User talk:Jon-Blackcoat

I'm Jon and am part of a university project exploring Wikibooks. Jon-Blackcoat (discuss • contribs) 18:05, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #1 - What makes a good wiki?
I'm a big consumer of collaborative content, however it is not often that I contribute to it. My experience goes as far as checking talk pages to see the justifications behind certain edits. If there was ever evidence I had to back up somebody's edit, I would post it in order to do my part in ensuring that the information on a certain page is as accurate as possible.

I think the kind of engagement you find on social media is very different to the kind you might find on wikis. On social media, engagement tends to be more colloquial. People are more often to post more causally about subjects they may not know too much about in a laid back tone. Sources usually aren't cited and if the information is incorrect, there is no way for other people to edit it outside of convincing the original poster to do so. However, when people edit - or even create Wikipedia articles they usually are more knowledgeable on the subject with a good idea what they are talking about. The tone of the content will also usually be formal and if information does turn out to be incorrect, it can be changed by somebody else.

I'd also add that social media engagements tend to be more intense than Wiki engagements. Although social media platforms are personal, people often argue and debate content that is posted by friends or those they follow, especially in regards to politics and current events. It seems as though the number of followers or friends one has on social platforms provides a sense of importance and as such leads to people making blanket statements based on their biased opinion that they expect others to blindly trust. The recent US election provides an example of social media as a platform for heavy debate to the point of many unfollowing or unfriending those who disagreed with their view point. Wiki engagement however takes, as you stated, a more formal tone. The information is presented in what appears to be an unbiased manner and facts are supported by evidence rather than what someone said or thought. Natashakirmse (discuss • contribs) 16:12, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Social media posts are personal. You can identify somebody by the way they post on their accounts. However despite being written by millions of people across the world, wiki entries all read like they were written by the same person. It's easy to forget that when you read a wiki page, that page was actually put together by many different people as opposed to just one. It's this consistency as well as the fact that inaccurate information is constantly being corrected that makes social media engagement differ so much to wiki engagement. Jon-Blackcoat (discuss • contribs) 23:42, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

@Jon-Blackcoat : Considering your experiences of social media with particular reference to the "blanket statements" and "biased opinions" you've witnessed for example, in regards to political developments, could it then be reasonable to draw a distinction between what is called "engagement" and what is called "argument"? This isn't an attempt to degrade one and champion the other; it's just a search for definitions. Personally, I have never seen someone on Facebook admit they were wrong. Have you witnessed someone do a complete about face and retreat humbly from their position, quietly beaming inside that their thoughts were corrected? My immediate suspicion is that 'engagement' must contain the element of falsifiability; we deserve the right to stand corrected. When this is absent the result is the descent into rank argument, that is, "I'm right and no-one can tell me otherwise." Truthfully, that reaction isn't confined to social media platforms. These are the blocks which when in place, engagement - in the way I think we mean it - can't take place. The conclusion is a real indictment of facebook. If drowning in the miasma of hate that is the sea of belligerent comments is a great tenet of our western-neoliberal-democracy, while Freedom of Speech stands irreproachable as a sacred cow on a hill surveying the chaos then, I think we have every reason to feel disappointed. Cheated, even. --CITIZEN LUC (discuss • contribs) 11:36, 10 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.


 * Satisfactory. Among other things, satisfactory entries may try to relate an idea from the module to an original example, but might not be very convincing. They may waste space on synopsis or description, rather than making a point. They may have spelling or grammatical errors and typos. They might not demonstrate more than a single quick pass at the assignment, informed only by lecture and/or cursory reading. They may suggest reading but not thinking (or indeed the reverse). The wiki markup formatting will need some work.


 * This post is at the upper end of this grade band, so a little improvement will go a long way to attaining a higher mark. 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 to engage other users.


