My Project
The Wishing Well
Well... Wishing Well went well as they say wishing that indeed all things that went were well but in doing so little Johnny fell into the well and soaking wet he concluded that all things that went in the well were not well at all and infact were very wet indeed.
What I had proposed was bold (I thought) and probablly too large a project to take on by myself. I ended up calling the project an encyclopedia for change, and thats what it ended up being several articles written with a basic to moderate overview of a problem concerning the world or the U.S. for the most part. The articles were written in a dry reportive tone and included some pictures with links to the sources.
I proposed that I would build and edit a wiki that would gather all or as much factual data as possible concerning issues that effected the United States and the World as a whole. My goal was to write and maintain 25 nodes or articles but after realizing how much time I was puting into research on differnt topics and how few topics I had to start with I realized it would be next fall before I could get that many full prepared I have since settled on 10 as an acceptable number. I had read in random searches through the internet that there were solutions to many problems that I have discussed with my friends over the years and I wanted those solutions to be evaluated and acknowledge by a vast number of people hoping that some influential people might take notice and then take steps to change things.
I suggested a wiki because I was going for a database approach that could be read easily and edited by those who I deemed would have the education and scholarship to contribute observations, facts or opinions that were based on reason and facts as oposed to political or religious rhetoric. To this end I was reasonablly succesfull as I had one friend contribute a very reasonble and rational argument for a radical soultion He was also the only person to contribute besides myself. Also in one of my Studio Tours it was noted that my wiki was dry and "read like a short text book" which I took as a compliment because of the nature of my project I was attempting to discuss issues with facts and rationlization not with outlandish opnions.
To help people navigate the site I linked all the pages at the bottom of every page, as well as a page deicated to all the articles. Also at the bottom of every page I put "links of interest" for sights I found interesting or useful- but not nesescarily well cited or un-biased
Some problems I ecountered however in gathering information was that there are not many sites on the web that back up their statements with facts or cite any sources for evaluation. I wanted people to read the facts for themselves from reliable sources. The sites I found to be the most useful were goverment sights and interestingly enough wikipedia. The goverement is usually a good place to find information and wikipedia backs most of its information well and is generally cited fromo solid sources. Although searching govermnt data bases got me nowhere when researching information concerning the war on terror other than information I already knew ie: "Terrorists are dieing we are killing them, here are the ones we still need to kill" (well not an actual quote this was generally summerizing what I was able to find) The University of Michigan was actually very helpful when researching the page for the War on Terrorism
Another problem I encountered was getting people to contribute, I realized while many people are willing to share their opnion on a subject few are willing to write up a nice short essay on the subject and even fewer are willing to find sources to back their claims. I have hopes though that as the wiki exsist longer and I make more revisions to the project it may attract more attention and grow faster than it has. I have gotten hits from around the U.S. but I cannot say for how long or what pages were noticed. I also do intend to keep this project going as it I really enjoy the research aspect of it (being a history major this is mostly what I do) as well as the actual writing on different topics, but I feel I will not be spending nearly the time as I have been.
I feel I could have improved upon the actual writng aspect of the articles but for the most part I was trying to blend bits and pieces of data I could collect in a unbiased and somewhat connected article. I could use the side bar for many different things but I put a short blurb about me on there- so if people just stumbled onto a page they could know who wrote it, why and how to contact me if they had more to add or just plain disagreed with my conclusions.
As the articles progressed I generally settled on a form that I liked and so I feel the best articles written were the later ones that have been done in the last few weeks of the asignment- partially because I'm a little deperate for things to write about and because I've gotten more comfortable using the wiki. My favorite article for the moment is the Fresh Water Conservationarticle it would be perfect if I could find a picture that might ilustrate a point. I'm hoping to go through and revise some of the earlier articles. (At the time of this post I am still working on modifying my project).
While this project fell short of my goals and expectations I was able to find a sight that I hope to model someday (in the middle of my project I found this site). That sight is Global Issues although this site also has a little more political bias than I would like it has the size and scope I am hoping to achieve one day- maybe many years from now.
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