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Final Group Report for the Jack Welch Page

Team Members: Kateheinle, sjoo446, Mzw3, and The_Da_Crook

Contributions to The Jack Welch Article

At the beginning of the project, the Wiki page for Jack Welch had basic information on all the aspects of his life, but did not go into much detail. To fix this problem one of our first proposals and first thing tackled to change was adding more information about his “Early life and education”, including his early summer jobs and college time. We also reformatted this section greatly for better grammar and flow.

We tried tackling the same problems in each section of his Wiki page, adding more relevant information and sources and overall fixing flow. We slowly added more information to the “CEO” subsection under “General Electric” including Welch’s policies at GE and his unique leadership qualities that was previously not written about on his page. We also found sources for some information that was correct but previously unsourced (i.e. Welch firing bottom 10% each year).

Plus, we added specific information to his “After GE” page because we did not want his Wiki page to only reflect his time at GE, and also fleshed out greatly about the Jack Welch Management Institute. After minor edits and additions about the Institute, we decided to give it its own subsection a week later and expand it even more.

The next major revision was the overhaul of the “Opinions” section to the “Personal Opinions” section to add details about more relevant news like Welch’s controversial tweet about job numbers from 2012. By looking at what another Wiki User Cblambert proposed and considering how to make Jack Welch’s page more informative, we also added a whole new “Legacy” section to discuss the fate of GE as well as comparisons to the current CEO, Jeff Immelt.

Early on, we also added more links under the “See also” page like General Electric and Jack Welch Management Institute that was not there previously. We also erased Steve Jobs which was on their originally, thanks to feedback from a classmate.

In order to find information and sources for the Jack Welch Wikipedia page, our project group looked online for sources that are reliable and fit the standards and guidelines outlined by the site. Jack Welch is a living-person and therefore much information about him, his life, and his work can be found in various locations across the Internet. Our group took note of written autobiographical and biographical work in order to have a well-rounded understanding of Jack Welch. Additionally, because Welch is a living person, we had to ensure that all information was current and accurate and be particularly cautious of any biases to ensure all of our information was objective. On the talk page our group updated any source additions that were included and was sure to verify sources within the group.

The original Jack Welch Wikipedia page was limited in its information and was rated a C-class article. We imagine this is because it was "still missing important content or contains much irrelevant material." This especially makes sense as the Jack Welch article had seemingly random facts under “Opinions”, but we made sure to expand and format this section so that it makes more sense as a “Personal opinions” section. We also got rid of some random “See also” links that did not relate to Jack Welch, like Steve Jobs.

To be considered a B-class article, the article must meet the six B-class criteria.

It must be suitably referenced, which is something we made sure we did. Previously, there was correct yet unsourced information (Welch fires bottom 10%), so we added sources.
The article covers the topic of Jack Welch and does not have any obvious omissions or inaccuracies. Before, there was only one sentence on the Jack Welch Management Institute which we thought was major for him post GE, so we expanded on that giving it its own section.
The article has a defined structure and each section has subsections when necessary. We moved around some information that did not fit well into its original section like the mention of the controversial jobs tweet.
The article is also reasonably well-written, and we made sure that every group member checked over the article for grammar, spelling, and flow before completing the project.
Illustrations are encouraged, not required. The original article came with an appropriate headshot of Jack Welch that we decided to keep.
Lastly, the article presents its content in an appropriately understandable way. Especially as Jack Welch is a living person, we tried to make sure all the requirements for biographies of living persons were kept: neutral point of view (no bias saying Welch is bad or good), verifiability (adding relevant sources), and no original research.

Evolution of The Article

Originally, the Jack Welch article was much shorter, less organized, and did not go into sufficient detail about his early career, his life at GE, and his life after GE. The final revision submitted and posted for the world to see is fully sourced, as earlier there was some information that did not have sources. It was also edited for grammar and formatting. Overall, there is one more "Legacy" section added that was previously not there, one subsection added for the Jack Welch Management Institute, and much more expansion on other sections of the Wiki like "Early life and education", "CEO" under "General Electric", "After GE", "Personal Life", and also "Opinions" being fleshed out and edited to become "Personal opinions".

Although we were all once newcomers to Wikipedia, we found edits to be much easier as we kept on revising week after week. As Lampe and Johnson state in their article from Week 3 of our class readings, new members may have information overload. At first, we weren’t sure what step to make to expand the article. We as new members also violated norms, like forgetting to sign off with 4 ~ after proposing any changes on the Talk Page. Also, we did somewhat feel ignored and that our contribution was not as much as we had wanted after not getting responses from 3 Wiki Users (this is explained more in detail in the “Community Experience” section.)