 * Re: responses to other people’s posts – these are ok, but 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. consider framing your responses as questions to solicit discussion (this is, arguably, what discussion pages are all about!) and also 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). This needs to be extended significantly in order to take advantage of the project's potential though.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 18:24, 13 February 2017 (UTC)



I completely agree with your statement when you said "I think the kind of engagement you find on social media is very different to the kind you might find on wikis. On social media, engagement tends to be more colloquial. People are more often to post more causally about subjects they may not know too much about in a laid back tone." however when you where talking about when people edit things on Wikipedia or create Wikipedia articles they usually are "more knowledgeable" i would like to ask you if it makes a difference to Facebook pages for example when people get together and comment about a topic they are familiar with. does it make it less reliable that it was posted on a Facebook page instead of Wikipedia if the only difference was the formality?

you also mentioned that "if information does turn out to be incorrect, it can be changed by somebody else." which i defiantly agree with and you can also see the different versions of what people thought even if there is two different versions of the correct answer. Dalal22 (discuss • contribs) 23:16, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #2: Visibility and Data Trails
I don't have many social media accounts and it isn't often that I post updates on them, so I originally thought that my online visibility was quite low. However upon further thought, I do feel that if somebody put in enough effort, they could figure out a lot about me. Whilst I don't post much on Facebook, a lot of my personal data has already been filled in on my userpage. I've also made posts and comments in the past that indirectly reference factors such as my political stance and other opinions I hold. If more effort was done to try and find my presence outside of social networks using the username I commonly use online, a person would be able to find out my hobbies and interests by which forums I actively post in. This helps piece together a picture of who I actually am from such a little amount of data.

Whilst the information on my Facebook page can be removed, I do feel that the presence of information about me outside of social media is out of my control. Unlike social media where you can actively change privacy settings to determine exactly who sees your posts (down to the exact person if needed), forum posts and other interactions in online communities outside of personal social media are public for everyone and there is usually no way to change that. This is something that I however accept as it is the sacrifice for partaking in such discussions.

As for social media, I only share information about myself if it's relevant to a topic being discussed in an existing thread (e.g. political discussions). I don't like the idea of creating posts that contain personal information as I consider it oversharing on my part.

Wiki Exercise #3: Information Overload
The internet is an immensely useful tool when it comes to searching for information. There is an almost unlimited amount of it that can be accessed by anyone at any point. However, this comes with a price. Ironically, with such a huge abundance of information, it can become difficult to find exactly what you're looking for. Different sources may have the same information, but they may vary in levels of accuracy. One source may be accurate whilst the other may just be flat out inaccurate. It can be difficult to know what source to trust.

I deal with this using a few different methods. Firstly if I find information on a subject, I go out of my way to check if the source is well known. I'm more willing to trust well known publications on large websites (with good reputation) as opposed to information on small personal websites. However, this is often not enough. Because of factors that might affect the accuracy of the information such as bias, I will often seek a second source to confirm. The second source doesn't necessarily have to be as well known as the original source (however, it still shouldn't be obscure or have a bad reputation), but if it matches up with the original source, I will be more willing to accept it as fact.

I do this because I feel as if the internet isn't a place where you can trust the first thing you see written down. Anybody can host a website or blog and publish information claiming to be fact. And as there is no penalty for reporting misinformation, you need to be careful when dealing with sources.

I don't feel as if my workflow has changed much with regards to the wikibook project. My method of searching for information has always been the same as what is written above, it's something I'm very much used to and can do effectively. Jon-Blackcoat (discuss • contribs) 09:07, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Hello Jon-Blackcoat. I was very interested by your point on their being a lack of accountability and punishment to things posted online. Although I am certainly aware that information on the web has to be taken with a grain of salt, I realise its still not something I really consider unless its for researching sources for University. Although it would definitely improve reliability of sources, o you think if 'punishments' were introduced that it would affect open nature of the internet, where anyone can broadcast their thoughts and opinions on matters?

