summary of my blog work this semester!

I have completed my blog work for this semester! Overall, I really enjoyed this project. It was much more interesting than writing typical papers, or doing traditional group projects or presentations. I think this project helped me develop skills that I may use more in the real world and definitely helped me have a better grasp on blogs and wikis and how to manuever them.

Here is a list of my blog work so that Professor Brown will be able to easily access it all.

• First Introductory Post
• Second Introductory Post
• Posts about Teammates Blogs (2)
• Posts about Required Blogs (4)
• Posts about Class Material (6)
• Wikipedia Articles (Grey's Anatomy, Vera Bradley, California Tortilla, Charter School of Wilmington) (3 edits each, plus 1 summary post)
• Comments: Comment #1, Comment #2, Comment #3, Comment #4, Comment #5, Comment #6

evolution of the california tortilla wikipedia article

Here is some more information of the evolution of the California Tortilla article and my edits...

Current update on my edits: (click on the links to see my original blog post about each edit)

Edit #1- On March 31st, I made my first edit to this article. When I began, this article was labeled a stub, because it has very little content. I didn't even know where to begin because there was nothing to actually edit. What I decided to do was add some headings about aspects of the restaurant. I added 4 sections: Location, Atmosphere, Menu and Promotions. I also provided some information about each of these headings. This was probably the most significant edit I made during the wikipedia project because I basically increased the content in the article by about 500%. All of the sections still remain in the wikipedia article several months later. The content in each section has been elaborated on, and one additional section has been added, but this basic format that I created has remained.

Edit #2- After making such a large edit, I wasn't sure what to do for my next edit. Finally, I decided to just add some more promotions to the list. I added two seasonal promotions and wrote a few sentences about each one. Unfortunately, since then, someone has deleted all of the seasonal promotions from this section and listed only the yearlong promotions. I guess I agree that the long list of promotions was unnecessary, but I felt like the promotions helped to explain the overall humor and feel of the restaurant.

Edit #3- Finally, I made my 3rd edit to the article on May 9th. For this edit, I simply added a reference link to "The Burrito Blog", a reference I found through a quick google search. It has been less than a week since this edit, and so far it has stayed!


Summary of the Evolution of the Article:
This article is rarely edited. Since my first edit, several months ago, only 3 different users have edited the article. In fact, until just last week, only two edits had been made in addition to mine. Clearly, this article is not a high priority to many people. Last week however, on May 11th, an unregistered user made 8 edits within a matter of minutes, and then minutes later, a registered user with the name "Caltort" made another 5 edits in a few more minutes. I am speculating two things. 1- that this unregistered user is actually "Caltort", and 2- that "Caltort" is someone who works for California Tortilla. Each of the 13 edits is very well done, gramatically correct, and logical. I think its an interesting thought to think about someone who works for the company can edit the article. Except for this recent edit frenzy, there was little activity. This recent string of edits has greatly improved the article and I believe that the article is on its way to having its "stub" status removed!

evolution of the vera bradley wikipedia article

Here is some more information of the evolution of the Vera Bradley article and my edits...

Current update on my edits: (click on the links to see my original blog post about each edit)

Edit #1- On March 16, I made my first edit on the article. At this point, the article had very little content and was actually considered a "stub." The article was also tagged for reading like an advertisement. Since I had already been editing wikipedia articles for a month at that point, I felt pretty comfortable and made a substantial edit on this day. I added a lot of information about different colors and created a new subsection of a list and entitled it "Retired designs." Then, I rearranged some of the old bulleted items, added a few more groups of retired patterns, and organized the entire list. The majority of this content has remained, though I have slightly edited it further in my subsequent edits. This first edit seemed to spark a little participation in the wikipedia community and after this, a few other people made some other edits and additions, but didn't delete my edit.

Edit #2- Next, on March 31st, I fixed a sentence that was incomplete and made little sense. I reworded the sentence, clarified and added some more information to the topic. The sentence was about retired designs. This sentence had been added after I created the entire section about the retired designs (see above, edit #1). A few weeks after I fixed the sentence, someone changed my edit slightly, but the majority of the intent of my edit is still there.

Edit #3- On April 26, I made my third edit. I actually made two edits on the same day (though I know they just count for one), because the one edit was just so simple and easy. That edit was to change various verbage of "colors", "patterns", and "designs" to be consistent, and all use "colors", as is used on the official website. This was very simple so I decided to make a more significant edit. To add more content, I added an additional section about the different collections that Vera Bradley offers. I listed seven different collections, each separated with a heading, and then wrote a few sentences to describe each collection. Except for the correction of a spelling mistake I made, this content edit has remained on the article. I am hoping that other people will expand more on this edit and add more information.

