Assignment 11: Joyce Lee (jl579)

For a page on something as seemingly as trivial as a video game installment in a lesser-known franchise (Persona 4), Wikipedia still has an article describing, in detail, its gameplay, its synopsis, its development, and even its reception. In addition, the gameplay and synopsis sections link to individual pages of their own. It's clearly a lot of information to put together, and the references in it of itself are very varied - ranging from game development blogs to foreign magazine scans, indicating that the page was probably populated by more than one person.

The History section reveals that there are a handful of main contributors (at least, recently), but there is also the occasional anonymous contributor named only by IP address. Most collaboration takes place in the Plot section, and edits usually take the form of adding more detail to an entry someone already wrote. This is one of the most highly-specific sections of the article as a result.

An interesting note, however, is the editing and re-editing of spoilers. On the History page, there is evidence that someone tried to hide spoilers:
# (cur) (prev) 15:25, 21 April 2009 Masem (talk | contribs) (20,258 bytes) (Reverted good faith edits by 12.104.244.6; WP does not hide spoilers.. (TW)) (undo)
# (cur) (prev) 13:07, 21 April 2009 12.104.244.6 (talk) (20,162 bytes) (→Characters: Removed spoiler.) (undo)
Spoilers, which are plot points and twists that may ruin a story for those that have not reached that point in the game, are usually hidden in online communities. Wikipedia, however, does not hide them. The member 'Masem' is an example of members editing each other's edits to comply with a site-wide standard.

There is also the sense of discussion within edits. As seen above, reasons for the edit can also be put in the log. In these comments, the article shows evidence that the collaborating members have been debating over whether the wording of the title of one section (Legacy vs. Comic) is correct or incorrect, and a few series of edits shows the change back and forth, before finally deciding on the latter. This is a stronger example of a back-and-forth case of collaboration.

Having no experience with editing Wikipedia myself, I cannot say for sure what would best facilitate the collaboration process. From what I saw, however, I think that a chat installed on the page during the editing process may help. In other words, whenever people are editing a page, they are automatically entered in a chat with other people who may also be editing either parts of that same page or other pages (it provides a place to ask for help on how to code for wikipedia, perhaps.) This creates a smaller in-group of Current Editors as well, to enhance the collaboration process, rather than having to wait for one person to finish, write their comment, and then waiting to reply.