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

Final Project Report

1. Your contribution to the article in terms of the changes you have made in the article. Add details about content, formatting, style, organization, multimedia, links, etc. Describe where you got the information for these changes and what sources you used. Do you think the article now ready to move up from a C-Class to a B-Class? Why or why not?

• Our contribution started with small edits to titles and formatting to give the article better organization. The title “Bread Making” was changed to “Preparation”. “Quick breads” which was originally a subsection in Types was instead put in as part of the list for uniformity. A new section called Properties was created in order to consolidate some of the sections of the article (Chemical Composition, Serving and consumption, shelf life, and crust) which did not have much information. In the See Also section, the Types of Bread was linked to a list of breads in order to provide a more comprehensive list of bread-related article links. Additionally, Religious significance was separated from Cultural significance.
• We then sought to contribute content to the bread article starting with information regarding gluten-free bread related to the “Gluten-free diets” Wikipedia article. This was added to the Types section.
• Nutritional information was added concerning bread which was important because there was no information on it. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans was the source used to explain how bread in general is a source for grains and many nutrients that are required for one’s healthy diet.
• We contributed to the Europe cultural section about the decline of the baguette culture in France. This segment included a relevant reference to a recent Today Show segment and a link to Wikipedia’s own baguette article.
• A blurb was added to the “Crust” section of the article. I linked the “sealed crustless sandwich” article on Wikipedia to this portion of the bread page.
• Content was added to the Anti-Bread movement segment about the decrease in bread sales in the United States.
• Content was added to the history segment, immediately following the sentence about the ease of automated bread makers, which discusses a new bread making tactic that involves minimal work. I included a source to back up my claim.
• Content was added to the Asia cultural section of the article to discuss the importance of Chapatis, an unleavened bread, that is considered Holy and essential to marriage in the Muslim culture.
• The religious significance section was expanded to include more about the symbolic importance of bread in the Eucharist tradition of the Christian religion. The source used was a paper analyzing the importance of bread in The Last Supper.
• A brief sentence about the European tradition of a Bread and Salt ceremony as a means of expressing hospitality was added. This information was gathered from a food news website article.

Regarding the criteria that identifies a B-class article, we believe it is very close to a B-class article. It reasonably covers the topic as we expanded upon some of the more modern changes to bread culture. The article has a defined structure and is well-written and copy-edited by several users. It provides supporting materials appropriately describing the preparation process and certain types of bread. It is also written in an understandable way. It fails to be suitably referenced, with inline citations where necessary. Despite the material we added, which we suitably referenced, a large part of the article, especially the preparation parts, do not contain references.

2. The evolution of the article in terms of what it was like when you started, what changes you made when, and how the current revision is different from the one when you just started. What contributed to the way that the article evolved?

When we started we were pretty lost. We just tried to make organizational changes and formatting changes so as to make the article more visually understandable. However, as we continued to look at the article we began to distinguish where it was weakest. We wanted to focus on the more current view of bread in different cultures and we provided content to evolve the article in that way. We made the article more relevant to modern culture surrounding bread. With a segment about a recent bread revolution in France, and the recent gluten-free phenomenon, our article has become more up to date.

3. The community experience you had in terms of interactions with others through article pages, talk pages, or other means. Describe specific interactions, who they were with, and whether they were beneficial or detrimental to your Wikipedia experience (anonymize names of those you had negative interactions with). Did you feel that you were in a community? Why or why not?

• We wrote on the “Talk” page for Bread to clarify our reasons for adding information. Also, the Bread page was part of the Wiki Food and Drink group that was trying to elevate the C-class articles about food and drink into the B-class range. An award winning (barn star) Wikipedian, Jeremy, reached out to us (on our talk page) because he has interest in the WikiProject food and drink. These interactions with Jeremy were beneficial in that Jeremy made the group feel welcomed and comfortable. Also, the interaction we had with him was immediate which made us feel important in that the edits we were going to make were actually going to be seen by others who care about this article too. It felt like a community because everyone that we communicated with had the same intentions as us. They were editing the same way we were editing, and going through the same motions, so I felt like we were all similar in that we wanted to edit for Wikipedia.
• We also received guidance from Candleabracadabra, making us aware of some of the norms editors have to keep in mind. For example, Candleabracadabra explained that our article had a very broad subject range so we had to be wary about including information about specific subjects like sandwiches or baguettes.
• Being unsure about where the decline of the baguette culture would fit in best, we reached out to a few relevant talk pages to get a feel. We proposed our ideas, including a reference, on the Bread talk page, the Baguette page, and the France page. After not hearing back, we chose to include it under the European influence section on the Bread page. It was hard to receive feedback from people we reached out to, but we were never attacked for being a newbie so that was pleasant.
• One user commented “And please try not to screw anything up, or leave half-completed efforts, like students have on other articles in the past”. The language was not very encouraging but understandable given the nature of students and assignments. However, we had made many changes at this point and this user had no objections so perhaps they thought we were doing a good job so far but were not good at expressing this gratitude.
• Overall, we felt like the bread article did not get much attention from other editors. It was difficult to get anyone to discuss with us about specific content additions/deletions we wished to implement. This may be because nobody objected to the changes we wished to make but that is an optimistic view. The people who contacted us seemed to be a part of the community whose purpose it is to welcome newcomers as opposed to users who were invested in the bread article.

4. A detailed breakdown of who did what in this project in terms of content, communication, and technical aspects.

• Kim – My contribution to the article in terms of the changes I have made to the “Bread” article include the content about Gluten-free breads and the addition of nutritional information concerning bread. I have linked a source within Wikipedia to the “Gluten-free diets” where there is information about gluten- free breads. This addition of the description of gluten-free bread was added to the bottom of the “Types” section. I also added the Nutritional information section into the page. I thought this was important because there is barely any mention as to why people eat bread, besides for the taste in their diet. As a nutrition major, I understand how important grains are in the diet and I know the sources as to what the bread can supply to peoples’ diets.
• Bethany - Preparation title change, French Baguette addition in the Europe section, addition to the crust segment, anti-bread movement addition about declining sales in the US, a new bread making tactic to history section, and inclusion of the cultural bread in the Asia section. Communication: Reached out on the France, Baguette, Bread, and Jeremy talk pages to get opinions on a particular topic. We nominated our article in order to bring attention to our piece. Technical: added references, learned how to link pages (both within Wikipedia and external sources), learned the markup to better post on users’ pages.
• Andy – Explained wiki mark-up language to group members, did the formatting changes including section additions and movings, added the link to the list of bread, removed impertinent information, added content to Abrahamic religions bread significance, added bread and salt ceremony information, provided some laughs (What do you call a worm that ate Mozart? A DECOMPOSER HAHAHA!) Atl48 (talk) 06:36, 10 October 2013 (UTC)