Edit #3.5- As I explained in a blog post earlier tonight, I realized today that I was actually not logged in for my first Vera Bradley edit so I decided tonight to make an additional edit to make up for that one that I technically don't get credit for. For this edit (#3.5), I added some information about retired styles. I added a sentence about this and then listed the four styles that will retired soon. Seeing as I only made this edit a few hours ago, it is still there.

Summary of the Evolution of the article: Though Vera Bradley bags are very popular, apparently the company's wikipedia article is not. Hardly any edits were made over the semester and this really surprised me. When I first started with the article, there weren't really any edits of current content to be made because there was little content in existence. I had to add some content and organization in order to really expand the article. Since I added these different headings and categories, more people have edited and filled in the different sections with more information. The article has changed slightly over the semester, but I would argue that I am responsible for the majority of the changes. It was very interesting to me how this played out, and it definitely served as a good contrast to my experience with some other wikipedia articles which were much more high traffic.

evolution of the grey's anatomy wikipedia article

Here is some more information of the evolution of the Grey's Anatomy wikipedia article and my edits...

Current update on my edits: (click on the links to see my original blog post about each edit)

Edit #1- On March 4th, I made my first edit, in which I added a sentence in regards to the new spin off show featuring Addison, about rumors that the rest of the cast was unhappy with this. This was quickly deleted, I guess because it was just a rumor. Though I understand that the wikipedia article needs to be factual, I had read this "rumor" on msnbc.com, so I assumed that was a legitimate source, but I didn't know how to reference the source so I didn't. Maybe if I had cited the source, it wouldn't have been deleted, but oh well.

Edit #2- After my first largely failed edit, I was nervous to edit the Grey's Anatomy article again, so this time my second edit was much smaller. For this edit (on March 11th), I added a link to the wikipedia article for the TV show "The Office." At the time, "The Office" was referenced in the Trivia section of the article, where the was a comment about how Grey's Anatomy was referenced in an episode of "The Office." Since this edit, the trivia section itself has been deleted, but this comment has been moved to a section entitled "In Popular Culture." In this new section, "The Office" still has a link to its wikipedia article, so I will consider this edit a success.

Edit #3- My third and final edit of the Grey's Anatomy wikipedia article was much bolder. I made this edit on April 15th, after many attempts to find something to edit, when I decided to just take a chance and make this edit. On the discussion board, there had been a lot of talk about the extensive list in the "Catchphrase" section of the wikipedia article. There was a ridiculously long list of every usage of the "Mc Labeling" from the show. Many people argued that this list should be shortened, and some even wanted an entirely different article for this "Mc Labeling" trend. On April 15th, someone finally deleted the entire list. Though I agreed that the list was too much, I still thought that the concept should remain, as it is an important aspect of the show. Therefore, in an attempt to compromise, I composed a few sentences that summarized this trend and included a few examples. This edit lasted all the way until 8 pm this evening. At 8 pm, someone changed a few of my examples, but still the majority of my edit was still there. Then, a few minutes later on this evening, someone deleted my summary (and the new examples), and replaced it with the old list! Since it has only been a few hours since this happened, and everyone else allowed the list to stay deleted for an entire month, I am predicting that the list will again be deleted in the near future. I may even delete it myself tomorrow if no one else does.


Summary of the Evolution of the article: This wikipedia article is HIGHLY trafficked. People are constantly editing it, removing prior edits, and arguing over what the page should look like. A few big important changes have occured over the semester. When I began this project, there was a tag on the "Trivia" section stating that this section needed to be edited or deleted. Since then, different components of this section have been redistributed to other appropriate sections or deleted, and therefore the Trivia section is gone. Also, clearly as this semester has progressed, more episodes have aired and this has caused basic facts such as number of episodes to change and be updated quite frequently. Information about the 4th Season of the show has also been added, among many other things. In conclusion, while definitely the most difficult article of mine to edit, I learned a LOT about the wikipedia community by editing this article. With a massive amount of people editing, there is little room for error and unless your edit is perfect, it will be gone in a matter of minutes! I am definitely going to continue to watch this article and possibly even continue to edit it.

evolution of the charter school of wilmington wikipedia article

Here is some more information of the evolution of the Charter Wikipedia article and my edits...

Current update on my edits: (click on the links to see my original blog post about each edit)

Edit #1- On February 25th, I added the "Ski Club" to the list of clubs and activities available at Charter. This was my very first edit and though simple, this edit has lasted!

Edit #2- On April 3rd, I completed my second edit. This edit reworded and expanded upon information about the dress code at Charter. This edit also has remained in place.

