Lessons of Wikipedia

Zittrain's article "Lessons of Wikipedia" delves into the difference between rules and standard on Wikipedia, and how this differentiation contributes to the overall success and uniqueness of Wikipedia as a whole. The article discusses how when one is given a set of rules to follow, then it is easy to have the tendency to want to rebel against these rules. It is a simple factor of human nature. Rules are meant to be broken. But when you give a user, or really any person for that matter, a "standard" then one feels given a lot more inherent control and freedom. As Cheyanne quotes in her blog post "Rules are less subject to ambiguity, and if crafted well, inform people exactly what they can do, even if individual situations render impractical, or worse, dangerous." It is in this way that Wikipedia exists in harmony as a freely edited, yet source checked encyclopedia. Users uphold the standard of good content simply for the fact that they feel more apart of that standard itself.


Cheyanne references the photos included by Hooks, which provide a standard for what a correct and incorrect Wikipedia article would look like. These photos exist as an accessible and beneficial resource for anybody who may want to contribute to the site, and therefore further add the the availability of content editing. This accessibility is at the very core of the Wikipedia goal.


One of the most important concepts that is further discussed by Zittrain's article is the idea of the the unspoken "cyber laws." As Zittrain calls it and Cheyanne quotes, "In modern cyberspace, an absence of rules (or at least enforcement) has lead both to a generative blossoming and to a new round of challenges at multiple layers." These "laws" both construct the freedom of the internet, but also act as a bit of a weakness as well. In theory, if users can follow cyber laws then the internet can exist without problem. But if these laws are not followed and the trust of cyber law is broken, it is easy for things to unravel into chaos. Kind of like how communism could be really great in theory if nobody was selfish, but people are and therefore the execution tends to be flawed.


The internet's inherent sense of fair chance of opportunity helps for any person to rise a position of authority amongst the Wikipedia community, which would be that of an administrator. Sort of like the modern american dream in a sense but without the meritocracy myth that plagues the reality of success for those less fortunate. Wikipedia holds a distinct emphasis on the community of teamwork (writers, editors, administrators, etc) whose work allows for a project like this to exist.

Discussion Initiation for 10/9/14 

Carolyn Handa’s piece “The Multimediated Rhetoric of the Internet” delves into the process of textual analysis as applied to the rhetoric of modern websites. This piece shares several similarities to Jimmie Killingsworth’s piece from “Appeals in Modern Rhetoric,” which specifically explores the appeal of time in rhetorical situations.

The rhetorical concept of kairos played a big role in the argument of both of these pieces. The Killingsworth piece defines kairos as “finding the right argument for the right moment. Speaking in terms of kairos alone, Handa’s piece focuses primarily on the role it plays in the development and analysis of websites, which more often than not are attempting to appeal to a specific audience. The information given on a website must not only be relevant to its intended audience, but to the time itself as well. An interesting and current example of this concept is well demonstrated by the Rock the Vote campaign, whose website is not only accessible, but effectively targets its young intended audience by utilizing the hashtag “#turnoutforwhat” as well its release of a video starring known celebrities such as Lil Jon, Lena Dunham, and Fred Armeson in order to appeal to its youthful demographic. This works because as mentioned in the Handa piece, an effective website must be designed by somebody who not only knows how to make the website look aesthetically pleasing, but must also be skilled in rhetorical analysis with a contemporary twist.” Appealing to young people is an exigency shared by most websites, considering the high volume of Internet users included in the demographic.

The millennial generation’s Internet usage was thoroughly discussed within Handa’s piece, as she spend a large portion of the article discussing the intentions of college websites alone, because as Handa puts it “websites are the principle vehicle for higher education’s commercial success.” Handa then goes on to quote Keller who refers to a university’s audience (students, prospective students, staff, faculty, alumni) as “the five-headed monster” that being said, it is difficult to create web content that effectively targets all five of these demographics.

Perhaps even more than kairos, another rhetorical common factor shared by both the Killingsworth and the Handa piece is definitely their discussion of exigence and its application to modern texts intended for a vast array of audiences. Killingsworth describes exigence as “suggesting that topics emerge as urgent considerations at a particular historical time.” This does seem almost identical to the concept of kairos, which is to be expected, as Killingsworth later says that “the power of both concepts depends upon the author and the audience coming to an agreement that the moment has arrived for a certain topic to receive close attention.”

