User:NVaden/NMAC 3108 Journal

29 May 2019: Introduction

Hello! My name is Nautica. I am majoring in New Media and Communications. I am taking this class because it seems like learning how to properly write for digital media will be a very useful and important skill to have going forward. I love photography, food, and painting, but for now the most interesting thing about me would probably be that I can sound like a chicken.

@NVaden: Hi! I am a New Media and Communications major too and I also love photography, food and painting. It is nice to find people who likes the same things I like, I hope you do well in the semester.Ysabella Escalona (talk) 03:22, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

30 May 2019: What I have learned so far

This is my first time ever doing stuff on Wikipedia that was not just reading an article and it is very exciting. So far, everything seems to be going just fine, I have figured out how to make this journal and links to it. I have joined the class on Wikiedu and done the first two training modules. One thing that does slightly confuse me is that in one of the modules it was talking about plagiarism and copyright issues which I understand just fine, but it was saying something like even if you had changed all of the words and made a completely new sentence, that if it had the same kind of meaning and structure that it would still be plagiarized??? Even if it was cited like it should be? I feel like I am probably misunderstanding this. I will go back over that module and watch the little video again.

@NVaden: Yes, plagiarism cam be tricky. I think they're just making sure you're as original as possible in your thinking and writing. You know what plagiarism is by this point. Trust yourself. And way to go with the first assignments! —Grlucas (talk) 11:24, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

@NVaden: Hello Nautica! We have something in common beside this class, we both enjoy photography. I went as far as to start a photography business and start taking clients as I worked towards doing wedding photography. That is, until I had a length conversation with wedding photographer, Jared Lindley. After that conversation I realized that I am more of a photography enthusiast, and less interested in pursuing it as a profession. Do you enjoy photography as a hobby or do you enjoying professionally?

For now I enjoy it as a hobby. I take pictures of lots of random things and work on getting better but I feel like I would enjoy doing it professionally.NVaden (talk) 04:13, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

5 June 2019: Article Evaluation

The exercise suggested picking an article that was related to the class so I picked one that was sort of related called Digital rhetoric. One of the first things I noticed about the article was that it has a broom at the top warning about some of the links in the article. There are lots and lots of references and citations and the links that I clicked on seemed to be to reliable sources providing reliable and unbiased information. I do not know how to tell what an article is rated but several wiki projects interested in the page say start-class and I am not sure if that is meaning this article or the wiki project pages that are interested in it. I noticed in the talk page, there was a section placed there that had been removed from the main article page because it did not have enough sources and citations to help back up the information being said. Everything seems to be from a neutral perspective although there is a quote referenced under the education section that is for an argument. If it is to explain or make a point is that okay? Because it seems like saying "such and such argues..." makes it seems like more of an opinion than something that is for sure a fact. Is saying "according to..." allowed when referencing a source in wikipedia?

@NVaden:Hello! I think you raise some important questions here. I think it is okay that the quote is more opinionated because it shows the view of someone else. If the author had said this, then it wouldn't be neutral. I also see your concern with certain words being used, I think it is good to be observant of these things. I think you should refer to both the NPOV tutorial and Words to watch, they are very helpful. I found that the Words to watch page says that 'according to' is fine and usually neutral.— Sabub (talk) 04:39, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi! You can check the rating by looking at the bottom of the page. For example, take a look at this article https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Cinkass%C3%A9 . It will show you that it's a stub. @NVaden:} --AmaniSensei (talk) 18:19, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

@AmaniSensei and NVaden: Here's the link in wiki formatting: Cinkassé (which you should be using). Often, too, article ratings appear on talk pages. —Grlucas (talk) 20:58, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

@NVaden: A very thoughtful and thorough evaluation,@NVaden:. I also appreciate @Sabub:'s reply to the "according to" scenario in regards to the article maintaining a neutral point of view. Well done, class mates!-Jknox72 (talk) 01:49, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

9 June 2019: Topic of my choosing

So for this journal, I guess I will just talk about the discussions. I have looked at the one for this week and still need to do some kind of contribution to it. The one for this week looks like its own little mini article on the discussion talk page. Then to check out the way things are being formatted, I looked at the one for next week and it looks like how discussions do on d2l. Does it matter how those end up being formatted or should we make them all look like their own mini articles?

