Ethics and Humanity

Ethics is a system of moral principals and it sometimes seems to be ignored in our everyday lives whether it is in the classroom, work or something as basic as on the Internet.  Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, is kept up to date by writers, editors and administrators. People are able to create pages and freely edit the pages, which would seem like a good way to keep the pages current but the problem is that people take advantage of the freedom of editing and they sometimes vandalize the site by writing inappropriate things on pages. 

Carra Leah Hood explains a situation she encountered on Wikipedia on her website Editing Out Obscenity: Wikipedia and Writing Pedagogy. She explains that she was looking up something on Wikipedia and she saw that there was an inappropriate racist phrase. She edited it and it only took two weeks for the situation to be all figured out.  In chapter 6, The Lessons of Wikipedia, Zittrain stated,  “Administrators can also prevent particular users from editing Wikipedia. Such blocks are rare and usually temporary. Persistent vandals usually get four warnings before any action is taken.” It appears that it is quite rare that try to vandalize sites over and over once they’ve already been caught but nonetheless, it still occurs.  Not only can people post inappropriate phrases, they can also just post incorrect information, which makes professors skeptical about their students using Wikipedia as a valid source.

When Wikipedia first started it was Nupedia. Nupedia was more of a blog than it was an encyclopedia because people couldn’t entries or comment on entries to question things. What was posted was just there and it couldn’t really be altered to accompany changes (Zittrain, 133).  Without change, whether on the Internet or in the everyday world, things aren’t able to grow or improve our lives. Just as Nupedia grew to Wikipedia, a better encyclopedia, change can also help the growth in our universities.

A lot like the ethical problems in Wikipedia, our universities have some ethical problems that need to be worked out. The number of African American students in American universities is very low compared to the number of white students and the bigger problem, as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. states in Integrating the American Mind, is “keeping them.” Only a quarter of black students that attended Berkeley graduated or stayed the full four years back in the 80’s. The reason is not only a financial reason but also what our classes are teaching them.

Humanities is a topic that most universities teach; not only do they teach it but usually the students need to take a certain amount of hours in humanities courses to graduate college. It’s a way to teach students about the world they are living in. African American students don’t necessarily feel as if they are able to learn about their culture because American universities offer more classes about the history of America or Europe than they do about the Middle East, Asia or Africa. The humanities course in America have “meant the best that has been thought by white makes in the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian traditions…” instead of “the best that has been thought by all human beings” (Gates, pg. 346). Students need to be given the complete history of the world so they feel more comfortable in universities and so they feel like they belong just as much as a white student belongs in the university.

Teaching a class in a university is a lot like editing a webpage on Wikipedia. Its sharing information that a person thinks is important enough to share with a large group of people. It needs not only be correct information but it also must be relevant information that will make sense to the audience. It should be ethical and cater to the needs of the audience.

Reliable Information for a Reliable Wikipedia

Wikipedia articles are created by writers that find knowledge in other places and bring it to the Wikipedia page for users to read and gain knowledge. It is important that the information is correctly reported and that it is a nonbiased page for people to read to understand topics that they didn’t understand before reading the articles.

The Wikipedia article, Queen’s Building, Wolverhampton, from the Did you Know section tells the transformation of the building going from the carriage entrance to Wolverhampton railway station to part of the city’s existing bus station.  The article uses two references to create its content: The National Heritage List for England and Britain’s Historic Railway Buildings: A Gazetteer of Structures. They site the readings using Wikipedia’s reliable source page. When people edit the site they must site them by using inline citations with numbers and they must add the source to the bibliography at the end of the webpage or it is considered unreliable.  Both the sources that were used to create this Wikipedia article were both properly cited and seemed to be respectable sources.

Both sources are well known throughout England and seem like credibly sources.  The National Heritage List for England is a credible site that discusses the history or places and things around England. It contains archives of important information and is set up in a professional way. The second source, Britain’s Historic Railway Buildings: A Gazetteer of Structures is a book about the history of the railway structures. Since the Queen’s building was once a railway structure it would make complete sense that they would get their Wikipedia information through a source that was quite knowledgeable about that stuff. It isn’t only important for the sources that a Wikipedia page uses to be credible sources but they must also report the information back to the Wikipedia uses correctly or it will defeat the purpose of Wikipedia.

The information from The National Heritage List for England is all reliable and correctly reported information. There is a description paragraph at the end of the page that describes what it looks like and when important features were added onto the building. The Wikipedia mentions that front glass gates replaced iron gates and that an extension was added to each side of the building. Both of those occurred in the 20^th century. The information is from the website and the website’s details match the details that were given in Wikipedia’s Queen’s Building, Woverhampton article. I wasn’t able to check the pages of the other source because I don’t have it with me but since they use page numbers in their bibliography entry it would be hard to believe that they lied about the information because someone could  buy the book and look it up if they really felt like seeing if the facts were correctly reported to the readers.

