Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/Cornell University/Online Communities (Fall 2013)/Aaron Paul

Goals for Improving the Article

When discussing potential Wikipedia articles to improve, we decided that Aaron Paul would be a sufficient choice because of his recent popularity due to the of the Breaking Bad TV series. One of our main focuses was to compare his filmography on Wikipedia with its official counterpart on IMDB and ensure it was up to date. We also wanted to improve the information about his future projects and provide insight into his post-Breaking Bad career. Thirdly, we wanted to add more references that would improve the quality of citation on the page. We were also aware that important personal information was missing from the page so we researched that as well. Lastly, we wanted to provoke discussion about the article and interact with Wikipedians to ensure that the progress of the article was a community effort.

Evolution of Article

When we first discovered the article, we noticed many headings had minimal information. For instance, the “Early Life” section was missing a critical fact about Aaron’s premature birth. We made this contribution, and it still exists on the page today. In the “Career” heading, we added two upcoming films that Paul will star in during the 2014 season—Need for Speed and Exodus. We also added information about Paul’s recent contribution to Zen Freeman’s house music song Dance Bitch, which was very popular on social media. We introduced readers to Paul’s multiple TV guest appearances, including a surprise spot on Saturday Night Live and an interview on ESPN. A post was also made about Britney Spears and her public love confession for Aaron after the finale of Breaking Bad.

The personal life section was especially lacking before our contributions. We included Aaron’s past relationships with Samaire Armstrong and Jessica Lowndes prior to his marriage to Lauren Parsekian. We commented on Aaron and Lauren’s charitable efforts with the Kind Campaign, an anti-bullying non-profit. Lastly, we wrote about Aaron’s appearance in his hometown state of Idaho, where the governor proclaimed October 1st as “Aaron Paul Sturtevant Day.”

We also researched IMDB to ensure that Aaron’s filmography on Wikipedia was comparable to his official IMDB profile. We found that he was currently in post-production for the movie Hellion, with a release date of 2014, and added that to the filmography. Finally, we noticed that an “Awards and Nominations” section was lacking from his page. One of our group members was in the process of making the section and woke up the next day to find it contributed by another Wikipedian! However, there were four awards and nominations that were missing and we added them to the new section.

We also improved the reference section of the page. We included 10+ references citing our submissions, which increased the reference section by one-third! There were also many errors in the reference section when we were editing the article, which are currently all fixed.

We believe that Aaron Paul’s Wikipedia article is on a good path to be promoted to a B-class article, especially considering the recent contributions of others in the Wikipedia community. Ever since we began editing the article, every heading in the piece exhibited systematic improvement, from the “Career” section to the “Personal Life” section. However, because Aaron Paul is a relatively new actor with information (especially that of his early, non-public life) not revealed yet on the Internet, there is still a lot of data not yet available about his non-Breaking Bad life. Thus, his article may not be up to B standards yet—not because there aren’t people who care about him, but because he is an up-and-coming actor whose full career has not been realized!

Interactions with Other Wikipedians

We were very surprised by the warmth of the Wikipedia community and their suggestions for improvement. Our group posted on about ten other recent contributors talk pages. Of these ten attempts, we received three responses. Two of the responses were from other Wikipedians who edited Aaron Paul’s page, and agreed to review our edits. They reviewed our contributions and gave us a thumbs up, but didn’t provide specifics of what we could improve. However, there was another member who commented specifically on our edits, arguing that our post about Paul’s SNL appearance was a bit long-winded and could be reduced. We followed his directions and had excellent success due to his help! We are confident that due to our positive feedback, some of these Wikipedians will endorse with our efforts and continue to make edits to the page.

Group Dynamics

Dan took the initiative to reach out to other Wikipedians who were active on other Breaking Bad pages to promote interest in helping this educational project. Dan also came up with the topic, and promoted communication with the other members of the group. In terms of content, Dan provided information in the article about Aaron Paul’s future projects. He also provided information about Aaron’s early life, in addition to detailing Aaron’s personal life. Dan, having edited Wikipedia before, was also comfortable with Wikicode, and taught the other members of the group how to use citation. Dan also researched the Wikimedia Commons for media about Aaron Paul; he ended up adding a picture of Aaron and his Breaking Bad co-star Bryan Cranston—it still is currently on the page!

Steve had the idea to incorporate a separate heading to list the awards and nominations Paul received based on his performance in Breaking Bad. When another Wikipedian created the heading, Steve made sure that the research was correct and added awards and nominations that the other user had missed. Steve also researched Paul’s dating history and added the previous relationships that he had been involved with prior to his marriage to Lauren Parsekian. Steve also made sure that Paul’s IMDB filmography matched up with the filmography on his Wikipedia page and added the film Hellion that was missing, which will be released in 2014.

Rehan improved the career section by adding Aaron Paul’s recent music endeavors and also covered Paul’s recent interview with ESPN. He also attended some group meetings and sparked discussion.

FingersInFood (talk) 16:45, 10 October 2013 (UTC)