Edit #3- Finally on May 2nd, I made my final edit for this article. There was a sentence in the faculty section about a particular teacher who writes for a television show. The sentence had a spelling error and was poorly worded, so I reworded the sentence and corrected the spelling. I also added a link to the wikipedia article for the television show that was referenced in the sentence. Though my corrected spelling, word choice and link have remained in the edit, about three hours after I made my edit, someone else edited that same sentence and clarified even further. Though someone changed my edit, I still feel like I contributed and helped this portion of the article get one step closer to the best sentence possible.


Summary of the Evolution of the article: Overall, the Charter wikipedia article has evolved greatly over the course of the semester. Considering it is just a local high school, the article sees a substantial amount of traffic and is edited several times a week. It is not uncommon for the article to be edited upwards of five to ten times on a few given days each week. Over the semester, a large amount of content has been added to the article. In particular, more information on the senior research project, faculty, clubs and activities, and DSTP results have been added. The article has definitely grown tremendously and seems to include all necessary, obvious information and just becomes more complete daily. Overall, I hope that I contributed slightly to this article. It definitely surprised me how much attention was paid to it, but I'm glad I was able to contribute something at all.

vera bradley wiki edit #3.5

So while wandering around wikipedia, I discovered that by clicking on my username, I could see all of the edits that I had made in wikipedia. After doing so, I realized that my records of my edits did not match up with this list. This concerned me and after a bit of investigation, I figured out that I must not have logged in when I made my first edit on the Vera Bradley wikipedia article.

Because of this, I figured I do one more edit just in case :)

For this edit (which I will affectionately refer to as edit #3.5), I added two sentences about retired styles of bags. Though the article already had content about retiring colors, I decided to add information about four styles of bags that will be retiring soon. The sentences I added read as follows:

Just as Vera Bradley frequently retires fabric colors, different handbag styles are also retired occasionally. Soon, the following four styles will be retired and no longer available: Villager, Molly, Travel Organizer and Travel Pouch.

You can see my edits here.

how popular is wikipedia?

Recently, I read a Global Neighbourhoods blog post made by Shel (the author of Naked Conversations) that talked about wikipedia. The post was entitled "Wikipedia. Just how popular is it?"

The post talks very briefly about the validity of wikipedia articles. First, it discusses a recent report by Steve Rubel that claims that roughly one third of online Americans have used wikipedia. Though the exact percentage may be debated, the point is that a LOT of people are using wikipedia. Since millions of people are relying on wikipedia for accurate information, the question of how accurate it actually is seems to be very important. Shel discusses how he used wikipedia when writing Naked Conversations and all of the information he found turned out to be 100% accurate. Shel brings up the concept of "Wisdom of Crowds" which is a book written about the theory that with a lot of people contributing, things will be accurate. The idea is that with countless people contributing to wikipedia, the end result should be accurate.

Several people commented on this blog post, throwing in their own opinions about the accuracy of wikipedia. Personally, I think wikipedia can be flawed at times. After doing this wikipedia project in class, I've realized that if I can just edit a wikipedia article about something and totally make it up, then I don't think it can be 100% accurate. However, I think that the accuracy largely depends on the topic. Popular, well known topics that many people are interested in and knowledgeable about seem to be more accurate because there are more people editing, whereas less common topics seem to more hit or miss.

Though wikipedia isn't perfect, I still use it regularly and have enjoyed learning more about it this semester!

i want to make some money

There have been some new additions to my blog so I figured I should explain what they are all about. The first addition consisted of some google ads. A few weeks ago, I signed up for an account with Google's Adwords. Basically what this program does is place ads on your webpage, and then you get paid for each time someone clicks on the links. My account has been up and active for about a week now and so far I have made 12 cents. So this is not a ton of money, but hey, 12 cents in one week for doing nothing is better than nothing.

Today, I joined Amazon's Associates program. This program is similar to Adwords, but instead of just putting links on my site, this program allows me to place specific advertisements on the side of my blog. Currently, I have ads for two CD's- Bethany Dillon's "Waking Up" and Matt Wertz's "Everything in Between". These are two of my favorite CDs so I figured I would recommend them to my blog readers. Also, if anyone clicks on those links and then purchases those CD's, I will receive some money for that too.

Overall, setting up both of these programs was very simple. It only took a few minutes and I just followed the steps that the websites explained to me. So if you are bored, you should set it up on your blog and maybe make a few extra dollars (or cents...).

Here are some links to get started...
Google Adwords
Amazon Associates


stiuqxela??

html class

Yesterday in class, we talked about the basics of html and how to make a website. After reviewing a few slides with some basic html codes, Allison came up to be the lucky "volunteer" to make a practice webpage. Here's a little review of what we covered.

First, you need to put in the html and header tags. The most important thing to remember is to always close any tag you put in. Alex suggested (and this is what I usually do too whenever I use html) to put in the second part of the tag immediately so you won't forget. After the header, we put the title tag in to name the page.

