Discourse Community Proposal

As a child I spent most of my time playing outside and watching movies, but the one thing that I loved to do more was to play video games. As I started to grow more mature I started playing WoW (World of Warcraft) avidly during the summer as well as one weekends during winter when there was literally nothing else to do. Needless to say I played this game a lot and learned all of the lingo and material that was related to the game.
To give a little background of the game would be to tell you that you spend most of your time doing quests to gain experience and level up so that you can progress further into the game. Many talents and equipment are also required if you don't want to die easily. Among all of this is the fact that the game is online so that you can quest and interact with many other people from all around the world. These people can become your friends, enemies, or just simply passers by. My discourse community of focus comes from the idea of friends within this mass multiplayer online role playing game or MMORPG of short.
There are options within the game to create what the game calls a "guild". Guilds in this game are groups of individuals that share common interests in the game and help each other out as levels progress and material in the game becomes harder. There are many different goals of what each individual guild wants to accomplish which makes this perfect for my discourse community. In my ethnography a intend to focus on Swales as well as other authors from the book to help disclose exactly why guilds are a good example of a discourse community.Swales proposes six characteristics that are essential ingredients that are required for a group of individuals to be considered a discourse community. These guilds follow these criteria and will be introduced accordingly within the ethnography. (p.471-473)
Of course this is just one topic that will be covered later in more detail, but it was definitely the determining piece of writing that gave me the idea World of Warcraft guild proposal.
In summary of this proposal the discourse community information will come from some actual websites of guilds and hopefully interviews from some of the leaders of the guilds so that the can provide insight of what they actually do, however i am still awaiting a reply. If the interview idea does not succeed the essay will be more general in terms of what these guilds do because of the lack of primary source material.

Post 9: From Pencils to Pixels

Reading From Pencils to Pixels gave me the same opinion of what new technology is going to do to the shape and nature of writing. Baron states that, "[He] will not join in the hyperbole of predictions about what the computer will or will not do for literacy, though [he] will be the first to praise computers (P.423)". I believe this pretty much sums up his feelings toward new technology. We shouldn't fight about what new literacy's will come from technology, but instead just except that technology is a great thing that is important to just about everyone. It is constantly changing as time goes on. "The computer is simply the latest step in a long line of writing technologies (Baron, p.425)". Quotes like this one by Baron pop up all throughout the essay. I also believe that it makes extreme sense that we cannot picture what will happen next when it comes to a new form of technology for literacy, but when we can do is understand that as long as it keeps growing communication and literacy will also keeps growing.

Post 8: The future of literacy

When reading the article for today I realized many things about my past schooling and the new use of visual and technical literacy. When i was in school technology was advancing on a fast paced level. However, in my hometown these technical values were hardly considered. Mainly because of funding and where I had grown up. I remember in 8th grade we would go to the computer lab and get on dogpile to look up facts about subject that we would then write upon. This was before websites like this were banned or considered cheating by my teachers. Even in high school there was only ONE computer lab and one class that actually used the computers and that class was only for basically Typing 101. Not until my senior year did we finally get funding for more exciting technology for classes such as the visual arts. Having been interested in computers and video games since I was about 6 years old I took advantage of this. Every other class basically used projectors from the dark ages or chalkboards. I remember we would always get new textbooks and that was it. Even if we did have money to provide more visual and technical literacy equipment I still don't think it would have been valued. I won't get into that however because that is a sociology matter. In all honesty if a had not taken an interest in computers as a child I wouldn't know what a motherboard, hard drive, or the like even meant. In my opinion this would have set me back on the college level of technical and visual literacy.