In my opinion I think facts that came from the sources are reliable and so is the information in the Wikipedia article. The people that posted the information didn't go into great detail probably because they didn't have enough detail. That alone shows they they are only trying to post reliable information that they know to be correct. 

Citizen Critic

1.     1. Donald Lazere in ”Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy: A Critical Citizen’s Guide” chapter 5 he discusses viewpoint, bias and fairness of a citizen critic. He gives his main ideas of what it means to be fair and what he thinks works best in being a citizen critic and what doesn’t. Lazere shares many of the same ideas that Edward Corbett and Rosa Eberly shared in their “The Elements of Reasoning.” They have similar ideas and some of them are the same. They both talk about the term “false dilemma” and how it affects becoming a citizen critic. Corbett and Eberly defines false dilemma as something that “forces a range of choices into an either/or structure” (pg. 128). Another viewpoint they have in common is “straw man.” Corbet and Eberly define straw man as something that “involves exaggerating your opponent’s position and the representing that exaggeration as his position” (pg. 130).  They both discus personal attacks as well. Instead of discussing an issue, they instead decide to attack the person that represents or supports the issue that they are against. Lazere refers to it as an ad hominem. All of these are diversions of reasoning. They are ways the “examining and critiquing the reasoning of others…” (pg.124). These ideas are put to work in Jamelle Bouie’s article “White People are Fine with Laws that Harm Blacks.” He uses the straw man fallacy to make strong points against his opponents by taking the worst thing he can use from his opponents and making it the only thing heard or remembered.  He uses false dilemma by only giving the people he interviewed a yes or no option after a short video. The solution to his problem is greater than just one question with two simple answers. He kind of uses personal attacks in his title by saying that white people are okay with harming black people instead of addressing the issue that black people are treated unfairly.

3.    3.  In “I agree, but..” McDonald used the idea of agreeing with what the opponent says but also showing them why it isn’t a good enough answer to the problem (pg. 206) He makes it a point that it isn’t good to only give reasons why you are right because your opponent will find a way to shoot you down. Lazere mentions that “stacking the deck” in your favor isn’t productive because your opponent wont listen to what you have to say if your point only talks about your ideas.  Bouie kind of stacks the deck in his favor and only shows us how his ideas are right and that white people are wrong. It doesn’t help his argument because that comes off as biased and people might get frustrated and not want to read it anymore.  

4.      

The Rhetoric of Social Websites

In The Multimediated Rhetoric of the Internet, Carolyn Handa brings us through a study that discusses how websites are used for rhetorical performances that socially impact our lives and our world.  She explains that social sites aren’t always what we think that they are. Its common to think of a social site as a means of communication like Twitter or Facebook but it can be as simple as a site that connects a community together (Handa p.117).  As long as a site impacts a community then it can be considered a social site.  Handa also states, “…the importance of staying ahead in the competitive world of technology, and the importance of making education relevant to minority students…” are two exigent circumstances of rhetoric (Handa p. 118). She brought up a website that the Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville has to help explain her ideas.

The SIUE has a Black Studies Program which ahs a website. The point of the website is to create a place for African American studies to communicate in order for the to get more involved and stay in school. According to many studies, “African American students have fewer retention rates than their white counterparts” (Handa p. 142). This website makes sense as a rhetorical exigence because as M. Jimmie Killingworth stated in Appeals to Time, an “exigence suggests that topics emerge as urgent considerations at a particular historical time” (p.38). At this point in time the retention rate of African American students is a problem so a website dedicated to getting them more involved will give them the motivation to stay in school instead of dropping out.

Handa describes that there was urgency in exigence but also that there was kairos, which is another rhetorical concept. According to Killingsworth, kairos is “finding the right argument at the right moment” (p. 38).  The argument that Handa talks about is the retention rate of African American students compared to white students in our universities at this time.  It is a situation that needs to be fixed so they used a website as a rhetorical performance to try to raise the retention rates.  

The website is designed to show the ethos, pathos and logos of the rhetorical situation. They used the Black Power fist on their page in order to gain some emotional response from the students to make them realize that getting involved in things on the website will make them stronger and able to succeed. They used different things from the African American culture that would really stand out on their page to give them a place that they felt as if they belonged more, which is an emotional stance.  It also has a blog for people to communicate making it a modern space for students in the now to be able to use it to their advantage.  It uses the appeals of time by Killingsworth by using epideictic speech, or present day known as instructions, to point students in the right direction based on what is happening now.

The site uses advertising in order to tell students what opportunities there are to get involved in now. Killingsworth states, “The aim is to move consumers to buy new products. The idea of progress, with the suggestion that technology…continuously improves the conditions of human life…” (p. 40). Handa and Killingsworth both argue how important technology can be in our lives and how much it can impact how successful our lives can be. I think that as much as technology has taken over our lives it can also be a huge benefit if it is used in a positive way instead of just sitting on Facebook or Twitter all day. People look at social sites as distracting but if they view a social site as a website like a university site, it is a way to communicate and get involved. As long as it is set up well then it will be beneficial.