@NVaden: I discuss this in my audio checkup that I posted earlier on W3. Spend a bit more time on these posts, please. You might review what the journal should address. Thanks. —Grlucas (talk) 21:01, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

14 June 2019: Choosing an article

While looking through the page for Macon, Georgia, I saw a lot of articles that could be chosen. Most of the ones I clicked on looked like pretty complete articles and like it would be difficult to contribute something that was not already there. In narrowing down my search, I noticed that there were several things listed that did not link to a page and after further looking on wikipedia, I found that those topics do not have their own pages (yet).

The first article I plan to choose from is the Waddell Barnes Botanical Gardens because it was rated as a stub-class article. The article was relatively short. I have found some things that might work as sources but not enough.The next article I plan to choose from is the Coliseum Northside Hospital because there is no article for it. I have found multiple sources for the hospital but so far nothing about its history. The last article I plan to choose from is the A. L. Miller High School for Girls which also does not have an article. I have been looking into external sources for these to see which is the most notable. I think I might choose to do an article about the high school since I have found multiple different sources on it and it seems like there will be plenty of sources and information to contribute.

@NVaden: All sound like strong possibilities. —Grlucas (talk) 20:33, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

15 June 2019: Reading and Citations

In this week's reading, I learned a lot about how to make sure something is credible. Something I definitely did not know was that having a bunch of seemingly pointless ads on a website or something makes it have less credibility than it would have had. There is a lot more stuff for me to consider when I start to work on the article I chose. Near the end of the reading, there was a section on coding and the little commands you can type which was very much like the codes in the Wikipedia:Tutorial.

This week I have also been practicing with trying to make references and citations in my sandbox. Following the tutorial had helped out a lot when I was practicing and made things a lot easier than they could have been. When I preview, it looks correct but I have not yet figured out how to make the citation part go be under its own little reference section.

@NVaden: That's a pretty large number of pages. You should try to narrow down to a specific page or two to make the reference more accurate. You also need a "References" section now. Also, make your writing more usable by having one idea per paragraph. Where's your obvious ¶ break? —Grlucas (talk) 20:35, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

@NVaden: The found fact you added about a website losing credibility by having unnecessary ads to be very helpful. I also like that you added the page number in the citation so that I can go to the specific page where this was mentioned —Ajhawkins95 (talk)

22 June 2019: Adding Citations and Copyediting an Article

The article that I decided to copyedit was the Medical Center of Central Georgia, Navicent Health. The little link that took us to the wikiedu page about copyediting an article said that we did not need to add new information to the article so I did not try and add any new information. When you go onto the page for this article, at the top there is a warning because the article did not have any in-line citations and it needs more sources. I went through the references and external links that the article did provide and used them to find some information corresponding to what was written. Then I had to fix a couple of citations and added some in-line citations. I will still have to go through the article and the sources provided to continue.

From this article, I have learned how to do an in-line citation that uses the same reference so that the reference is not listed a bunch of times. At first, I was unsure what I was doing wrong and why there were two of the same reference listed but then I figured it out. Wikipedia's article Citing Sources, especially the part about doing reference names was very useful in doing that.

@NVaden: That is so great that you cleaned up that article with those edits! I only added a word to an article to make the wording less ambiguous. I didn't want to make too many changes until I am completely comfortable editing other people's work on here. The training tutorial have proved to be so helpful for me. I am glad that we have the WikiEdu to learn from. Keep up the good work! Kehli.west (talk) 21:46, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

@NVaden: Good work. Do you consider your fixing the citations to be your copyedit? That's a good start, but surely you can find a sentence or two to revise. 😁 —Grlucas (talk) 15:25, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

23 June 2019: My Article

I have decided that I would rather go with creating an article for the page Coliseum Northside Hospital. While looking around for sources, I found more information than I did for the previous topic I wanted to choose. I have started to put some notes for it into my sandbox along with citations so that I will have them when I am ready to fully start working on the article. I feel like knowing information about your local hospitals is important. I will be adding more little notes and citations into my sandbox as I move along and make sure that I am not having some kind of accidental plagiarism going on.

My sandbox is kind of a mess so I will have to clean it up and get rid of the stuff I definitely do not need in there.