In application to the Handa piece, one can view Killingsworth’s definition of the relationship between kairos and exigence as incredibly relevant to that of modern web design.  However true it may be, the Handa piece did construct the Internet as little more than a place of consumers and willing, yet somewhat unaware vendors. After all, even if the goal of a website is not to get a consumer to purchase something, it is without a doubt still seeking viewership, which I believe still qualifies as consumption in its own right.  In her piece, Handa does attempts to establish the difference between a website’s intention of rhetorical delivery and one simply hoping to create the atmosphere for communication, but that line has a tendency to become blurred. Even communication driven websites such as Facebook use user targeted advertisements, which pop up on the sides of one’s Facebook page with the very intention to appeal to each specific user. An argument can be made that this is an unethical invasion of one’s Internet privacy, but at this day in age it is not out of the question to declare the term “Internet privacy” itself an oxymoron. The exigent driving force of the Internet may very well be consumerism, even while considering the vast array of knowledge and social accommodation provided by its modern usage, it may not exist without a certain level of financial achievement.

Understanding the rhetorical methods of the websites we encounter on a daily basis can benefit us not only academically, but also as people in our everyday lives. It is after all, naïve to assume that as an Internet user one is not also by definition a customer on the virtual market, regardless of whether or not any real online shopping is being done. Both the Killingsworth and the Handa piece can be applied effectively in order to interpret and analyze the Internet and its occasionally shady intentions towards consumers.

Short Assignment 3 Analysis:

For short assignment three I edited Mark Bauerlein’s post “Society is Dumbing Down” from The Chronicle of Higher Education. According to the content provided about the piece, Bauerlein is no stranger to the critique of higher education, in fact, he often writes about just that. His posts concerting the matter can be found archived at this link http://chronicle.com/blogAuthor/Brainstorm/3/33/Mark-Bauerlein/77/.

I was pleasantly surprised at my ease while editing this post. At my first read however, I did find it lacking in clarity and the statistics stated by Bauerlein felt forced, and almost awkwardly composed within the post. It also felt somewhat aggressive towards the modern man, quite literally saying that the majority of people have been dumbed down. But as discussed by the James Macdonald piece “Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation,” critical discourse is necessary in order for people to reevaluate and learn from their mistakes.

In my edit I paid a lot of attention to the general flow of the piece, that is, I felt it necessary to add certain lee ways into the otherwise spewing out of facts. For example, one of Bauerlein’s statistics said that “Around 60 percent of e-journal users view no more than three pages and a majority (up to 65 percent) never return.” I felt that was a very important fact, but in the interest of the assumedly less engaged reader, I decided to add some context in order to make this fact’s significance read better, therefore, my inclusion of this statistic was as follows: “Although the internet does allow for users to have a much higher access to different sources, typically this “access” is dwindled down to new forms of “reading,” wherein “users ‘power browse’ horizontally through titles, contents pages, and abstracts, going for quick wins.” The Internet generation has been given far more accessibly but it is almost negated by the tendency of millennial to seek instant gratification, rather than to patiently read on the Internet.

Rebekah Jones’ piece “Finding The Good Argument OR Why Bother with Logic,” talks about how in a typical argument meant for mass consumption, “what is often missing from these discussions is research, consideration of multiple vantage points, and, quite often, basic logic.” I believe that the Bauerlein blog post does most of this effectively, but that does not mean that there isn’t room for editing improvement. Another element that I considered while editing this piece was its categorization as a human-interest piece. Humans, without a doubt, are interested in themselves; therefore this post has an inherent applicability when it comes to this concept. However applicable it may be, Bauerlein’s post did not seem to be composed with the intent to fall within this genre. But as discussed in the Killingsworth piece “Scientific Discourse in the News Media, “the human interest approach goes against the grain of scientific research.” It is possible that by limiting his discussion of why “society is down” to include only the necessary facts, Bauerlein was attempting to preserve this staple of scientific discourse. But I, as an editor, found myself reconsidering this.

I found editing this piece interesting and very rewarding but on a side note- I was unable to affectively access Word’s Track Changes, therefore these were not included in my edit and for this I apologize sincerely.



Works Cited:

Bauerlein, Mark. “‘Society is Dumbing Down’.” Brainstorm. The Chronicle of Higher Education (13 Feb 2008): Weblog. http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/society-is-dumbing-down/5698.

Jones, Rebecca. Finding the Good Argument OR Why Bother With Logic?

Killingsworth, Jimmie, and Jaqueline S. Palmer. "Scientific Discourse in the News Media." Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America

Macdonalds, James. "Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation,."