I could certainly benefit from being so thorough with sources, as man headlines are often misleading or exaggerated. Dcunningham1017 (discuss • contribs) 23:18, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Content (weighted 20%)
The introduction section is very well-written, summarising many key points in relation to the subject matter. The presentation of a concept (i.e. in this case Fuchs and Sevignani) framing key ideas for discussion, and providing a foundational basis to proceed with an argument, is a really neat idea. It sets up what is essentially, the most theory-oriented discussion in the book, and this isn’t a negative by any means. In fact, it provides a crucial element of balance through which to address the more applied approaches that are perhaps more in evidence in other chapters.

A concerted effort is made throughout to communicate sophisticated ideas in concise ways. The overall structure is well thought out, and evidences deliberation, delegation and timely organisation. Coverage of many of the salient issues encountered in the module are touched upon, either explicitly or in passing, and this is a useful strategy for grounding some of the more abstract ideas.

Lots of live links are made – this chapter makes the most out of the platforms functionality, which in turn is read quite easily as a reflection made on the kind of platform used and the audiences for which you might be writing this chapter. This approach works very well overall. However, I think that more could be made of making interwiki links to various relevant sections in other chapters (especially, perhaps, chapters on Hive mind, or privacy in the Digital Age.)

The sections on Information Society and Network Society are particularly well put together. Although these are perhaps the least theoretically heavy, the way that you discuss and structure the concepts gives these sections a real sense of narrative. Some really good uses of examples and case here to illustrate points made. I would have liked to have seen some use of images or wiki formatting to break up the text a little bit more here, however. The same goes for the section on critical theory – however, this section is much less successful, as it seems rather abstract, and detached from the subject matter. It is factually correct, fairly well written and historically accurate, but perhaps the least satisfying section in the chapter because of this. The sections that immediately follow, featuring the material on social media, are very strong, although again, interwiki links to material on other chapters would make a considerable improvement to the argument overall and to the wikibook more generally.

The glossary is really useful – not quite exhaustive, but good for quick reference purposes. Use of interwiki links in here would have been useful. The references section again evidences research, reading and sharing of resources.


 * Your contribution to the book page fails to give an overview of the subject under discussion in your chosen themed chapter. There is little familiarity in evidence with concepts associated with your subject, and the grasp of conceptual, factual and analytical issues is tenuous and limited at best. You did not find any appreciable primary and secondary sources about the chapter’s themes.

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


 * Poor. Among other things, poor entries may just offer links without real comment or apparent point. They may offer nothing more than poor-quality synopsis or description of material of dubious relevance. They may have serious clarity problems (including dead links, random graphics) which affect comprehension (or even worse, admin warnings or take-down notices for copyright infringement). They might be off-topic, private trivia, or of unclear relevance. The wiki markup formatting will be of a poor standard.

Mark 12/30


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


 * Very Poor. Often, entries of this standard are quite brief, are structured poorly and are not spell-checked. They are often irrelevant, and offer little engagement with the concerns of the module or the assignment brief. Entries of this grade may have been subject to admin warnings or take-down notices for copyright infringement. The wiki markup formatting will be of a very poor standard and as a result it will be difficult for the reader to engage with the discussion.


 * Reading and research:
 * evidence of limited critical engagement with set material, although most ideas and procedures insecurely grasped
 * evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material limited, displaying a qualified familiarity with a minimally sufficient range of relevant materials
 * Argument and analysis:
 * poorly articulated and supported argument;
 * lack of evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position in discussion);
 * lack of evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections in discussion);
 * evidence of independent critical ability limited, due to the fact that your grasp of the analytical issues and concepts, although generally reasonable, is somewhat insecure.

Engagement (weighted 50%)

 * No evidence from contributions to both editing and discussion of content (i.e. volume and breadth of activity as evidenced through contribs)
 * No engagement with and learning from other Wikipedians about the task of writing/editing content for a Wikibook
 * Little or no use of discussion pages