@NVaden: Writing a new article is great! You could use your sandbox, or start a draft. Let me know if I can help. —Grlucas (talk) 15:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi :@NVaden:I think Northside Hospital is a great choice for your article. I agree knowing information about your local hospital is very important especially if you would like to visit someday.-Acm2625 (talk) 17:15, 28 June 2019 (UTC)Acm2625

30 June 2019: Drafting in my Sandbox

I so far have four sources referenced in my sandbox for my article on the hospital (Coliseum Northside Hospital). I will get more and see if I am able to go and get a picture of the outside of the hospital to be able to add to the article once I move it onto its own page. I have been searching through wikipedia to find articles that I can link to, especially when it comes to the different kinds of services that the hospital provides and for links that I cannot find, I will put my own notes on what the services are specifically. For reference, I have looked up many different hospitals and saw at what their articles looked like and what was included so I could get a better idea on everything that I definitely should be including in the article I am working on. Wikipedia: Your First Article has been a useful guide in creating what I have so far of my draft.

@NVaden: I was looking at that exact Wikipedia page when drafting my article as well. It’s extremely resourceful and I found that even the new article wizard link that they have near the middle of the page helps a lot too, especially with what links are credible for sources. If I could go down to Macon to get my own photo I would. Trying to request for permissions is a pain so that’s awesome that you are local and can go grab a picture. Strasburg7312 (talk) 11:51, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

@NVaden: I also looked to similar Wikipedia articles as my own to get a sense of how they formatted their page. Looking to an established source as reference is helpful because it has given me a better sense of how I should format my own article’s headings and information to make the page the best it can be. Atallent (talk) 12:17, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

6 July 2019: Moving Article into the Mainspace

I feel that I have gotten my article, Coliseum Northside Hospital, to have enough information to be able to move into the mainspace where I can continue to add the pictures I plan to get and anything else I need to contribute to the article. After doing the training module assigned for this week about moving the article, I followed the directions for moving a new article out of the sandbox. The article Wikipedia:Moving a page was a very useful tool as well in telling why a page would need to be moved and how to do it. I did not know that moving the page from my sandbox was going to keep the user template for the sandbox so at first, I was confused about why when I tested the link, it was bringing me to my sandbox. Then I got to looking and in the top was a code for the template saying that it was part of the sandbox so I deleted it and previewed the page and it looked normal. I published that version and tested the link and everything seems to look normal for now. I just need to continue adding on to it.

I would like to thank Atallent (talk · contribs) and Strasburg7312 (talk · contribs) for their peer reviews on what I had of my article so far, so thank you! You both brought up great points about the things I needed to clear up and fix.

@NVaden: Checking your coding is important with sites like this. Sometimes you need to troubleshoot. Just go slow and remember to triple check your work. Jkoplin1 (talk) 19:23, 7 July 2019 (UTC)Jkoplin1

@NVaden: Please add a link to your article. I wish you continued success. Thanks!—TSchiroMGA (talk) 03:53, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

@NVaden: I agree with TSchiroMGA (talk · contribs): this post could be more informative and detailed with links and support. —Grlucas (talk) 16:00, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

10 July 2019: Social Media Plan

I have not personally came up with any kind of social media plan because I have not seen a lot of people trying to promote wikipedia articles on social media. I know that for companies such as Apple Inc. or Nike, Inc. just to name a couple, having a social media plan would be important because they would want to be able to promote their new products and that they can do that through Advertising or doing a kind of Press release on their social media accounts. I remember from taking a Mass Communication class and Public Relations Strategy class that using press releases were important because they could make your company look more reliable and stuff.

If I were going to come up with a social media plan for my article, first I would want to look at who my target audience is going to be. Because I have been working on an article about Coliseum Northside Hospital, I would think that my target audience would be people who are looking for where they would like to get treated, people who live in the area, and maybe even people who may want to see about getting a job there. Then I would have to make sure that whatever I wrote to post about for the article is easy to read and understand, and if I use visuals, that they are not ugly, overwhelming, or unattractive to my audience. I would have to also make sure that after people look at it, they would want to share it and spread the knowledge with other people that they know.

10 July 2019: Working More on the Article

As I have been looking for more sources and things to add to the article Coliseum Northside Hospital, I have been looking at some articles on other hospitals people have suggested for me to look at such as the Texas Medical Center. That article had a LOT more information than the article I am trying to create, but it was also a much older hospital with so many more resources. I feel a little bit like I am struggling because I want to make the article I am working on a good and informative article but since the hospital is newer and does not have as much information on it as the other hospital articles I have been looking at, I am worried that I am not going to be able to contribute enough. I will definitely be able to add pictures when I get them.