However, we slowly learned more netiquette and got at least some feedback from one experienced user which encouraged us not to stop writing and improving the page. We also got great constructive criticism and feedback from our TA Nebelmeister, who suggested adding a chart to organize our plans and thoughts throughout the project. As Cheng et al. stated in their article assigned in Week 5, any kind of feedback is better than no feedback, so this definitley helped us contribute.

The article evolved greatly once we split up the work and focused on what areas of the article we would improve. Although Beneen et al. discuss the problem of social loafing leading to under contribution, our group frequently kept each other in check to do equal amounts of work in different parts of the article so that we would all feel responsible to pull our weight and eventually improve the article overall.

Process of Familiarizing with Wikipedia

In order to provide quality contributions to the Jack Welch Wikipedia page our project group had to become familiarized with the proper policies, formatting, and markup language used on Wikipedia. A majority of the basic knowledge required for using and understanding Wikipedia was attained during our Cornell University college course studying online communities.

In our Cornell University course we were taught the basics of the Wikipedia markup language from edits as simple as bolding text to the more complicated process of adding pictures. An early assignment in our course required us to complete a tutorial on Wikipedia that educated us on the proper policies for using the site including acceptable behaviors and an overview of the editing processing.

When topics were not covered in class or on the Wikipedia tutorial, group members resorted to finding answers on the Internet. The Wikipedia community extends past the site pages, in fact, there was an extensive amount of information whenever anyone in the group required assistance.

Additionally, our group had to familiarize itself with the biographies of living persons policies on Wikipedia, which meant that all members had to read and understand these policies so our group contributions fit the standards of the site. These policies were an additional source of information on how the Wikipedia community functions and include things such as maintaining an unbiased perspective for additions. Within the group, there was a certain degree of conformity to follow the norms (policies) on the site because as Nguyen and Rose state conformity to group norms actually reflects commitment to the group. Our project team worked hard to become members of the Wikipedia community, by following procedures and policies set up by the site and all the users on the community that came before us.

Another tool that enhanced the project group’s ability to contribute to the Jack Welch page was the sandbox feature on Wikipedia. This tool allows users to practice, make mistakes, and become better at editing. As Morgan, Bourterse, Stierch, & Walls explained in a weekly reading from the course, in many cases people do not participate on online communities because of a confusion about how to properly use the software. However, the sandbox tool and the tutorials, as well as the user-friendly editing functions on each page reduced confusion and allowed the editing experience to be enjoyable. Similar to the sandbox function of Wikipedia is the previewing feature available. Each time one made a change on the site there was an opportunity to preview the changes before saving the work. This ‘view preview’ tab allowed our group to view our work before we posted it onto the Wikipedia page eliminating minor mistakes and allowing us to safely learn the technical aspects of the site.

Ultimately, the only experience on Wikipedia that prevented our project team from becoming better users and contributors on Wikipedia was the lack of feedback from a large group of Wikipedians. While we did receive a great deal of feedback, we were hoping to meet another user just as interested as we were in making significant changes. Much of an online community involves interactions with other users, and our team would have become more accustomed to the community aspect of Wikipedia if there had been a more solid connection made with a veteran Wikipedian.

Community Experience

When we started the project, each group member reached out to a Wiki User personally on their Talk Page. We ended up choosing the users that had most recently and also most frequently posted on Jack Welch’s talk page.

One user was Silver seren who had a lot of input on Welch’s early career and throughout his entire Wiki page, albeit mostly in 2012. We reached out to him on his Talk Page informing of our class and asking for input, but we never got a response.

The next user we reached out to was Hamilton83 on his Talk Page, a GE Employee who frequently wrote on the Talk Page that he did not want a conflict of interest. This was a user who consistently updated the page, so we felt he would be a good person to reach out to, but we did not get a response in the short time we had for our Wiki project.

Another user we reached out to on their Talk Page was Canoe1967. We chose these three users because interestingly enough, they all often talked to each other on their Talk Pages because of their shared interest in updating the Jack Welch page.