Post 7: Sponsers of Literacy

I believe that Brandt and her claim that sponsors always benefit from sponsorship is supported mainly on the idea of gaining acknowledgement through whatever it is that they sponsor. Since literacy comes from learning or reading anything that was not otherwise previously known in a certain social, economic or cultural setting it makes sense that sponsors can gain from literacy and sponsorship. For example when I was a boy, only about 7 years old I played baseball. As a small town we never really got BIG sponsors but we did receive some support through organizations and businesses  through sponsorships. These businesses were not really known to me at age 7 but as i read their logos and constantly saw their signs on the baseball fence the name of the organization and what they do caused me to become literate to what they did. So going back to what Brandt suggests about sponsors always gaining something can be proven by my simple example. Even though i didn't contribute personally to their business I am more knowledgeable of what they do and that their business actually exists. In this way the business has gained a potential consumer as well as someone that could possibly spread the word of their existence to  someone else. I think this is the biggest point a recieved from reading Brandt's piece.

Reflection Essay

I guess I should start off my reflection essay by discussing a little about why i chose the topic before i get into the particular constructs and other materials I recently learned in class. When I chose to do my topic i looked at major psychology disorders in the start and stub class wikipedia topics. This came in major handy when finding a topic because of the lack of material covered within these topics. I decided to go with Sleep Terror Disorder and based my data off of the DSM-IV TR which is one of the most informative pieces of literature when looking up psychological disorders.  During my wikipedia edit I found it hard to find verifiable source material for my topic that I covered that was not already in the DSM. Most importantly towards the end of my edit I realized this shortened my editing power significantly.

As I was editing i noticed many important topics discussed in class started to appear. A good example was the "Shitty First Drafts" article by Anne Lamott. As she clearly put when a first draft is done it becomes tedious and tiring when trying to write the second and final drafts. I experienced this after looking at many sources and writing down as much as I could in the first draft just to have so much information to meet the word quota. However, in my second draft, as well as final, I found that all this information was so overwhelming that it made me want to just drop the whole subject completely. After so many revisions it came down to realizing that all the information from my sources where meaningless. Had I not done this i would have not came to this conclusion and perhaps put information on the wiki edit that would have been disinformation.

Another instance of a topic was the idea of Donald M. Murrays' "All Writing is Autobiography" and the wikipedia guidelines of what is proper to edit.  Wikipedia makes it clear that they do not want any false, non-credible, or opinionated material on the site. They do this with internal editors within the company. Since this is true it is hard to believe Murray and his claim that everyone should be speaking from their own personal views. This holds true for me considering all of my editing information about Sleep Terror Disorder came straight from the DSM only in my own words.

When editing my Wikipedia page I was concerned about a certain part of the material that I was going to put in and it was mainly because of the content that was in it. It had to deal with differential diagnosis. Basically, all that means is that there are other disorders that are closely related through symptoms  but are not Sleep Terror Disorders. The reason I did not put this information in my edit was because the information was more about the other disorders rather than my topic and I thought Wikipedia would frown upon information that did not relate to Sleep Terror Disorder. 

I should also mention that I found the information we learned in class over rhetor and audience was useful when writing my edit. I felt that the original edit was a little disorganized and chunks of information were either missing or misplaced. As a “rhetor” I realized there could be some confusion within the audience and took this relationship into account and spent most of my time not finding new information to throw in but instead make it better for the audience to understand. I think this could possibly be another reason why my word count was so low. In my experience I look on Wikipedia sometimes for help on definitions for psychology. When I look these definitions up a am looking for straightforward details that slowly gravitate upward in difficulty of understanding. However, eventually I would just become bombarded with more and more words that I wouldn’t understand. Because of this fact I kept out some information and word uses that the DSM uses to avoid confusion to those that are not psychology majors or experts.

In summary, I am disappointed that my word count was low and I do accept that it was low, but in my experience making edits of the page if I would have added more the information would have either been repeated or would have been loosely related to the topic.

Post 6

Note: My computer decided to not inform me that it was updating when writing my post and due to lack of time i am giving the short version.

Exigence is the issue being addressed by a Rhetor. Example: Everyone should go green. Multiple questions should be asked from; Why does this need to be addressed to what needs to be done?