(I am not finished with this entry, I will be back later to continue)

Hi @NVaden: I know that you said you were not finished with your entry, but I thought maybe I could help you with some topics to add to your article!

• Does this hospital host any classes? Examples could be birthing classes, CPR classes, etc.
• How many people are employed?
• I know that the location is in the information box, but there is not any mention of it being in Macon anywhere in the article itself.
• Are there any outpatient offices onsite?
• Here is a link to another award they have earned.

I hope this gives you a few more things to check out and helps you broaden your article!LynzeeWhite (talk) 17:45, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

@LynzeeWhite: Thank you for these suggestions! I have looked into them and should definitely be able to add information on classes I have found that the hospital hosts, and I was able to get a picture of the outpatient center.NVaden (talk) 20:06, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

@NVaden: You're welcome! It's great that you were able to take a trip and visit the campus! I know that will help your article tremendously. - LynzeeWhite (talk) 15:21, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

11 July 2019: Field Trip

This morning, I had my mom take me on a field trip to Macon so I could take some pictures of Coliseum Northside Hospital to contribute to the article. We took the interstate I-75 and then after we got off we took several turns and ended up on a very interesting road because it had these signs that said which lane you could drive on and they were able to switch. Then we made it to Charter road which is the road the hospital is located on. The hospital is located on a very pretty and well-groomed campus. There were multiple other buildings in their own little areas, but for my picture I just wanted to get the main entrance so it could go in the infobox. My mom dropped me off by the front and I took several pictures but I felt kind of strange or like I would be considered some suspicious person who just showed up there and started taking pictures. I hope that was okay. Then my mom drove me around to the back where I also took a picture of the Emergency room entrance and the outpatient center. After getting the pictures we came home.

@NVaden:-Great job with the photos. They look really good on the article's page. Have you considered adding map to the info box? Keep up the good work.-Mightymize (talk) 00:18, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

14 July 2019: Adding Images

Previously, sometime near the beginning of the semester I had been messing around in my sandbox trying to figure stuff out and I had uploaded an image (one of my own that I had taken) to the wikimedia commons without knowing that it would go there, and then I deleted it from my sandbox but it still exists in the commons. I guess it will just be there forever?? From that experience, I had learned how to successfully upload an image.

This week, I have added two images to my article on Coliseum Northside Hospital. After looking at this weeks lesson on uploading images from the wikiedu dashboard, I also pulled up the page Wikipedia:Uploading images to further review the do's and do not's of uploading images. The image featuring the emergency room was easy for me to upload as it looked right on the page and was similar to how images on other pages are. (For example, you can look at the image in the infobox and along the article for the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.) I did have to make a small adjustment and move the first line to be under the image because when looking at the page from a mobile device, it did not look right for the image to be under the first line and then have a list.

Now, when it came to uploading an image to the infobox, that I found slightly more difficult. I was able to get the image uploaded, but when I previewed it, the image was off-centered. I spent a little time looking at the page Help:Infobox picture to make sure I was getting it right and then I looked at a random pages wikicode in the edit source to look at what that person put for the image they uploaded. In its upload code, it said 'center' so I figured I would give that a shot. After erasing 'thumb' and replacing it with 'center,' I previewed the page and it turned my image ginormous. I did something else that didn't help and my image was still huge. Then I found that I needed to specify a size and 300px centered worked and made the image the right size and centered in the box.

It has also been suggested that I look into adding a map so I will see if there is something I can do about that.

@NVaden: I have an info box on my article as well and I will probably be coming back to this journal entry once I have a picture to use so I can reference that link. I figured the info box would act a bit finicky, especially since I had to deal with things acting weird for coding in html. Since they are fairly close, it doesn't surprise me there are some bumps that have to be ironed out. Strasburg7312 (talk) 05:04, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

@NVaden: Images are great, but not as important as solid, secondary articles. It seems like most of your support comes from the hospital itself. This is OK for one or two citations, but you must have other sources for notability. —Grlucas (talk) 12:43, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

21 July 2019: Reflective Essay

Throughout this course, I have learned a lot more about working with and using wikipedia than I ever thought I would have. Before, wikipedia was just a site that I would occasionally visit when I wanted to know something such as what was included on the Lists of legendary creatures or what Carom billiards was. Writing on and editing wikipedia is something I am grateful to have had the opportunity to learn and that I hope to get better at.

