Wiki Writing: The Good, the Bad, and the Obscene

Upon reading the text of the second paragraph of a photographed Wikipedia article I was surprised and alarmed by the unanticipated obscene material embedded within factual information about thermodynamics. The screenshot depicts a version of the wiki article prior to Carra Leah Hood’s editing. By coincidence, Hood came across the obscene material only an hour and eight minutes after it was posted and was able to quickly remove it and further edit the article. This capability is the keystone of Wikipedia’s functionality. 

Because collaborative writing pieces like Wikipedia entries have several authors who are unknown, unpredictable and come from potentially diverse cultural and educational backgrounds, they have the potential (and sometimes likelihood) of deteriorating during the writing process. Because of this, Wikipedia entries are often dubbed unreliable. But integrating information from multiple cultural and educational viewpoints also has clear benefits. The goal is to create a shared understanding. It is up to the editors to be conscious of this and sensitive to this.

Wikipedia places inherent value on the writing process over the written product. Wikipedia is revolutionary in the sense that no article will ever be finished, but will instead act as an “always and forever a public conversation” (Hood). I think this is the greatest strength of a web-based, collaborative encyclopedia. Students have been conditioned to think that writing serves its functions only as a finalized product. I think it would be helpful and beneficial for students to view their own written work as constantly evolving products. That is becoming easier now that a majority of writing is conducted on the web and can be easily adjusted. The effects of not only placing value on process over product, but creating a medium that only functions as process, are numerous and worth investigating.

These collaborative aspects of Wikipedia raise the question of whether Wikipedia serves to further or inhibit the writing process (individually and collaboratively), or to both further and inhibit it in distinctive modes.

Citizen Criticism

In “Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy: A Critical Citizen’s Guide,” Donald Lazere introduces and illustrates many terms regarding citizen criticism, some of which align with Corbett and Eberly's discussion of citizen criticism in The Elements of Reasoning. These concepts can be applied to Nat Nakasa’s “Writing in South Africa” in order to analyze the rhetorical strategies that Nakasa employs to appeal to his audience.

Lazere discusses viewpoint, bias and fairness of a citizen critic. Corbett and Eberly highlight the different diversions of reasoning. Both pieces discuss “false dilemma” and how it affects becoming a citizen critic. Corbett and Eberly defines false dilemma as something that “forces a range of choices into an either/or structure” (128). As I was reading “Writings in South Africa,” I noticed that Nakasa does a good job avoiding false dilemma, at least in dichotomy, and instead presents a wide variety of issues and possible causes. His argument is spherical in that sense.

Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy and The Elements of Reasoning both discuss a similar concept that Corbert and Eberly call the “straw man” and Lazere calls relativism. Corbet and Eberly define the “straw man” as a tactic that “involves exaggerating opponent’s position and then representing that exaggeration as his position” (130).  Nakasa’s writing style could make a reader question if he uses the straw man as a strategy. Nakasa’s writing is dramatic and playfully wordy, while it does provide an entertaining read, it is difficult for a reader to establish what is factual and what is a dramatic representation.

The author’s ideas also overlap regarding logical fallacies (errors in reasoning that invalidate an argument) such as “stacking the deck” and “begging the question.” According to Corbett and Eberly, begging the question “occurs when a reasoned makes a statement that assumes the very thing he wants to persuade a reasoning partner or audience of in his reasoning” (125). There is an instance of this in Nakasa’s writing when he is discussing the prevalence of the English language and assumes Africans would take interest in it, in which he jumps to a conclusion that is not logically supported by the factors he outlines. Nakasa does, however, do an excellent job avoiding stacking the deck, the concept of rejecting or ignoring evidence that supports an opposing argument, by incorporating multiple exceptions and varying viewpoints into his argument.

Lazere points out that stacking the deck is often counterproductive because it dissuades an opponent from considering the viewpoint. If the opposing side of the argument is never even mentioned, the opponent will lose interest and the will argument lack credibility. Similarly, in “I Agree, But…” McDonald supports the idea of valuing an opponent’s opinion but later introducing its flaws (206).

In Jones’s “Finding the Good Argument,” readers learn that “What is often missing from these discussions is research, consideration of multiple vantage points, and, quite often, basic logic” (157,158). Jones introduces the common mistakes of citizen criticism while Corbett and Eberly take his ideas further and categorize how these issues often integrate in writing and argumentation. 

Dumbing Down an Argument

I decided to edit Mark Bauerlein’s The Chronicle of Higher Education blog post, ‘Society Is Dumbing Down’. Similar to his other writing on his blog, Bauerlein’s writing in his blog is straight to the point, as in, he does not make use of flowery language and anecdotes. However, when aiming to write straight to the point, one should, in fact, have a point.

This post has major issues regarding clarification. Bauerlein’s implicit and incomplete argument leaves readers wondering what the point of his post is. 

Clarity is the biggest issue here because a reader actually has to assume, based on the title no less, what the author’s claim is. The title of a piece should give a reader an idea of what might be discussed, but should not be the only place where the main point of the work lies. I assume, based on the title and general flow of the piece, that the author’s purpose is to inform and persuade readers, but he does very little of either due to an almost complete lack of information. Without the title, I would probably be thoroughly confused about the direction of this article. As I began reading his post, I assumed Bauerlein’s included evidence would support the claim that society is dumbing down; however, the evidence alone is too insufficient to do so.

He only writes about five lines in this blog post. The remaining content is entirely quoted material. Bauerlein does not include supporting evidence for why he included what he included. The piece could be greatly improved upon with his explanation of his motives and some reaction to the research. It is one thing to let the facts speak for themselves, but this is not written in a compelling enough way for that to be the case. It is nice that he uses specific evidence and distinctly embraces intertextuality, but the article is lacking substance and the evidence does not clearly support any claims. Bauerlein does little to bring any additional information or context to his argument. He does provide links for the reader to learn more about the study, however the majority of the links are broken.

In his post, Bauerlein reduces a complex argument to key points, which is impressive, but the way in which he does so causes readers to lose all the important information, including the general basis for why his argument exists. There is also a serious issue with obscurity. He does not make any original claims and he does nothing to aide readers’ understanding. 

Technically Bauerlein includes transitions in “Society is Dumbing Down,” but readers are unable to follow his thought process since he does not expound on how he links one claim with a subsequent one. The lack of logical transitions, in addition to the bland organization of the piece, erases the distinction between supporting quotes and major claims. The reader has no way to identify which parts of the piece create the main idea because the author does not expand or comment on any of the piece’s components.

Since most of the article consists of quotations there is not much room for line editing. I did, however, edit the organization, use of the quotes, and apparent gaps in the post. My strength in editing this piece lies in being able to recognize what is wrong. An unfortunate weakness is my limitation in fixing the main problem due to lack of context and inability to create Bauerlein’s claims for him.