After completing the header section of the page, we made the body by placing the body tag. We added a header (size 3) and then added some text to the body.

Finally, we added a few links. We added a link to another webpage and then a link to email. To make the email link you simply ad "mailto:" before the email address and place this where the web address typically goes in the html code.

In addition to these codes that we practiced in class, there are many other tags that are very easy to learn. To make text bold, italicized or underlined, you simply add < b >, < i > or < u > respectively (without the spaces which are added so they will show up here) and then end the tag by using the same tag with a backlash before the letter.

After doing a quick google search, I found a few sites that listed pretty much any html code that you might want to know. Here they are:

HTML Code Tutorial
Web Source

And here is the link to the wikipedia article on HTML which provides a lot of informaton:

Wikipedia...

Additionally, here is a link to the slides that Alex provided for us on html.


Hopefully this was a good recap of HTML for everyone, some stiuqxela anyone?

california tortilla edit #3

I just made my 3rd wikipedia edit on the california tortilla wikipedia article... which means, it was my last wikipedia edit! Well, at least for the class. Since I started doing these edits for this class project, I have actually edited a few other articles (for fun i guess) and will probably continue to do so sporadically after this class is over.

I decided to add a link to the references list. After performing a search in google, I found "The Burrito Blog." This blog is all about various burrito restaurants. Since they seemed like a pretty good source, I thought I would add this as a reference. I added the link to the California Tortilla section (http://www.burritoblog.com/multi_state_chains/california_tortilla/) and then entitled it "The Burrito Blog." No one else had added much to the wiki article so I figured this would be a good addition.

You can see my final cal tort edit here.

charter wiki edit #3

Today I made my final edit on The Charter School of Wilmington wikipedia article. Before making my edit, I viewed the history of edits for the article to see what changes had been made recently. I noticed that recently someone added a sentence about the faculty about Charter. After seeing the change on the History list, I viewed the article and read the sentence in its entirety. Immediately I saw that "television" was spelled incorrectly and after reading it a few times, I decided that the entire sentence sounded somewhat awkward. Before my edit, this is how the sentence read:

One member even helps to write some of the episodes of the hit telivision show Numb3rs.

So to edit the sentence, first I changed the spelling of "telivision" to "television." This was obviously needed but I figured while I was there I might as well fix the rest of the sentence. Next, I clarified that the subject of the sentence was one member of the faculty. Finally, I added a link to the wikipedia article for Numb3rs, the show referenced in this sentence. I personally had never heard of the show so I figured many other people hadn't as well. After my changes, this is how the sentence reads:

One member of the faculty even helps to write some of the episodes of the hit television show Numb3rs.

Even though I only changed one sentence, I think these edits greatly improve both the grammatical and content quality! My edit can be seen here.


has anyone ever heard of stiuqxela?

SEO by the SEA

Yesterday in class Bill Slawski from SEO by the SEA spoke to our class. The original guest speaker cancelled, and luckily, Mr. Slawski was nice enough to come to our class and speak to us with very little notice.

Mr. Slawski spoke to us about many different things that his company, SEO by the Sea, does on a regular basis. According to their website, SEO by the Sea "offers internet marketing services, helping businesses and organizations be found in local and web search engine results, and improving usability and conversion rates for web sites." More simply put, "We make it easier for people to find your website, and to use it."

Mr. Slawksi detailed for us the process that his company goes through when working with different clients. The process begins by identifying the client's goals and needs for their website. SEO by the Sea can then go about trying to reach those goals by improving the client's website.

He also talked to us about Google's "PageRank" system, which we have talked about in class. Google's PageRank feature rates websites based on importance as opposed to just relevance. I think he said that there are less than ten webpages that are ranked as 10 (the best), where as there are about 2,000 that are ranked as a 9. I had never heard this before and this was surprising to me.

After hearing his presentation, I wondered how many other similar SEO (search enginge optimization) companies exist. From a quick Google search, I found these companies (SEO by the Sea's competitors):

Patrick Gavin, Inc.
Inteliture
E-Traffic Jams

These are just a few Search Engine Optimization companies. It was somewhat hard to find them because most of the links that are displayed do not display the companies name but more actual information about the company (such as the phrase "search engine optimization), but I assume they know best that this is a good way to set up their website.

Overall, the presentation was very informative and tied into several different concepts we talked about in class (even though not many people were willing to raise their hands and confess that.) Interestingly enough, today when I went to the website (www.seobythesea.com), Mr. Slawski had made a post in his blog about his presentation to our class. As of today (May 1st, 2007), there were already thirteen comments on the post. I think this is a great example of what we have been learning in class about blogs and social marketing.