This, for me, makes the reading and shifting through large amounts of information difficult as my mind wonders.

Littlekatie1 (discuss • contribs) 22:39, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I completely agree with you about how easy it is to get distracted when doing work, especially since there is no avoiding the internet: we need it to do most of our work. Also, what you said about searching for sources and readings being time consuming is completely right. This is especially bad because it's so easy to find unuseful information compared to how difficult it is to find the info you actually need.. Scottmcindoe (discuss • contribs) 11:24, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Communication
While creating a Wikibook involves a lot of communication between people over Wikipedia, as there is a large amount of people who may not be involved with each other in person but come together over the internet to create an article. In our own Wikibooks, because we all had each other on Facebook we started out discussion on the messenger app that they had. here we discussed the things that we couldn't on the Wikipage as we had not yet had our topic; and that is what topic we all were most happy with doing. We also used the messenger app to organise when we were to meet up in person together; here we would talk about what we were going to do but simultaneously be posting it on the Wikibooks discuss page. We found that it was much easier to use Facebook messenger or meet up in person, however that wasn't what the Wikibook project was about.

Concept vs Practical Application
The idea of the Wikibook process is that a group of people, who may not know each other online and can connect to create a free information source that anyone can edit. We communicate with others on the internet to create such information on the discuss pages of Wikipedia. While you can use all the headings you want to try to organise the communication between all the contributors, such as our group did for our Wikibooks assignment here its still really easy to get lost, information usually could come under a few headings so finding the information can be difficult and can lead to the same question being asked twice for example under different headings. If you weren't in the initial conversation thread and the discussion changes topics, adding your comment into an older thread can lead to it being lost as even if you ‘reply’ to others and they get the notification, finding the text can be challenging.

Audience
The target audience for Wikibooks is considerably small compared to many social networking sites, as social networking sites have a more wide ranging and better developed range of users, as well as the users being more regular. The Wikibook's audience is comparable to that of a small cult following for Tv of Films, where while the audience may be small the audience are usually contributions themselves on Wikibooks and devote more time to the website. This is true of Wikibooks especially as it is a sister website to Wikipedia, meaning it is less popular.

This affected the way we wrote our books in that they were targeted for an academic audience and could reference studies and theories ect, and can expect the audience to either understand them or follow the references that we put down for them.

The Peer Review Process
I feel like Peer Reviewing was one of the highlights of the Wikibooks, the open format made it easy for others to criticise or compliment my work and when it came to little mistakes, such as spelling, they could easily review it and change it without me having to. The ability to reply and send a notification to someone when you do is very much like that on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. It seems that the areas that are the most similar to social networking sites seem to work the best for myself as I'm more used to information being organised in that set up.

Overall
Hgfoster (discuss • contribs) 11:51, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Comments on Wikibook Exercise 4
Hi I think you've made a really good post and I like your inclusion of a table at the end! How did you manage to do that? Our group also had to make a facebook group first, as I personally found it hard to get my head around the wikibook discussion page. I also found it hard to communicate with people on this platform as there was a special code in order for the user to get a notification to say that you have replied to them but since there was an abundance of information on the discussion pages, it was easy for messages to get lost and missed. Did you enjoy the overall experience of the wikibooks project?Sammyforbes (discuss • contribs) 14:52, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Hey I think the way you compared the concept to the practicality of Wikibook as a platform. This is because I think that it fails in many ways to fulfil its purpose. It is meant to be a convenient way to communicate with people you've never met about academic matters but - for reasons you mentioned - it is not nearly as practical as social media apps for efficiently communicating. You concisely summarised my main problem with the platform as a whole! Scottmcindoe (discuss • contribs) 21:38, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Hey, this is such an informative and extremely detailed account and reflective piece written and I can honestly say I agree wholeheartedly with most of it. Especially the getting lost and the social media elements, we too ended up setting up a Facebook chat just to begin with. Apps are what are important for communication these days and your highlighting of this being the major issue was very well said. Courtney 1994 (discuss • contribs) 15:55, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Content (weighted 20%)
The introduction section is incredibly well-written, summarising many key points in relation to the subject matter. A concerted effort is made to communicate sophisticated ideas in a concise, summative way, before proceeding onto the main sections of discussion. The overall structure that follows is well thought out, and evidences deliberation, delegation and timely organisation. Coverage of many of the salient issues surrounding online identity are included, as well as some quite well-chosen examples and cases.

The actual content itself, in the discursive sections, is a little more patchy than what we expect after that Introduction, with some parts that are more superficial and descriptive, yet others that are clearly very well researched, developed, and thought through. The overall effect of this is fine, because as a whole, there is a clear aesthetic that you are writing a hybrid version of a collaborative essay, and an encyclopaedic entry.

There are some instances of typo errors, and a few formatting decisions that could have been better thought through. In addition, the repetition and ill-organisation in one or two subsections (especially the Tinder and Online Dating Websites section, where there is a lot of description, and not much application of theoretical material from the module – references to journalistic pieces on anonymity for example, where reference to good peer-reviewed sources would have given just as good information with obvious added value and opportunity. Anonymity appears in a couple of sections barely sentenced apart, and yet there doesn’t seem to be much joined-up thinking here, nor applying the concept to the section’s subject matter (Tinder and Online dating). Likewise, discussions of various applications repeat (e.g. Snapchat has a few sections specifically devoted to it. Some interwiki links joining up the various sections would have made more of the platform’s functionality.

The final main section, on AI is particularly interesting – it is fairly well structured, well researched, and draws from a wealth of different kinds of sources and materials – ranging from peer-reviewed sources, through journalism and popular cultural materials, to speculative and science fiction. This helps to close off the chapter in a way that establishes a sense of authority as well as being well-written, and therefore is an interesting read, on its own merits. Again, an interwiki link to join the section on Black Mirror with the previous section on the same topic would have been useful.

Referencing – good formatting, good range of sources and materials.


 * Good. Your contribution to the book page gives a good brief overview of the subject under discussion in your chosen themed chapter. There is a good range of concepts associated with your subject, and the effort to deliver critical definitions, drawing from relevant literature and scholarship, and your own critical voice in the building of a robust argument is very much in evidence. The primary and secondary sources you found about the chapter’s themes cover a good range and depth of subject matter.

Wiki Exercise Portfolio (Understanding weighted 30%)
Posts and comments on other people’s work, of this standard, roughly corresponds to the following grade descriptor. Depending on where your actual mark is overall (and particularly in relation to Understanding and Engagement elements), that should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band, relative to the descriptor


 * Good. Among other things, good entries will make a clear point in a clear way. They will relate concepts to original examples in a straightforward fashion. They will make effective use of the possibilities of the form (including links, as well as perhaps copyright-free videos and images, linked to from Wiki Commons). They may also demonstrate a broader understanding of the module's themes and concerns, and are likely to show evidence of reading and thinking about the subject material. The wiki markup formatting will be very clear.


 * Reading and research:
 * evidence of critical engagement with set materials, featuring discriminating command of a good range of relevant materials and analyses
 * evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material to a fairly wide degree
 * Argument and analysis:
 * well-articulated and well-supported argument through judgement relating to key issues, concepts or procedures
 * evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position);
 * evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections);
 * clear evidence of independent critical ability

Engagement (weighted 50%)

 * Evidence from contributions to both editing and discussion of content to an appreciable standard (i.e. volume and breadth of activity as evidenced through contribs)
 * Good engagement with and learning from other Wikipedians about the task of writing/editing content for a Wikibook
 * Reflexive, creative and well-managed use of discussion pages using deployment of judgement relating to key issues, concepts and procedures