Our ultimate goal was to reach contact with all of these users to form a small “community” and discuss together, but these three users did not get back to us before the project ended. We believe the issue was with timing, as there was a spike in edits, controversy, and discussion on Jack Welch’s page in 2012. There may have been more “spark” around him near his controversies (like his tweet on fixing job numbers from 2012 that we added to his Wiki), but because there is not much recent news on him now, there has not been much revising or editing from any users. We were ultimately saddened by not getting feedback from 3 users, and we did feel discouraged to continue on with the project on Wikipedia. This goes in line with Cheng et al.’s article from Week 5 in class stating with no feedback people leave, compared to negative or positive feedback. We felt even negative feedback would be better than no feedback, so we would not be talking to an "empty room."

However, there was one user Cblambert who edited Welch’s page recently in Summer of 2014, so we also reached out to him on his Talk Page. He did respond on the Jack Welch Talk Page giving advice to post the recent We Are in the Post Industrial Economy article that we ultimately did end up putting in his "Legacy" section (a section proposed by Cblambert should be put in the summer). However, this user also recommended adding a chart of comparative stats of top organizations granted patents over time- of which the user claimed GE was once was No. 1 or 2. Yet, we checked this information and found it to be hard to claim, as can be seen in the article List of top United States patent recipients saying GE was was not in the top spots since 1997. So we decided not to put this into the Jack Welch page.

We posted again on Cblambert’s Talk Page towards the end of the project thanking him for his input, and he also had some more suggestions such as writing more about patents. We also noticed he seemed to have a negative bias stating “Jack Welch made a lot of shareholders rich but he turned GE in a soulless organization. Pity.” We kindly responded that the deadline was quickly approaching so we did not have sufficient time to add more edits, but thanked him again. Just by talking to at least one user, we felt that there was somewhat a community on Wikipedia. As Bryant, Forte, and Bruckman stated in their article in Week 4, we as newcomers originally saw Wikipedia just as an online, volunteer-produced free encycolpedia. However, by talking to another Wiki User, we felt responsible contributing to Welch’s page, especially through exploring all of Wiki’s interface and use (Page history, Talk Pages, etc). We ultimately felt part of a community.

Group Member Breakdown

For the Wikipedia assignment, our project team members divided the work evenly and all contributed equally for each portion of the assignment process. When deciding how to allocate assignments for content, communication, and technical aspects, our project team chose to work together because of our similar strengths and interests.

The project members on our team had no prior experience editing a page on Wikipedia, so the entire process was new and interesting. Therefore, each member wanted to take part in creating content, communicating with other members, and figuring out all the technical aspects involved with editing.

For each portion of the project the team would meet to discuss what needed to be accomplished and then would evenly divide up the work. By collectively discussing each step of the contributing process we were able to get feedback from each other before making any significant changes, and because of that our team developed its own checks and balances system. For instance, in terms of communication with other Wikipedians, each member of the team reached out to multiple Wikipedians that showed interest in the Jack Welch page. Therefore, one person was not solely responsible for communication or any other aspect of the project.

Our group had a great experience working together and sharing idea’s throughout the duration of the project. As a system of communication, our group utilized another online community called GroupMe, which allowed us to stay in contact with each other at all times and openly discuss any concerns, issues, or suggestions for the Wikipedia page. Therefore, as a group we worked cohesively, efficiently, and effectively to ensure our contributions to the Wikipedia page fit the policies and procedures of Wikipedia.

Our team did not want to divide the work for the project based on select requirements of the project because we were all equally interested in similar portions of the projects. However, this collective behavior is a reflection of the Wikipedia community because that is how Wikipedians make significant changes, by working together to communicate and contribute. Our mimicry of typical Wikipedia behavior also allowed each member to make significant changes to different sections of the article. Bryant, Forte, and Bruckman suggested that minor or small changes are not cohesive with good new user behavior, therefore, by each making many changes our group worked to be effective new users.

For the actual article itself, our team divided up sections that needed to have additions based on our individual interests and then we were each responsible for finding reputable sources and making the required edits on the page. Kateheinle focused on "GE" subsection "CEO" and also "After GE". sjoo446 worked on "Opinions" to "Personal Opinions", creating "Legacy", and adding to the new subsection for the Jack Welch Management Institute. Mzw3 mainly focused on "Early life and education" and "Personal Life". Finally, The_Da_Crook cleaned up "After GE" and made the bulk of the Jack Welch Management Institute subsection. Each week multiple members would do grammatical overviews of the entire page and ensure that additions fit the standards of Wikipedia and made the page better. Things we looked for collectively as a group included the flow of the article, the grammar of the page, word choice, sentence phrasing, as well as source reliability and value of additions.

Sjoo446 (talk) 21:53, 8 October 2014 (UTC)