Wikipedia Generally

For the most part, I want to say that I picked up on how to work with wikipedia quite easily, but I do feel that when it came to things like critiquing an article, I lacked competence. As much as I would like to say that I did a good job of critiquing articles, I felt like I could have done better by not letting myself overthink and worry about if I was doing something right or not or looking at the right things. By being able to make my own article (on Coliseum Northside Hospital), I did learn quite a bit about critiquing because I have to make sure that my article is understandable, clear, concise, and has notability, this last part being something I struggled with in creating a new article, but I will get there later.

Over the semester I learned how to add images into info boxes with help from the page infobox and by testing and previewing different settings to see how the image looked. I learned how to add references and spent a lot of time looking at the page Wikipedia:Tutorial/Citing sources. I learned that putting two equal signs at the beginning and end of a word or words, it would make a section header, and the more equal signs would create smaller sub-sections. I learned that two square brackets on either side of a word or words would make it a link to another article such as what I have linked above. I learned that four tildes makes a signature and that to reply to someone, you have to use a colon or maybe more and curly brackets to be able to reply to somebody.

All of these things I would have never known if it was not for this class.

Summarizing my Contributions

Rather than picking an article that had a little to go off of and adding on to it, I choose to create a new article on Coliseum Northside Hospital. I had to figure out what should be included in the new article and figure out how best to write the article so that it said everything it needed to and was not biased or hard to understand.

I had to find sources for notability and admittedly, that was the most difficult part of the process. Of course, I had several websites to use on the hospital as well as the hospital itself's website... Which I had used too much as a source. I spent a little time looking at the page Wikipedia:Potentially unreliable sources and the page Wikipedia:Tutorial/Citing sources to get a better idea of what I should and should not be looking for. I believe at first, one thing that threw me off was that for some reason, I thought I was not allowed to use news sources even though every time I went to make a citation, the template was right there with the others. And then it was suggested that I do use newspaper articles as secondary sources. I have since corrected what I could so far and have lessened the amount of times I used the hospitals page as a source. I do still have it being used as the source for what I wrote about the specific services the hospital does because it has been difficult finding an outside source specifically on those things. That was a learning experience.

Contributing other things to the article I found quite simple. It did not take me too long to figure out how to upload and size a picture so that it fit inside the infobox. And, I knew how to link certain phrases and words to other articles so I was able to do that quite a bit although I was a bit surprised that there is not already an article on HCA South Atlantic because I had already seen other articles on other big companies that owned hospitals.

Peer Review and Feedback

When it came to peer reviews, I did my best to try and follow the guidelines from the module about checking if the article had a clear structure, neutral content and reliable sources.. When I had looked at the article the first time (Tubman Museum), Everything looked to be going great. The structure was clear. I had asked if there were plans to add images to the article and if the section on art was going to be expanded, and from looking at the article now, there are images and the art section is a bit longer.

With the article I was doing, I had received many useful suggestions. Some information, such as the exact location of the hospital, I was told that it may be best to move from the lead section and just have it in an infobox along with some other information, so I created one. I also got suggestions on adding pictures and clearing up some statements I had made. After working on the article a bit more, another one of my peers had suggested several things I could look into to expand the article on the hospital.

All of this information was very useful to me and I am thankful for the people who took the time to look at the article and suggest things that needed to change and that I was able to fix almost all of them. The feedback I struggled with the most was about having secondary sources and not relying too much on one source and the reason I struggled with it was because finding credible sources is not the easiest thing in the world.

Overall

There is so much that I learned from this course in the eight weeks of being in it. I got more of a hands-on learning experience from this course because whatever contributions I make are going to be seen by everyone else and are not just some private thing that only the professor and I are going to see like most assignments tend to be... Unless for some reason everybody has some secret view each others assignments party and I am not invited.

Thank you for this wonderful learning opportunity and your time. :)

@NVaden: You're welcome. ;-) Thank you for your contributions. —Grlucas (talk) 14:10, 24 July 2019 (UTC)