Rhetor is the writer or speaker of the address subject or situation. Example: Activist telling us to go green. Needs to be careful of the way the address the issue based on the situation they are in.

Audience is the mass of listeners gathered in front of the Rhetor. Example: People listening to a Activist at a convention. The audience can vary and the Rhetor must be aware of this. The audience can never truly be part of one whole big group like the definition actually suggests that they are.

Constraints are the factors than may inhibit the desired results of the subject or situation being addressed. Example: It may be a go idea to go green, however, if income is low and resources are not fit to truly "Go Green" then no matter how much the Rhetor stresses the importance nothing will change. Constraint can occur in different forms and levels of writing and it is important to think of possible constraints before writing to prevent sudden stops and end points in your subject and situation.

Post 5: "Shitty First Drafts"

I believe Lamotts central argument is the presumption that people have that experienced writers can just write an amazing story within one sitting. She tells us that it is important to understand that writers have their own process for writing and that it all starts with a very important first draft. She tells us that it can be a painful process but if you can just let yourself go and write about whatever you can that pertains to what you are covering without any restrictions. This way you can open doors into new avenues of writing.
 When thinking about how this pertains to the wikipedia edit it kind of makes sense. Looking at all the start and stub class of works that are not quite done yet show us just how "shitty" a first draft can be. Over the weekend i have started to edit in my sandbox and as of right now my first draft is so long and fact filled i need to trim it down in my second and third drafts. I do believe what she is saying is useful motivation to write your first draft so i can see that it does help with what we are learning on this wikipedia edit.

Post 4: All Writing is Autobiography

What I get from Murrays' article is that he would rather us focus on the constructs that surround us and avoid the ones that do not cause us any interest. He stresses this most when he starts talking about academic writing. a good paragraph that I think stresses how he feels about academic writing and writing in itself is comes on page 64. " I do not think we should move away from personal and reflective narrative in composition courses, but closer to it...", he goes on to state that, "I do not think that we should make our students write on many different subjects, but that they write and rewrite in pursuit of those few subjects which obsess them." What i take from this is that he wants writing to be seen more from ourselves rather than somebody else that either forces the writing on us or the person of thing that we are writing about. This why our writing is our own and in a way our own formed autobiography as the title and subjects that Murray brings up suggest.

Post 2: Williams on Error

When reading Joseph Williams' article about error i noticed one main thing that the article does. I noticed that it challenges why do writers and other experts that make the "rules" for grammar are so picky when even they themselves don't notice their errors in their own writing. He uses two examples where this occurs and also questions why no one else, along with the experts (example: E.B. White), don't catch or notice these errors. I also get a sense that he is puzzled as to why students can make these mistakes in their own papers but be told they have made an error and these experts are not questioned in the same way. As a undergrad i might now have understood the message of the article exactly but i feel like he targeted an older audience of writers and teachers that my have been previously blinded by these "rules" and "errors". I also think that Williams is defiantly targeting or indicting writing in general. More specifically he is targeting the picky and tedious rules that so called experts make that teachers then follow. The question being that, "If these experts make the mistake and then teachers ignore the mistake and a student then learns the mistake the teacher misses why are these rules even followed if they are actually learned?" This, Williams states, is why he is so puzzled.

Post 1: A Little About Myself and Writing

I am going to college for Psychology and having been in many psych. classes has cause me to write a lot of article summaries and/or research proposals over the past 3 years. These of course being in APA format instead of the common English MLA. Learning APA has become my main focus of writing and almost always follow the APA rules when it comes to writing. I am interested to see and a little worried about writing in this class because I have not used the MLA style since my first year in college. All in all I enjoy writing to a certain extent, however I have not written many long essays because research proposals and article reviews are much shorter. The research part shouldn't be a problem because that is mostly all I do. Hopefully everything will turn out in the end. That's just a little about my writing history.