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Motivating a Reader

Motivating a Reader. ENG 140: Writing about: Wikipedia Professor Fleming. Good claims are:. Subject to Evidence (debatable) A claim should, at least in principle, have the potential to be disconfirmed, or proved wrong. Contestable

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Motivating a Reader

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  1. Motivating a Reader ENG 140: Writing about: Wikipedia Professor Fleming

  2. Good claims are: • Subject to Evidence (debatable) • A claim should, at least in principle, have the potential to be disconfirmed, or proved wrong. • Contestable • A good claim could be stated as its opposite and still make sense. A reasonable, intelligent person could hold a different opinion. • Conceptually Rich • A claim should introduce and build on concepts that the reader cares about

  3. Adrian Riskin, “Elementary Mathematics on Wikipedia” What’s his claim? And who cares about it?

  4. Riskin’s Claim [articles on basic math concepts] are a hot mess of error, arrogance, obscurity, and nonsense, and they’re the public face of mathematics on Wikipedia … The fact is that those articles are written by specialists for specialists. They have no place in a general-purpose encyclopedia. • Contestable? • Conceptually rich? • Subject to evidence?

  5. Riskin’s Claim [articles on basic math concepts] are a hot mess of error, arrogance, obscurity, and nonsense, and they’re the public face of mathematics on Wikipedia … The fact is that those articles are written by specialists for specialists. They have no place in a general-purpose encyclopedia. • Contestable: “Wikipedia’s entries on basic math are very useful” is a reasonable statement. • Conceptually rich: math; general readers vs. specialists; public perception of Wikipedia. • Subject to evidence: Quotations from the Wikipedia pages support the argument.

  6. Framing a problem for a reader To motivate a reader to listen to your argument, you must answer these questions: • What is the typical or accepted viewpoint, or the situation/belief that needs to be changed? (We call this the status quo or common ground) • What is/are the cost/s if nothing changes? • What fact or idea alerts the reader of the cost? (We call this the destabilizing moment) • What is the solution? (This is your claim)

  7. Riskin’s problem frame I often recommend that my students look up definitions in Wikipedia and I know that many of my colleagues do as well. In fact I look up definitions on Wikipedia myself. If you want to know, e.g., what a Halin graphis, you could do much worse than the linked article. …But you know, I’ve also edited Wikipedia, although very rarely mathematics articles, and found the experience to be toxic and soul-killing and the (non-mathematical) articles mostly worse than useless, even the ones I’ve written myself … [articles on basic math concepts] are a hot mess of error, arrogance, obscurity, and nonsense, and they’re the public face of mathematics on Wikipedia … The fact is that those articles are written by specialists for specialists. They have no place in a general-purpose encyclopedia.

  8. Riskin’s problem frame I often recommend that my students look up definitions in Wikipedia and I know that many of my colleagues do as well. In fact I look up definitions on Wikipedia myself. If you want to know, e.g., what a Halin graphis, you could do much worse than the linked article.…Butyou know, I’ve also edited Wikipedia, although very rarely mathematics articles, and found the experience to be toxic and soul-killing and the (non-mathematical) articles mostly worse than useless, even the ones I’ve written myself… [articles on basic math concepts] are a hot mess of error, arrogance, obscurity, and nonsense, and they’re the public face of mathematics on Wikipedia … The fact is that those articles are written by specialists for specialists. They have no place in a general-purpose encyclopedia.

  9. First Paper: Wikipedia Article Evaluation Evaluate a Wikipedia article for a topic you studied (or are studying) in another class. You may choose any topic, with this caveat: you must have a published source for the topic (e.g. a textbook or an assigned reading from the class). • First step: problem frame • Claim will take the form, “X is better than Y” • Assignment is on our class website: http://social.rollins.edu/wpsites/writingaboutwiki/assignments/wikipedia-article-evaluation/

  10. Summary of Vocabulary Thestatus quo is the situation as you find it or the viewpoint you are trying to change. The destabilizing moment introduces something about the status quo that, if allowed to continue, has costs • The reader should care about the costs. • The destabilizing moment should be a fact (not contestable) The solution presents a claim that would solve the problem. • The solution/claim should be different from the destabilizing moment Good claims meet three criteria: • Conceptually Rich • Subject to Evidence • Contestable

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